The Trip That Changed Me Forever Wasn’t Iceland or Italy. It Was Mexico.

I always imagined that my life-changing trip would be somewhere “epic” maybe hiking across Iceland’s volcanic landscapes or sipping Chianti in a quiet Italian village. That’s what I thought transformation looked like.
But the trip that rewrote me didn’t happen where I expected. It happened in Mexico a country bursting with life, with stories, with spirit.

You don’t always hear Mexico spoken of as a place of personal awakening. Most tourists are heading to Cancun for beach parties or to Tulum for a yoga retreat. And yes Mexico has all the goods: lush jungles, white-sand beaches, coral reefs, ancient Mayan ruins, and cities so alive with music and color it’s overwhelming in the best way.

But for me? Mexico cracked me open.

It started in Mexico City, where I met three strangers who’d become something like family.
There was Aria, a Canadian schoolteacher taking a sabbatical after a brutal breakup. Funny, sharp, and always the first to try something spicy from a street cart.
Then Diego, a Brazilian travel photographer who barely spoke English but communicated everything with laughter and a camera lens.
And Amara, a Kenyan documentary filmmaker on a grant to explore migration stories across Latin America. Wise beyond her years.

We met at a rooftop hostel in Roma Norte, and within 48 hours, we were inseparable.

Together we explored Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, biked down the Avenue of the Dead at Teotihuacán, and took the last boat out in Xochimilco singing with strangers under the stars. But our journey didn’t stop there. We rode bumpy buses to Oaxaca, got drenched in a sudden jungle rainstorm in Palenque, shared stories with Maya guides at Chichén Itzá, and fell in love with the rhythms of Mérida.

It was in those in-between moments between destinations, between languages, between expectations where everything shifted.

One night in Chiapas, sitting on cracked plastic chairs in a village square, I listened as Amara interviewed a local woman named Esperanza. She spoke about farming through drought, sending her son north, and still finding joy in morning coffee and church bells. Something in that conversation so raw, so real made me feel the world differently.

That night I journaled for hours.
By morning, I knew.
I didn’t just want to see the world.
I wanted to serve it.
That trip is what inspired me to pursue a career in international development.

The trip changed how I listen.
How I see people.
How I move through space that isn’t mine.

By the time we reached Puerto Escondido where we clumsily surfed, cooked a fish we bought from a local fisherman, and watched the sunset in near-silence we weren’t just travelers anymore.
We were people who had held each other’s grief.
Who had laughed over nothing until our ribs ached.
Who had sat in silence when there were no words.

So no, the trip that changed me forever wasn’t Iceland or Italy.
It was Mexico with all its contradictions, all its colors, and all its heart.

It was the joy, the mess, the music.
It was the people.

And I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Don’t just chase picture-perfect moments. Chase the kind of experiences that shift your soul. The kind that introduce you to strangers who feel like mirrors. The kind you carry with you forever.
Mexico might surprise you.
Let it.