I've always struggled to dive into actual travel writing truly, as a career move. At one end of the spectrum ranges from generational movement-making authors from Hemingway or Paul Theroux and the other seemingly AI-written blogs on "top white sand beaches ranked" or actual humans writing the same garbage after a solid three-day stopover at said beach.
Theroux, inspirational and motivating, without telling us how to do it (selling the sizzle, not the steak), the latter delivering baseless opinions, the meager quality of content outdone only by its SEO. We are all looking for an online middle ground when planning a trip, and there are few and far between. I get it! But I’m not going to be your guy. Even Saveur Magazine, our household travel Polaris and bar-setter for this elusive middle ground has gone online-only, in my opinion, its future in limbo.
But my struggle is that, frankly, I don't want to tell you about the unique details of my trip or any trip. Quit asking me online. I’m NEVER going to tell you or the public my hard-earned locals. Yemen is one thing; you arent' going there soon and aren't looking for my advice. But the Yucatan? Perhaps. We spent a long time researching this trip, went to three locations on the Yucatan Peninsula, spent a decent chunk of change, covered a lot of miles, and experienced a lot of dead ends. We were here 20 years ago on our honeymoon and visited what once were genuinely remote beaches and jungles. These same places are now overrun with hollow promises due to terrible travel blogs, half-buttoned white-shirted “shaman”, shallow sellout influencers, and other complex industry reasons. Empty of real identity, creativity, or culture, much of this region has bent the knee to what the industry thinks the affluent western traveler wants. But we found and experienced otherwise. We drove far and experienced something you aren’t going to find on the average blog.
I'm not going to provide details of my trip because that's not what travel is about. If you lean towards major resorts with a shuttle and wristband... this probably isn't for you. If you want to have a beer with me or sip mezcal to hear about it and learn about the reality of complex travel, pull up a seat at my house any time. I'll tell you all about our lack of power at night or inability to flush a toilet for most of the night or get realistic about that you need to have a solid grasp of Spanish long before you have a trip like this. Or even have the stomach to drive five or six hours in another country.
Here is the nut and bolts of our trip - 30,000 level.
Lindsey and I went down solo for about a week to celebrate our 20th anniversary. I'll call it the extreme southern end of Tulum. Literally, the final stop before you cross into the Reserva de la Biósfera Sian Ka'an, which is where we went 20 years ago. I’ll even share the place.
Our close friend flew with our kids to Mexico, and we picked them up and continued on another 4-5 hour drive to a very remote off-grid house on a 10-mile private beach.
About a week there, we dropped off our friend at a bus stop to get a ride to his next destination. Our third spot and house brought us four to our final destination.