Sapphic Travel

My name is Cierra (the one writing the blog) and my girlfriend Rachel. I decided to create this as a place to put our adventures for friends, family, and whoever else cares to listen! We made the leap to quit our jobs and travel. Did we have a plan? Nope, not really! Which personally was a dream of mine! 

[sapphictravel]

Why We Chose Mexico

Rachel and I had thought long and hard about where we wanted to travel. Ever since we met we talked about traveling together and we tossed around the globe but never really knew where we would end up first. After assessing our goals for the future we had come to the decision I would continue to work as a hairstylist, so we could get permanent residence in Australia.. even though they were still in lockdown I would have to work for 2 more years, no biggie, right? wrong. The months passed and we went in and out of lockdown ourselves but one thing stayed consistent, Australia seemed to only be getting worse. We knew we had to make a plan and dive in headfirst. Both of us booked two weeks off in September to do a surf road trip in our car, which was amazing I fell in love with surfing. When it became time to come home neither of us wanted to return to the ball and chain of our 9-5s, so we did what any logical person would do... we booked plane tickets for 3 weeks away.

Mexico was appealing to our wide eyes from its beautiful views to the fact a visitor visa is 6 months. That was a significant amount of time to explore, live life in Mexico, and figure out what we were doing next. With rose coloured glasses we planned to stay in Tulum for the entire 6 months. I would call this our fatal flaw. Don't get me wrong, I love Tulum but there is so much more to see. It is a very small town, definitely set up to be there a week or two max and probably at a resort. Although it comes with a very safe feeling, Merida felt so much more secure walking around at night.

This is what I wish the plan had been.... or maybe the plan for next time. We would have looked into the fact that you can only surf on the other side of Mexico, not the Caribbean side. Of course, this was not the side we had chosen. Talking to people in Mexico, locals or travelers, it seemed all the same; everyone agreed Tulum was not the place to be. When I talked about Tulum back home in Canada people had nothing but good news. It's strange to see how opinions change depending on where you are in the world.

[sapphictravel]

Halloween Abroad

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Halloween Abroad / Dia de los Muertos

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays back in Canada. Up until this point, I have never missed a Canadian Halloween, this year that would change. I had always assumed Halloween was the same everywhere. Kids Trick-or-Treated until they were around 13 years old and then slowly tapered off to the Halloween parties. I discovered this wasn't true around the world from exchange students my family hosted. From my understanding, in most countries only very young children dress up. I had no idea what to expect in Mexico... especially since their holiday Dia de Los Muertos runs from October 31st to November 2nd.

I woke up Halloween morning; instead of being met with the crisp air piercing my lungs, the rays of the sun beat down onto my skin, and tiny beads of sweat formed on my temples. This feeling will never be synonymous with fall. Every other day if I was asked about cold weather, I would proclaim its dreadfulness without a doubt, but Halloween is different. I wouldn't mind seeing the leaves turn into an array of vibrant

. In Mexico, you wouldn't know it was the time of horror films, haunted houses, and costumes it would be seen as summer. The only part giving away its disguise was that restaurants hung cobwebs and skeletons. One ramen place even had a Halloween sign. Most of the décor might have just been for Day of the Dead... I'm not so sure how to tell if Halloween has been intertwined into Day of the dead. on October 31st We saw toddlers and children dressed up and what appeared to be trick-or-treating at restaurants. The only thing I saw that was most certainly related to Halloween, was a club hosting a Halloween night.

October quickly turned into November, and it was Dia de Los Muertos. It is an ancient holiday that reunites the living and dead, to share a meal with their passed loved ones. Rachel and I didn't know what to expect. From what I've heard in Mexico City there is also a parade. In the small town of Tulum, there were altars set up for loved ones and people in costumes. Rachel tried Pan de Muerto. She said it tasted like a dense lemon loaf coated in sugar, which sounds amazing. From the outside, you wouldn't be able to tell much was going on. I'm sure the locals of Mexico felt the presence of their holiday.

[sapphictravel]

Starting our Travels 

Canada -> Mexico 

[sapphictravel]

Live Your Dreams (quitting our jobs and buying a plane ticket)

We all catch ourselves fantasizing about our so-called dream life... but how often do you truly get to live it. How often do we let ourselves experience what we long for? I never thought I would, and let me tell you it didn't help when the majority of the world began to close. Talk about existential doom, which I reveled in for the entire lockdown. Through all of this uncertainty, Rachel and I decided to take one of the biggest leaps of our lives. We bought a plane ticket. After realising this was really happening we had to do one last thing... well two. Tell our mums and quit our jobs! All four parties took it quite well. It was definitely easiest on the jobs, personally, I had been prepping my job for this moment; always talking about my dreams of leaving and travelling the world.

We 'planned' our entire trip in the span of 3 weeks (the day we bought our plane ticket and rented our first Airbnb). Although it didn't seem that planned at all. The trip felt so far away as our life stayed the same pace in our basement suite. Then all of the sudden it was here. We had packed our backpacks and were only wearing a set of pjs that didn't make the cut for our last day in Canada. Not to forget, of course, we left two days after Canadian Thanksgiving and not one but three Thanksgiving dinners. 0-100 we packed up my mum's car and drove to the YVR airport since we needed a direct flight to cut the cost of a PCR test. It was easy sailing from there... or so we thought. Neither of us had experienced such a disorganised airport system. Our airline made it clear we were to be there four hours before take-off. That was much longer than I had ever heard of but we assumed it just boiled down to new COVID protocols. Our check-in didn't even open until 8 PM, although we are thankful after looking down the line at about 90 people waiting to check in with the airline. After a man quietly herded the group of people to a random table with a QR code and gave no instructions, we found out this was when we filled out our health survey. The survey took seconds and there we had it 'approved to travel'. Once we finally boarded our plane the real fun began. The captain definitely spoke English but not fluently. We sat on the plane from 11:00 PM (when we were supposed to take off) to 2:00 AM, while they fixed some technical issues or so we believed. This three-hour delay only meant one thing... we were most certainly not getting on our next flight which had only an hour and a half layover. The airline was super organized with this flaw, someone waited as we got off our flight in Mexico City to hand us our new boarding passes. That's how our one day of travelling turned into almost three and the start of our new adventure.