In February 2009, I was on the Eurostar returning to London from a day of meetings in Paris. Somewhere in rural northern France, the train broke down. We were asked to disembark and wait on the platform indefinitely for a replacement.
A stranger asked me a question that changed my life.
We shared our live stories while we waited
I had been sitting at one of those four-seat tables where you face strangers across a shared surface. We hadn’t spoken until that point, but as we stood on a freezing platform together, we each began to tell our story. One woman in our group had been to Paris to deliver an engagement ring to a hotel for her son, who was flying in later that day and planned to propose to his girlfriend. The other two were businessmen also heading home. I mentioned I was pregnant with my second child and had just finished a long day of meetings with advertising clients.
Eventually, I shared that my husband was Mexican and working on a bar opening in London that would wrap in September, right around my due date. One of the men looked at me and said something that changed everything: “I guess you will be spending your maternity leave in Mexico then?”
I didn’t understand his comment, so I asked him to expand. He said that if I was going to be off for a year, why weren’t we going somewhere warm for the winter?
We decided to move to Playa de Carmen
It stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t even considered that option. But he was right. Why should we stay in cold, gray London when we could be bonding with our newborn in the Caribbean sunshine?
By the time I got back to London — many hours later — I called my husband from the taxi and asked, “Is there any reason we shouldn’t spend six months in Mexico after the baby’s born?” He paused, thought about it, and said, “No. Let’s do it.”
And so we did.
We rented out our London house to friends of friends. On December 6, 2009, with a 2.5-month-old baby and our 3-year-old in tow, we flew to Mexico. After a stop in Mexico City to spend Christmas with family, we settled in Playa del Carmen, a beach town on the Yucatán Peninsula, for four months.
The house we stayed in was very basic — plastic garden furniture, mismatched dishes, and borrowed essentials from generous relatives. No washing machine, no microwave — which, with a newborn, felt pretty daunting. But we were in heaven. We swam every day, ate fresh fish, took turns to go to the gym, and spent true quality time as a family. Our toddler became fluent in Spanish. My husband and I got fit, tanned, and rested — something I never expected to feel just a few months after giving birth.
We made money by renting our home in London
We actually made money while we were away. The rent we earned on our London home covered all of our expenses in Mexico. Our cost of living there was dramatically lower — no tube passes, no childcare, no expensive dinners or work wardrobes. We came back refreshed and financially ahead. The basic but very happy life we lead completely reset my understanding of what I need versus what I want in life, a benefit that lasted for many years after our trip.
When I returned, a friend’s husband swore I’d had “work done” because I looked so rejuvenated. I hadn’t. It was just sunshine, sleep, and a simple life.
That spontaneous decision, sparked by a stranger’s comment, became one of the best of my life. It taught me that the obvious path isn’t always the smartest one. Sometimes, the most logical next step is the one you hadn’t even imagined.
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