Coworking in the Yucatán
In early April 2022, we wrapped up another 1-month Executive Remote Worker coworking trip. For this trip, we were in the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico.
We spent the first half of our trip in the quiet beach town of Chelem and the second half in the colonial city of Merida. Geographically, these two towns are only 30-45 minutes apart.
Please enjoy this recap of our coworking trip…
Timing
As a group, we decided to spend the month of March in the Yucatán of Mexico.
Similar to our coworking trip in Puerto Vallarta, the month of March was perfect timing since it was hot and sunny in Mexico and cold and dreary in the US.
Once our dates were set, everyone booked their flights to Merida.
Accommodations – Chelem
The town of Chelem was very small. Therefore, each member was able to find and book their own accommodations. As it turned out, everyone ended up in a place with a private pool located within one block from the beach. It was a beautiful and relaxing beach town.
Accommodations – Merida
For the Merida portion of our stay, one of our members found a large & beautiful house for us in Centro. The house had a Moroccan flair and included a private pool, several sitting areas, and a gourmet kitchen with an 8-person island.
Also, each bedroom had it’s own private bathroom so it felt like sleeping in a hotel room, but we were living together under one roof and sharing the kitchen and living areas. It was a GREAT arrangement!!
For this trip, it was also important that our accommodations were pet-friendly since one member brought her registered service dog, Tiny. Luckily, Chelem and Merida were VERY dog-friendly places so Tiny was welcomed in every restaurant and café we went to. In fact, our servers almost always brought her a special bowl of water!
Internet
Our Airbnb hosts in Chelem understood our need for internet, so our accommodations were configured with sufficient internet for us to work. This meant we had a special modem that uses cellular service from Telcel, the largest cellular service provider in Mexico.
This set-up worked just fine for us until both the electricity (and cellphone towers) went out a couple times during our last week in Chelem. The first outage lasted about 5-6 hours and the second for about 3-4 hours. Unfortunately, both outages occurred during weekdays.
The good news was these outages didn’t overlap with any of our synchronous work or major deadlines. We were able to continue working with our batteries and desktop files until the power and cell service was restored.
We also heard from a few locals that power outages are pretty regular – similar to any beach town in Mexico. They said there are times when the power goes out for 1-2 weeks at a time. This is why a lot of locals and people working remotely from there keep generators for backup.
In Merida, we experienced one power outage which occurred on our last day there. It went out on a Friday night and lasted into Saturday. The good news was that nobody needed to work during that time and just the electricity went out so we still had cellular service.
The biggest downside of this power outage in Merida was that it was incredibly hot there. Nobody slept well that Friday night because none of the fans or air conditioning could run. We also lost pretty much all the food in our refrigerators because it spoiled before the power came back on.
While we loved both our stays in Chelem and Merida, please be aware of the potential for outages and plan accordingly if you’re considering either as a remote working destination.
Time Zones
Similar to our stay in Puerto Vallarta, Chelem and Merida were in the Central time zone. This made it very easy for us to do synchronous work for our US employers (outside the power outages of course).
Typical Days in Merida
On a typical workday, somewhere between 7:00-8:00 am (earlier for some), we all got up, made a pot of coffee, and logged into work for the day.
In Chelem, we each worked from our private accommodations.
In Merida, we each set-up our “work stations” on the large kitchen island but took phone or video calls from our respective bedrooms (or from the pool like one of our members did regularly)!
We typically ended our workdays around 4:00-5:00. [Sometimes, the day’s closing bell was when a bottle of tequila came out to mark the end of the day!]
In the evenings during the week, we were able to do some fun things but we took FULL advantage of non-working time on the weekends! In fact, we often joked that we were looking forward to Monday because it was more slow-paced and relaxing! 😆
On this trip, we worked really hard but we also played really hard too!
Our Fun Activities 
Here’s a sample of the fun things we did during our non-working hours:
⛱ Relaxed and enjoyed the warm sun on the beach & poolside
🌮 Ate delicious authentic Mexican food
💖 Made new friends in the local, expat, & digital nomad communities
⛲ Explored the colonial city of Merida
🌴 Visited the Uxmal ruins
🏊🏻♀️ Swam in cenotes
🤿 Went scuba diving
🎤 Sang lots of karaoke
👩🏻🍳 Had a local Mayan chef prepare an authentic Mexican meal (Here’s a recap of this awesome meal)
🍫 Learned all about cocoa beans: growing, harvesting, processing, Mayan rituals, and cooking/drinking with them
💆🏻♂️ Had wonderful in-home massages
🥃 Enjoyed learning about and sampling mezcal
Wrap-up
With this trip, we proved AGAIN that business leaders can be just as effective (if not MORE effective) when they can work from where they work best!
This is especially true when you’re traveling and working remotely with other, like-minded business executives! There’s a mutual understanding that our careers are very important to us, so we support each other’s need to get work done.
Simultaneously, we made lifelong friends, developed inside jokes, shared incredible experiences, and broadened our perspectives by living in local communities different from our own.
In the end, it was another fantastic community coworking event! In fact, during our trip, we even started planning our next community coworking trip!
If you’re interested in joining us on future group coworking trips, check out our membership page and join our community today.
See you there!
