2020 OUR YEAR IN REVIEW

2020

Our year in review, sharing more than 55 years together with my best friend, my wife Jane.

We started the year in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico, on the Caribbean coast where we booked an apartment with all the amenities for two months, from mid-November to mid-January, escaping the clamorous Mérida holiday season. This was a six hour bus ride south of Mérida, we traveled light, but as always brought our folding bicycles.

Our location was fantastic. With the central market a block away we indulged ourselves in fresh produce, sea food, and numerous great eats. Every morning early we biked to the nearby bay front to enjoy our sunrise breakfast in perfect serenity with nature at at it’s finest. Great Mexican coffee is conveniently available all across Yucatán at OXXO convenience stores, and we got our daily fix there.

Days we biked, exploring the areas many historical places, visited our grandchildren, sampled local eateries. Afternoons and evenings we stretched out in our hammocks reading books on our Kindle readers plus listening to audio books and noteworthy podcasts. We had a giant screen TV we didn’t use once, but the internet connection kept us tuned into the world and connected with family and friends.

Returning back home to Mérida our daily routine of biking out to breakfast and shopping the local markets for fresh food was a slice of paradise, and preparations for our annual Europe trip were set in motion.

Then corona virus arrived in Mexico from Spain and Italy and next a private jet and two charters of Mexican skiers arrived from Aspen, Colorado, infected with the virus and promptly spread the bug.

The American president confidently assured us that the China virus as he called it would disappear when the weather warmed up and everything would be back to normal by Easter...it was just the sniffles! As casualties increased daily with no end in sight, the Mexicans began to call this the Trump virus.

America became the world’s number one hot spot for virus with daily deaths reaching over 3,000 in a single day by early December. This is more deaths than from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The number is expected to quadruple after the Christmas/New Year holiday. Private hospitals in Mexico are now demanding huge deposits for admission that have driven many to sell their cars and homes.

Compounding this problem is the fact that Mexico does not require quarantine on incoming air passengers and the secretary of health did not order sufficient flu vaccine medicine for this year.

This will be a very interesting time in history, if we live!