Would you believe that Mexico is green ?

When I was unknowing about this country, I just kind of presumed that the entirety of Mexico was one vast and dusty desert sort of thing. I had impressions from movies that this entire place was some sort of flat and rolling dust-bowl the way that all the cowboy movies and most of any film about this place has presented it.

I can't speak for the entire country because I have only seen a small part of it but I have been surprised about how green and plant-filled this country actually is.

I could tell that it was green here in Jalisco just from the plane approaching. The last time I was here was in Mexican winter - which isn't very cold - and it was not green then. I suppose that this would be the equivalent of a US or European autumn.

I went on a hike with some doggos (shhhh, don't tell Nadi), and was just astounded at how green and growing this part of the country anyway, actually is.

Thinking back on my life, I don't think I have ever seen Mexico represented in films like this even though, at least in the areas I am in this trip, all of it is like this. If you look around in any direction where I am you see green mountains everywhere.

Being in them is a far cry from any green outdoor adventure that I have experience in SE Asia because over there things are green year round as well as brutally hot and humid.

In Mexico, I am a lot more likely to do things outdoors because you aren't sweating like a madman immediately after leaving your air conditioned apartment the way that it is almost all of the year in all the places I have lived back in Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam.

This is a really big selling point for me as far as considering ever living here in the future is concerned.

once you get up to elevation though, and this last picture was shot at around 2000 meters above sea-level (I think) you can see how the greenery is limited to whatever the sun can get to, and this is again very different from the tropical environment that I am accustomed to for the past 20 years in Asia. I understand that plants need the sun to live, but the sun must just be so damn powerful in SE Asia that the stuff on the ground can get by with just a little bit of it. Keep in mind that the above picture is quite far from any road, so it's not like someone comes up here and cuts the grass every week.

If I were to show these pictures to most of the world's population and ask them to guess what country it was from I don't think many people would even consider Mexico, yet that is exactly what is going on here.

They say that everywhere has its plusses and minuses and from what I have experienced in Mexico a HUGE selling point for living here would be that the weather is so nice. I found this hard to believe at first because when you think about Mexico's proximity to the equator, it's so close that one would assume that it is just hot as hell all the time but that is far from the case. It is still brutally hot in Vietnam and Thailand and will be until around December. Then and only then do we get a few months of respite.

According to the people I know that live and work here, there are only 6 weeks or so of really hot summer and while that might be normal for a lot of the world, that is a very strange notion to someone that lives where I do. This weather is just wonderful.

I spend a lot of the day not even near a fan. In Vietnam outside of December and January, I absolutely must be near at least a fan at all time, preferably in an air conditioned room. My parents don't even have a single air conditioner and they definitely have the resources necessary to get them if they wanted it. They don't have it because it simply isn't necessary and it would spend so much time in the off position that it would probably not work when they did want it without servicing.

This isn't to say that all of Mexico is like this. I am quite certain the imagery that we are all familiar with form movies is what a great deal of the country is like...but it certainly isn't like that here.

I don't think that tourism is a big thing where I am right now because we are quite far from places that are well-known like Cabo San Lucas, Puerta Vallarta, and of course Cancun. Just to get here you have to be in a car or taxi for 1-3 hours depending on traffic, and I think that alone is reason enough for most people to stay away. Even if you were willing to do that you would be subjected to needing to drive a car everywhere that you go and this likely keep the global audience from ever getting involved.

It does seem to be a nice place to live though and outside of the farmland that I was around the other day and most of the other days, I haven't really experienced any sort of dry looking tundra that I am so familiar with from movies.

So this was an eye-opener for me. Who would have thought that movies my entire life kind of skipped this part of how the country is!