When a friend invited me on a whirlwind tour of México so he could visit family, I never blinked.  Of course I’d go with him!  What I did blink at, however, was not having a camera.  This would be the first time for me to travel without one.  I thought about buying one, and even as we stood in the airport yesterday waiting to board our six-hour flight to Tuxtla Gutierrez, I pondered grabbing a handful of disposable cameras (at exorbitant prices even if it was duty free).

But ultimately I challenged myself to see the world differently this time, to experience it in real life rather than through a lens.  That was like asking an addict to give up his fix just when he needs it most.  The flight dragged on endlessly as we headed south.  I was convinced I would begin sweating like a nervous farm animal, twitching as though in a seizure, and ultimately passing out the moment we landed as I realized there was so much to see and no way to capture it.

None of that happened, though.  Not one bit of it.  In fact, I discovered the experience was more liberating than I ever imagined.  Not that I would ever give up photography, mind you.  It’s just that one can spend too much time worried about the next picture and too little time actually living in the now.

On the bus for a thirty-minute ride from Tuxtla Gutierrez to San Cristóbal, we passed a young girl—Tzotzil Indian perhaps?—tending a flock of black sheep along the roadway.  How picturesque a scene it made.  How comfortable and indigenous.

Not once did I think about taking a photo.  Instead, I thought about looking—really looking.  I let myself vanish in the scenery as we climbed the road into the mountains.

As we drove through the clouds that hung on the mountains like wet cotton, it never occurred to me to look for the right angle, the right view, the right bit of ambient light.  Instead, I allowed the landscape to wash over me and around me, to capture my imagination and attention.  No fidgeting with settings, no silo of view, no worry about photographic results, no multiple tries for the same photo.

Only then did I realize I was free.  Free to look, free to hear, free to witness and experience.  Free to record with the mind’s eye all that is worth noting.

And therein lay my intent: living the travel and writing of the living.

So here’s the scoop.  Today is our first full day in San Cristóbal.  Tomorrow will be our second full day.  Thursday we spend traveling to Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula, then we spend Friday there and travel to México City on Saturday.  After two days in the Distrito Federal, we return to Dallas on Tuesday.

Instead of showing you images, I intend to write those images.  I’m keeping a written journal of the event, though admittedly I’m writing after the fact.  This is much different than photographing it.  The former is more personal while the latter is more visual.  Hopefully I can do justice to what represents some of the most historically magical places imaginable.  And hopefully I can do justice to the beauty wherein they rest and which inhabits them, beauty of architecture and nature and people.

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I plan on scheduling these posts as I write them.  This one was written around one this morning, though I scheduled it to appear at 11:30 AM Dallas time (to accommodate when people are more active on Twitter and Facebook).  I won’t note on future installments that it was scheduled; I just thought it worth mentioning to give some context.