I have never set foot out of the United States.  The plan is, that changes tomorrow, when some gay friends of mine are taking me down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a long weekend at a gay B&B and lounging at the beach maybe.  Last month I got my first passport ever.  Last week I loaded up on pesos so I’d have something to spend.  I’ve been trying to pick up a little basic tourist Spanish so I won’t be the rude American when I go down there.  I’ve never been to another country before.  Hopefully this leads to my exploring more of the world.

There’s two reasons most likely that I haven’t done any international travel before.  I’ve been a bit scared of the language barrier, yes.  But it’s been money mostly.  I haven’t made good money for most of my life.  It’s only recently I’ve had actual vacation time plus disposable income enough to travel, and my first urge was to see the country by car.  I love taking long cross-country road trips.  Here in the States, they don’t require much planning.  You just hope in the car and drive somewhere.  To travel abroad means a tad more planning, and I am more of an oh let’s see where that road goes kinda guy.

I’m in the midst of packing now.  Later this afternoon I’ll pack the car and set the house alarm and drive to visit my friends down in Arlington.  Tomorrow we fly south of the border.  So this may be the last blog post for a while. The place we’re staying at, Villa David, advertises Internet connectivity and I’m taking my laptop and a little Nikon digital camera I bought specifically for air travel (It’s small and cheap enough I won’t be too upset if it’s stolen).  So I may be able to post some shots here over the weekend.

The friend who arranged this trip pointed me to the Villa David web site pages that describe the rooms, but not the Main Page, where it clearly states the place is "clothing optional".  Er…I am not a clothing optional kinda guy…but I’ll probably enjoy myself all the same because I’ll be with friends.  The web site says their pool has a web cam you can tune into.  

I’ve been reading a bunch of travel sites trying to learn what to expect, but standing here at the cusp of it all I know is that it’ll be something new and I won’t really know what’s what until I actually go.  That’s fine.  In a way, it’s a lot like all my other road trips, even though there is more planning involved.  I don’t want to fall into a pattern of sticking only to the roads I am familiar with in my middle age because then I might as well stop going anywhere.  There is no growing up, there is only growing.  And it seems the older you get, the more you need to push yourself into that unfamiliar, uncertain territory where you can see something new, and learn something you didn’t know before.  I want to see the world now.  Or as much of it as I can at this stage in my life anyway.  Hopefully this is a start.