we went to mexico

last week we went to mexico!  our friends have a house on the beach in bahia de kino.  we first drove to tucson where one of them was finishing the migrant trail walk.  we stayed for the ceremony and were completely inspired by this group of walkers who had started on the border and finished in tucson.  i really want to do it next year!  so we were totally moved by the ceremony (the perfect start to a trip to mexico) and then we had lunch and headed further south across the border.

we stopped in hermosillo, the capital of the mexican state of sonora, for dinner and both luke and i were so lit up by the city streets and the taco and fruit stands and the signs all in espanol.   one of our friends had studied in that city years ago and he took us to a great outdoor restaurant with typical mexican food and a border-dog hot dog stand next door.  we tried both.  so delicious is the food in mexico!

we drove another hour towards the sea of cortez and arrived at the perfect little row of beach houses in kino bay.  kino is a small fishing town which is perfectly authentic and seemingly untouched by tourism.  we were happily surprised to see not to see any of the typical tourist shops or signs of the united states.

my friend sarah is super pregnant right now and we took a bike ride together into town where she was loved on by the whole city.  we bought pan dulces and paletas esquimales and went in and out of little market shops.  i road one of their electric bikes which was super fun.

 each day of our trip susan (sarah's mama) would have miraculously cooked up meals for the 12 of us, with us hardly realizing it in order to help her.  everything was so amazingly delicious and i tried to learn some of her mexican cooking skills.  luke made happy hour drinks each day (virgin and otherwise) with whatever fresh fruit we had that day.

 the ocean water was super warm and perfect for swimming.  we developed a little ritual of going out during the magic hour, floating and watching the sun go down behind the mountains.  these swims, for sure, were some of the highlights of the trip for me.  and the beaches were completely empty the entire time we were there.

 another one of our favorite parts of this trip was the humanitarianism of our hosts.  they don't try to be generous and compassionate people - they live it.  from stopping every time they saw someone in need, to bringing entire beds and bags of shoes for the community there who doesn't have them -they did it.  they brought basketball nets for the city park and they brought solar lights to a single mother living in a shack made of scraps of wood and net.  we were invited into her home and even though the floor was made of dirt, it was the cleanest floor i'd ever seen.

 sil & sue stopped the car when they spotted a man walking in the desert, miles and miles from anything.  he ran towards the car as they gave him water and food.  the image of this man will forever stay with us - he was mostly a skeleton with shoes as thin and tattered as paper.  he looked like he'd been walking for years.  and he was so grateful.

they also stopped to buy cheese and tortillas, etc from street vendors and soon we began thinking of the vendors differently.  you know how it is so easy to not make eye contact because you don't want to deal with it?  luke and i (thanks to our hosts) started considering purchasing things from them as a (small) way to help them out.  we heard so many stories.  plus sil & sue initiated a group-beach-clean-up where we collected over ten bags of trash.  we totally saw (and lived) how they came to a place and left it better than when they'd arrived.

it was ruby's first time in mexico and since she was in canada as a baby we realized she has now checked a good portion of north america off her travel list.  :)  she loved the mama time since we were so relaxed and mateo loved the beach time.  ruby couldn't get enough of the ocean-floating while mateo preferred playing on the shore.  this week ruby went crazy for quesadillas and mateo loved (and keeps asking for) "nana tacos".  luckily i learned how to make them!  each time we've traveled to mexico with babies, we've loved the culture of women and children coming up to them and holding their faces while they say sweet things.

 we are so so so happy to have driven hours into mexico and hours back and have had nothing but positive experiences to report.  it is so easy to hear stories of crime in a place we aren't familiar with and consider the entire country unsafe.  we did some research before going and asked experienced friends about the area and heard all good things.  the road to hermosillo which we took on the way there, and the road along the coast from kino to rocky point, which we took on the way back, were full of military checkpoints which made us feel safe.

so that was our trip in a few main points - it was fabulous to soak up some beach sun with friends, it was fabulous to visit one of our most favorite countries, and it was absolutely inspiring to do it with such compassionate humanitarians.

 the rest are more of our favorite photos from this past week.