I left Mexico City to go to Guadalajara, it’s the second largest city in Mexico with a population of only 4 million 🙂 After staying one night at a hostel, I decided to live with a family, so I found a place which it turned out to be a guest house with 15 people sharing the house. It’s a big house that’s owned by an Australian man and his Mexican girlfriend who rent the place to mostly students. They are very nice couple, the Australian guy has been traveling for 30 years, he’s a handyman, who does a lot of wood work and he’s also a sailor who owned his sailing boat for many years. We had few conversation while I was there, and he told me he’s been living his life traveling and doing these things for many years. He traveled the world since he was 19 years old, and he did most of it on a motorcycle. His name is Bass, and he told me that everyone thought he was a loser, and won’t make anything in his life. To the contrary, if you want to value success by being rich he was a millionaire by the age 30, he had many houses and few yachts. He lost everything when the real estate market crash few years ago. He’s a very cool guy and although he’s 48 years old, you won’t think he’s more than 35. The other day we were sitting around the fire in the backyard and he was climbing the trees to show to hookup a swing for the kids.
It’s really amazing what the people I met in my travel, whether they are the other travelers or the people I met in this guest house. The type of life people do to make living just confirms that making a living can be easy, you just need to change the mindset. I met a Belgian girl who’s been traveling for 3 years, doing little odd jobs and speaks 4 languages. I also met an American young man in Mexico City who slept the past few nights on the floor of a church in order to save some money for his trip back to the states. At this guesthouse, I met a Mexican young man who came from northern Mexico and he quit his job because he wanted to concentrate on football/soccer, because it’s his passion. He was in Guadalajara interviewing or showing his skills to different soccer team in order to be selected. I met a lot of people in this house and I didn’t get the chance to know everyone’s story but they’re all interesting and surprisingly the house is very organized even with that number of people. Everyone is friendly and fun, they all wanted to help me or just chat, someone offered me to work in a call center, he told me they need some people who speak English and French. If I didn’t have some obligations and the need to go back to Canada I would have taken it because it requires at least 6 months of commitment. Although my approach about work has changed after this trip I would have taken it just to live in this beautiful country among these fine people.
The Mexican people are amazing, I can’t say enough good things about them, they are very optimistic, everyone wants to chat and everyone wants to help. On the bus, in the park and everywhere I start with a little question and it becomes a conversation. I just loved this amazing place.
