¡Bienvenidos a Mexico, Whohn Brose!

What is a night without sleep when you have four and a half months to catch up? For all the planning and lists that were made, it still came down to being wide awake at midnight the night before our flight with all of our belongs spread across the bed.

We packed, unpacked, and repacked again, whittling everything down to what we thought we would absolutely need to get us through July. And yet, we still looked at each other and wondered aloud if we were bringing too much stuff. I guess only time will tell whether we made the right decisions.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way—clocking less than two hours of sleep before being thrown into nearly eight hours of airport travel. Then again, anything other than adrenaline-fueled last-minute chaos just wouldn’t be the Whohn Brose way.

RIP Old PDX Carpet.

Our flights were largely uneventful, thank goodness—save for the moment we were about to touch down in Houston, only to increase speed and pull right back into the air. Between tensing up and having an internal freak out—is something wrong with the landing gear?!—Whit was able to make a funny “Houston, we have a problem” joke.

Fortunately, the announcement came soon after that a delayed plane on the runway had caused air traffic control to request we do another loop. Phew!

So then it was off to Cancun—during Spring Break, we might add. No luck finding Carson Daly or the rest of the TRL regulars, though. In fact, we didn’t even hear Sisqo’s “Thong Song” playing when we landed! Pretty sure MTV lied to our childhood selves.

That Pixel camera phone, tho.

The bus ride to Playa del Carmen was easy as pie—or tarta, if you’re speaking the local language. Everyone we’ve encountered has been super warm and welcoming, from the taxi driver that took us to our airbnb to the nice ladies on 5th Avenue that keep offering us massage packages at a special discounted price—because we’re amigos!

Speaking of amigos, this place is full of them. We ran into some people that John knows from reffing flag football, literally on our first night and first time venturing onto the main walking street. More than 6,000 miles from all we know in Portland, Oregon and we’ve already found familiarity.

That’s not to say we aren’t stepping outside our comfort zones, though! John ate guacamole on our first night here—the best guacamole of her life, Whit would like to add—and both of us are slowly acclimating to throwing toilet paper into the trashcan instead of flushing it down the pipes.

Find someone who looks at you the way literally everyone looks at guacamole.