You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.

I was chatting with another blogger/traveler about how every day traveling isn’t a paradise of party and sunshine. Sure a bad day traveling generally beats a good day at work, but traveling this way has its own thorns and trials.

You are all probably sick of pictures of these four but this is likely to be one of the last. I had my hardest goodbye to date on Monday when Mario and Andrea headed down to Queretaro to visit his uncle. From there she’ll head on to Puebla to hang out and celebrate Cinco de Mayo and continue south on her journey. Jorge left a few hours later heading for Morelia on a pilgrimage to take a look around his mother’s hometown. He will also head south in due time. Myrna is still here with me, but things aren’t the same. She is sad too, but she has the salve of her daily life and other friends to divert her attention. Her day-to-day life isn’t much changed whereas I feel like the sky is a little less blue and the fun a little less…well, fun.

I pondered why this goodbye left me feeling “off-kilter” and realized it was probably because I would have to do my homework and buy most of my own drinks from here on out. Seriously though, I think every now and then a group just gels in a way that is inarticulable. We looked after one another and it was nice caring about someone else for a change. When we went out I felt like I could let my guard down a little more than usual because Jorge and Mario had our backs. But mostly it was the companionship, the conversation and the comraderie. The bittersweet knowledge that it would end made our time together burn more intensely, the quiet moments and the crazy moments equally full and perfect. I’ve said hello and goodbye to literally dozens of people the last three months and this was one of the hardest but also one of the most perfect in terms of loving people (and being loved) where they are and when they are, with no other expectations. 

*We’ll be seing each other