How I almost slept on the street in Mexico

Until saved by the grace of a stranger

Life in April 2023 was wild. My partner of 10 years and I were separating. My role at work was changing completely. I burned out hard.

In the beginning of April 2023, my ex partner and I drove a moving truck down to her new home in North Carolina. The last time I saw her was at the airport curb asking her when I would get to see her again.

Two days later, back home in Maryland, I learned there would be some changes at my company. The team I had been managing for the last few months would no longer be reporting to me. As a part of the company changes, I was called to come onsite for a week.

There was one minor challenge. The same week of the onsite I had plans to go on a vacation with friends to rest. After many calls with friends, family and colleagues, I chose to show up for my company. My only request was to have time off after the onsite. Rest was desperately needed.

To recharge, I booked an Airbnb on Isla Mujeres in Mexico. The company onsite ended on a Friday morning and I flew to Cancun, Mexico mid morning on the same day. Before arriving at the Airbnb, I knew the first place I would go after dropping my bags at the Airbnb was the ocean. As I was traveling alone, I felt uncomfortable bringing my phone, wallet or house keys to the beach.

There was a little four digit lockbox to store the keys next to the door to the house. As the code was only four numbers, I figured it would be easy to memorize. So when I went to the beach I left my phone, wallet and house keys behind. Water, a bag of granola and the clothes on my body were all I brought to the beach. After a lovely swim, I went back to the house. I popped open the lockbox and spun the dial to the code. The lock box did not open. A second try. This time a slightly different number. Still no luck. The code was gone from my mind. I wandered out to the street to ask for help.

At this point you may be thinking — just go ask someone for their phone to get in touch with the Airbnb host. What a great idea. Sadly it did not cross my mind at the time. Maybe burnout turned my brain into a pile of mush.

Back out on the street in front of my Airbnb… My broken Spanish and lots of hand waving to communicate the situation to a group of locals earned me the pity of one of them. He said he knew the woman living above the Airbnb. He passed along her name and where she worked. Now due to my broken Spanish, only bits of his message made into my exhausted mind.

With this knowledge in hand, I headed off to find my neighbor. It was now after 5 pm on Friday. The feeling only a few hours remained before people ceased being helpful was strong. Later in the evening, it felt as though helpful hands would turn into questioning looks asking if I was enjoying Friday a bit too much.

With this urgency as fuel, I jogged for three minutes to the business where my neighbor worked. At the front desk, the hostess said no one with the name of my neighbor worked there. Thinking I may have gone to the wrong business, I told two nearby shop operators the same story. No one seemed to know my neighbor. Defeated and confused, I jogged back to the Airbnb.

The kind local who was on the street outside the Airbnb listened as I relayed the story.

“Sit on the curb.” He said.

He headed off on his moped to search for the neighbor. Plopping down on the curve, I began to wait. Twenty minutes later, he returned. Message relayed. He told my neighbor I was locked out and she messaged the Airbnb host.

“She will be off work soon. Keep waiting.” He said.

I thanked him for all the help. He wished me good luck before driving off. After an hour a woman approached. She said the host did not respond, and she would pass along a message if the host contacted her. Still sitting on the curb, I signaled to her I would continue to wait.

At this point, I began to meditate. A plastic chair served as my meditation seat. Many tourists passed me as they went to dinner. They walked by again as they returned from dinner. The meditation transformed from a seated meditation to a walking meditation as I paced back and forth on the street.

It was now late evening and I began to think sleeping on the street was my path for the evening. The options seemed to be stretching out between two plastic chairs or taking some cardboard from the trash pile on the curb and breaking it down into a bed.

I wondered what the punishment was for sleeping on the street. The police drove around in pickups with two officers armed with assault rifles standing in the truck bed wearing bulletproof vests and helmets. Being woken up by one of these officers to be hauled off to jail was not how I wanted my night to go.

Luckily, the Airbnb was down an alley 100 feet long. I set up my cardboard bed in front of the door to the Airbnb and laid down to rest.

Lying down on the bed lasted for a few minutes before I wandered back out to the street. There was not a single clear thought in my mind. I noticed a hotel next door where a manager was working the front desk and decided to walk in.

“Good evening. Do you have any open rooms?” I asked.

“Yes, we do,” he told me.

Hope surged through me. “Do you take credit cards?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, we accept either card or cash.”

“Do I need to have the physical card?” I asked.

He nodded again. “Yes you do.”

My shoulders slumped in defeat. Despite not being able to remember a four digit code to the Airbnb, I had my credit card details memorized. Using the card was my last hope. This hope being smashed to bits must have shown on my face. He told me he heard about my situation.

“You can stay the night and you can pay after you get back into your Airbnb.” He said.

I could not believe my luck. He passed along a room key and I headed upstairs for the best shower of my life. The bed was infinitely more comfortable than the cardboard one I had built a few minutes earlier.

The following morning, with a well rested brain, a brilliant idea popped into my mind.

Maybe I can borrow someone’s phone?

For the next three hours, I squatted in the hotel’s front office as I worked to get in touch with the Airbnb host. All attempts to get into the Airbnb account and my personal email failed due to 2FA requiring my phone to be present.

When the Airbnb booking had first been made, the welcome message included the code to the lockbox. I figured, let me make another booking and see if it provides the code. In hindsight this was a little questionable because of course it is good security to rotate the codes between guests. But hey, we can see I was only making the best decisions since landing on Isla Mujeres.

Borrowing the hotel’s landline, I got my parents on the phone and we hunted down the Airbnb listing. We made a booking. Unfortunately, the code was different. Using Airbnb, we sent a message to the host telling him the name of the hotel I was at and how I was locked out.

At this point, I was entertaining the possibility my host could be fully offline for a long time. Days? Weeks? Months? I had no idea. The hotel manager gave me instructions to find a locksmith down the street. Only thing was, the locksmith had no sign, no storefront, and was identifiable by the color of the door to his house. Still, this seemed worth a shot.

While walking for five minutes on the street searching for this mysterious locksmith, I began to worry about the Airbnb host calling the hotel landline while I was away. Feeling the same urgency from the previous evening, I jogged back to the hotel.

When I was within 200 feet the hotel manager stepped out onto the street looking in my direction holding the landline in his hand. I signaled frantically I was coming. He handed the phone to me.

“Hello.” I said.

“Hi. Evan?” Said the voice on the phone.

“Yes, yes.” I said.

Alex, the Airbnb host, proceeded to apologize for the situation. I told him it was my fault, and I had forgotten the code. I asked the hotel manager if I could borrow a pen and paper. Pen in hand, I wrote the code down. Twice. Leaving the call with Alex open, I ran to the Airbnb lockbox. I spun the dials to the correct code. The lockbox popped open.

Grabbing keys, wallet and phone from the Airbnb, I headed to the hotel. Back on the hotel phone, I expressed my gratitude to Alex and apologized for the mess. Now the time had come to repay my savior of the last 12 hours — the lovely hotel manager. Over and over again I thanked him for all the help, for letting me stay in the hotel on trust, and for letting me crash his office for three hours.

After paying for the hotel, I offered him a tip exceeding what I had paid for the night at the hotel as a token of thanks. He tried to deny the offer. Being unwilling to take no for an answer, I told him how he saved me from sleeping on the street last night. The power of the generosity he had shown me must have dawned on him as he accepted my offering. I walked back to my Airbnb and began to laugh and cry at the same time. What a start to my vacation in Mexico.

Despite not having a handle on the local language and traveling alone, by asking for help from other people I was able to move through this challenging situation. As long as we live, there is always a way to work with others to move forward. Even if it means we are sometimes asking for more and more help.

This is what it means to be a member of the human family. Ask for help when you need it. Give help to those in need. Sometimes those in need will not be able to ask for help.

Like the hotel manager who saw he could offer me the chance to stay the night on trust so too can you seek opportunities in your life to offer people help.

What is blocking you from helping more people? What narratives do you tell yourself that are getting in your way?