March 15, 2020
At around 4:30 in the morning we were woken up to the sounds of a marching band and fireworks going past the RV park. Seriously, who has a parade at 4:30 in the morning? I was a little temped to go out and see what was going on but it was still dark out. Apparently this weekend was some sort of religious holiday.
Returning from Mexico City and having a bad night’s sleep due to church bells, fireworks and early morning parades we decided to have a couple of rest days before heading off to our next destination. We basically just hung around the RV park all day. Holly BBQ’ed a Tri Tip and we just put things away and cleaned up.
We had been keeping up on the Covid-19 news and it is starting to look bad in the US. There were still few reported infections in Mexico but it is hard to tell the true status since the Mexican government was in full denial over the situation. The official numbers of confirmed infections might be low but that could be true simply because the government isn’t testing people. In other news the stock market is crashing, and we are likely entering a recession at least if not worse. Millions of people are going to lose their jobs. Schools, restaurants, bars, and borders are closing in the US. It is a good thing that most of this bad news does not affect us since we are not worried about losing our jobs or the schools closing.
However I do anticipate that there will be widespread travel disruptions and lock downs like in China. We can’t go back to the US since we don’t have any US health insurance so we are going to need to find someplace to hide out in Mexico until things blow over.
March 16, 2020
We had another rest day in the RV park but determined that we would head out to Oaxaca tomorrow. We read on the news that the US government was thinking about sending out checks of up to $1,200 per person. Thinking over the situation, all the bad news would actually work to our benefit, assuming that we didn’t get sick of course.
First, we didn’t need to worry about losing our jobs or the schools closing. This is especially good since I worked in a nonprofit health clinic and Holly was in retail, both rather high-risk jobs for sickness. Second, borders closing would be a bit inconvenient but we were not planning to travel fast anyway so we could just find a nice place and hole up. Third, the stock market crash is going to be good for us as all of our stocks are in retirement accounts that we can’t touch for at least 10 years. Our money outside of the retirement accounts is almost all in cash already and it would be a good chance to pick up some bargain stocks. Fourth, the economic uncertainty has driven up the value of the dollar so everything in Mexico was costing less. Fifth, if the US government does send out free checks, it would just be bonus money for us and that money would go much further for us in Mexico. Sixth, we are in a warm climate so that should help reduce the risk of the virus a bit. Finally, I expect that when the virus recedes we would likely be able to find a good flight and hotel deal to visit Holly’s family in China as the travel industry tries to lure back travelers. In summary, we are in really good shape, again assuming we doing actually catch the virus.