I've been living here for the past month and I'll be doing the same until February 26, when I leave this continent - hopefully for a couple of years - to go to Europe and begin a new life but, in the meantime, I'm trying to make the most out of what could possibly be my last days of really good weather in a long long time.
It's like when life gives you lemons and you decide to prepare mojitos. In my case, life has given me exactly four weeks from now to enjoy the hot weather, the beautiful beach, the exotic hostel life, the careless vibes, the chill attitude from everyone around me, the cheap lifestyle my spartan ways allow me to live but most importantly, life has given me a chance to have closure, to leave my home country the way I want to, the way I needed to for so long, exactly as I've been planning to do it for several months now.
But first of all, I want to show you what a normal life in the Caribbean means for me, but what you have to understand is that there is no normal day in the Caribbean, especially for me that my schedule and routine changes so much.
I know, I know, I've been writing for several weeks that I crave routine, so perhaps the way I should be living right now is striving for it, but truth to be told, I can't and I don't want to. One of the magical things about Playa del Carmen is that no day will be the same, and you have to embrace that fact if you want to have a good time, otherwise you'll be miserable - like I've been some days over the past 5 weeks, I won't lie.
So, instead of showing you what a normal day looks for me, I'll show you how an ideal day goes by in my current lifestyle. This kind of days happen perhaps 3 times a week and this is exactly how I enjoy them. The schedule varies every day, and what happens during that schedule is never the same, but you'll get the overall feeling of my non-special days in the Mayan Riviera.
By non-special days I mean that these are not days when I visit a Cenote, or explore a nearby beach, or sleep in a nearby town, or or or. Means that there are no weird plans off schedule, only the day by day stuff I enjoy doing in what is my hometown for now.
Waking up very early, around 7-8 am
Playa del Carmen is a party and touristic destination. This means that the music goes on until 5 am every morning and the streets are crowded from 10 am to 7 am on the next day. But in between those hours, the streets are completely deserted and the only people you get a glimpse of, is runners. Runners that make the 5th avenue their own every morning.
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So I get on my running mood, stretch a bit, get my muscles warm and I start running, no destination, just running. I usually take my cellphone with me, both for Actifit gains and also to listen to some music. This is probably the only time of the day where I listen to music. Doing this type of cardio is incredibly hard for me because I see no point in running aimlessly without a purpose. I find it so much easier to establish a goal and then set my mind on it, putting on top of my mind what I want to achieve and how I want to achieve it, and still, running for the sake of running holds no interest, challenge or drive for me. So, no matter where I start running and the street I do it, I always end up in the ball court.
This is the kind of cardio I love. I can't run for more than 20 minutes. I get bored. I don't see the point. I even get tired even though my body can go over 3-4 hours doing heavy excercise on any given day.
But this one, the competitive cardio where you play against other men and you prove yourself, where you get to show who's the boss, where the alpha male gets sorted out from the pack by going over your opponents... man, I could play this all day. I've actually done this before but not with basketball - the most time I've played basketball is 4 hours - but with flag football. In flag football there's something called lightning tournament , where you play around 6 games in one Saturday and then, if you are good enough, you play 3 on Sunday. You can win a championship and be the best in just one weekend. Now that's a challenge. And those are exactly the kind of sports I love. That's my kind of cardio. Now you get why I don't like running and I get tired in 20 minutes but when it comes to competitive sports I can go all day long.
One thing I love about Playa del Carmen is that everything is close by. Anything and everything you might need is just walking distance from wherever you are. If you read my posts on a regular basis (or follow my instagram @ericfna), you might have seen that the kind of excercise I like doing when it comes to shaping my body and getting fit is the outdoor gym, some people call it the bars or the irons. Well, it turns out that the best outdoor gym in Playa is less than 50 meters away from the basketball courts so, every time I finish playing ball I hit the bars and put my body to the test, always trying to surpass my own limits - within reason - and trying to get my body to be ready for peak performance. Of course I haven't achieved this, but the key here is being constant and doing this on a daily - or almost daily - basis, to never falter, to not get discouraged, to keep the goal in mind. I don't get bored fighting the irons, this is different than cardio, at least for me. In here I have defined goals and the music helps to be honest.
This is what the amazing outdoor gym looks like
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After that, my morning get's a lot calmer. I return to my hostel running, trying to cool down as I get there, lowering my heart rate and when I get there, I stretch a bit and bum. The real deal starts. Time for breakfast and then getting my ass to work on Steem, curate some with ocd and ocdb, check out the crypto news of the day and trying to write a post when I have time - granted, I haven't written a lot lately, but that's just because I've been very busy with the Steem projects I'm part of.
My breakfast is not very Spartan, in fact some people could consider it a lot. I have a couple of eggs with tomato to get some protein after the workout, a bit of rice for the carbs, some beans for the grains, coffee and two slices of bread (I know I shouldn't eat bread but I'm weak, leave me alone.
Then for the next 4 or 5 hours it's all about computer time, sitting down, having a pair of cigarettes, drinking plenty of water and when people are too obnoxious, pretending I'm listening to music on my headphones.
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The upside you ask for? Well, look at the background, that's my office and I enjoy this little oasis in the fifth avenue every day, that's why I'm able to get so much stuff done every day (when I don't go out on day trips or meet cute girls that I follow around the Mayan Riviera).
Do you see the pills in the left picture? Those are the pills I've mentioned before in some of my previous posts, the same pills that help me keep my cholesterol, lypids, triglycerids and sugar levels on hold, allowing me to have as much energy as I should have if I didn't have a health condition from which I'm slowly but steadily recovering.
I try to get as much as I can done before 3-4 pm, which is when the hostel starts to get noisy and crowded, because around 5 pm I know I won't be able to get anything done, so these hours between 10 am and 3-4 pm are worth my weight in gold, and even though I'm losing weight lately, you could still buy a small country with that kind of money.
Then, I start cooking. I usually cook cheap, healthy stuff - oh yeah, that is actually possible in Mexico, but I mean cheap for my standards, healthy food is usually expensive for the average minimun wage worker in Mexico, but that's a topic I won't bulge into today. I don't care what I eat, and I don't mind I repeat dishes more than twice a week, as long as the food is balanced and gives me everything I need to stay healthy.
Now I'm not the best cook, I've never been and I never will, but I know how to handle myself in a kitchen and I do have a few tricks under my sleeve. I can cook some dishes quite good, these are just two examples from two different things I cooked yesterday and the day before. I never cook with salt and I try to use as less oil as I can without compromising the food's taste.
After catching that meal, I gotta wash the dishes. In hostels that's how it works, you wash what you use, there's no cleaning lady to do your chores for you. I know, pity.
A bit of a walk to help digestion and then I'm back to the beach or the hostel, depending on my mood. That's where the fun starts. If there are cool people staying at the hostel I get a beer and hang out with them, with the potential night out no matter what day of the week is, after all, for tourists it's always saturday, right?
If there's not cool people to hang out with - which is quite frequent if you ask me - I head back to my room and try to get some more PC work done.
But, when there's actually an interesting plan to go out to at night, it can get pretty wild and I'll definitely wake up with a bit of a hangover and I'll definitely won't be able to have my same routine again... that's the only downside I see about going out at night with hostel guests.
Either way, ending my normal day in bed or in a club or bar, after getting all my responsibilities done, it really feels good. I wish that I could do this every day and get my craved routine going, but it's not possible, at least not more than 3-4 days a week at most.
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I hope you liked mu somewhat boring, and at the same entertaining day. I know it was a long post, it took me quite a while to write it, hopefully it was written in a way that made you read til the end :)