In case you weren’t aware I should warn you the Earth’s magnetic poles are about to switch and a catastrophic tidal wave will engulf the planet or causing end time climate changes. Right you are then.
I was lying on my back in the middle of the lawn at El Rancho RV park after a strenuous game of bocce and my neighbor Chris says he’s waiting for the end times. All I’m waiting for is Guatemala to open up so we can get moving to Panama but the political crisis in Guatemala shows no sign of easing.
Chris then started in on oppression and our overlords taking away our rights and poor us and so forth. I simply disagreed, told him to read some history and to travel to learn about real oppression and see real people suffering poverty and he drifted off. I’m not into conspiracies or magic or supernatural stuff. If I can’t see it it ain’t there. I don’t look for scientists on YouTube or snake oil salesmen on Facebook. I think I annoyed him and for that I’m sorry but in this travelers environment keep your nuttery to yourself. Overlanding is no place for conspiracy theories, the road is hard enough and we mostly stick to travelers talk.
Above you see a couple of the nicest retired Germans you could wish to come across. Matthias and Sylvia have toured Europe, North Africa and South America in their a Sprinter four wheel drive box van conversion whose diesel incidentally has given them hell across the high Andes passes where the oxygen is thin. 
We get along famously and he’s promised to drive the Silk Road with us if we ship to Europe after South America so that offer whetted our appetites. He wears no tinfoil hats and is if possible more pragmatic and certainly more cautious than me.
Below, Cali the caretaker napping after another exceptionally long day. This is how phone photos look rather than cameras with proper lenses! My camera was safe aboard GANNET2!
I’ve noticed that self identified victim status a lot of expatriates wear as a mantle in Mexico and it doesn’t make me want to hang out with them. I travel in Mexico because I enjoy it and I also enjoy being in the States. I enjoy the variety but I don’t want to live anywhere else. I’ve had a great, if modest, life in the US and I feel extremely fortunate. I never sought to make a fortune or alter history and in that I succeeded splendidly! But I’ve had a great time.
Last year we met a lovely couple in a beach campground driving a huge truck and trailer with a bunch of toys. We really liked them, in their fifties and retired from Alberta. Then they went off the reservation talking about how oppressed they were in Canada and how they had to flee to Mexico to a country whose culture and language did not interest them.
I was actually quite shocked but said nothing. He was a superb mechanic off the oil fields I believe with a high school diploma. Canada had allowed him to make an excellent living and retire early and far from oppressing him gave him an excellent quality of life. His ingratitude surprised me.
There’s another oppressed Canadian here in Oaxaca who talks about fleeing from the nut job Prime Minister Trudeau. He owns a massive Ram pickup now with Mexican plates and a large travel trailer any Mexican might envy. He is not the poster child for refugees escaping oppression.
The world seems to be spinning into real violence at the moment and I suspect more refugees will be struggling to escape to a place of wealth and peace. Southern Mexico is littered with Venezuelans walking north, living rough and taking their families with them. I look at them and wonder where my neighbors forgot their sense of proportion.
They say travel broadens the mind but I’m not sure that’s always the case. I have no idea what the point of living in Mexico might be if you don’t have any interest in the place beyond the cost of living. I like visiting but I know where my home is and I know where my travels will end. And that’s not here.
