It's Time We Travel More Slowly, Conveniently, Comfortably: Cruising Past 70

2018 was when we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. It was also when I said goodbye to my sexy sixties and hello to my sizzling seventies. The last year we had such monumental milestones was 2008 when I turned sixty and Bill and I were married. Time does fly and places recede to the distance.

Now, it's time to say goodbye whether it is to a time gone by or to places we’ve been. But it is also exciting to anticipate the next, whether it's a fresh new period or a brand new place. We always feel this at fever pitch when the end of the year magically transforms into a new one on the evening of December 31.  

We had prepared for this shifting of gears earlier in the year (see here). We completed getting settled in our new home at Viewpoint in July. After that, we resumed our bristling pace and traveled for 13 weeks to 19 destinations. Thankfully, 2019 will only be travel for 18 weeks and only to ten places.

During 13 of those weeks, from Dec. 29, 2018 to April 1, 2019, Mazatlan, Mexico will be our vacation home. We are using the El Cid Vacations Club timeshare we upgraded to at the beginning of 2018. Our four-week stay was upped to all-inclusive twelve-week stay per year in any of their seven hotels in Mazatlan, Cancun, or Cozumel.

three of  El Cid's four resorts in Mazatlan, Mexico

This year, we chose Mazatlan’s El Cid El Moro Beach Hotel. It will be no cooking nor housekeeping at our 26th-floor unit. The hotel has a beachfront. Ten restaurants available for meals. It is steps away from the Zona Dorada (shopping zone) and the El Cid Country Club with tennis, golf, pickleball, spa, and fitness center facilities. It is also just a short drive to downtown Mazatlan with its Catedral, Mercado, Teatro, etc.

When people ask me why we are doing this, I say, “It’s too cold in Phoenix during winter.” We hear it was even in the Fahrenheit 30s in the last few days! But the truth is Bill truly loves to retire in Mexico. This is our compromise. And an all-inclusive three-month timeshare is so much more practical than maintaining a second house. Besides, the room is comfortable and spacious enough, about 900 sq. ft in all with two baths.

our spacious and comfortable room, including the view

Then, to escape the summer heat in Phoenix, we will do a five-week road trip. First stop will be another family reunion, hopefully, in Park City, Utah. This time, however, instead of my family, we hope to gather around Bill’s. After the reunion, we go to Calgary to visit my daughter in Calgary. Then we cross Alberta to British Columbia and stop a few days at Kelowna, BC to say hello to Viewpoint friends.

To keep our tradition of celebrating somewhere special for our anniversary, we have booked a timeshare in Vancouver from where we will tour Victoria, too. Then we go to Seattle to see old friends and check out our rental properties. The last week will be spent in San Francisco with my eldest daughter and her family. Another easy journey.

The shift has also been reflected in my blog which I have rebranded as Carolina: Cruising Past 70. I have been writing travel essays about our decade of travels. The best-loved will be compiled as a sequel to my first book, Carolina: Cruising to an American dream. It will be entitled “Carolina: Cruising Past 70. Lessons Learned, Insights Gained.” I think it will be a vast improvement from my first, not only in my writing but also in my photography.

pinnable image

pinnable image

We say goodbye to the memories of a time gone by and the places we’ve been in 2018. But we also welcome our new cruising lifestyle, our vacation home in Mexico, the revisits of well-loved people and places, and a new book to make 2019 another banner year! It is indeed time to travel more slowly, more conveniently, and more comfortably, in keeping with our age. It’s time for cruising past 70.