Mexican dudes are "leg men" (wear pants)

Listen, before Spencer and I ended up in Mexico we were planning to travel through Indian and I spent a lot - a lot of time researching what to wear. This wasn't for vanity purposes (although I will freely admit I couldn't wait to wear some bag shaped dresses and loose fitting elephant print pants for an extended period of time, even if owning nothing with a zipper is a terrible idea when you're traveling in a place where the food is divine) - this research was based on every account from women who had traveled in the area. Dress code was talked about in depth because of it's importance in the culture, specifically, how to avoid sticking out and worse, constant harassment.

So for India, I had it down - coverage, I was all about that. But when we started planning out Mexico, I had a different idea. I thought "beach!" and "cosmopolitan city!" and "expat haven!" Which translated to a packing list full of shorts, and beach dresses. If I had actually talked to people, and done the research that I should have, I would have realized that although, yes, Mexico City is very cosmo and the beaches are forgiving when you're walking around in a sundress, the majority of Mexico does not operate that way. And we are living in the majority of Mexico this year. This is a conservative, religious country and to ignore that when deciding what to wear is at best flighty and ignorant, at worst, disrespectful and uncomfortable. 

All of the gals here wear pants or long skirts. I wasn't expecting that. Most women don't wear tank tops. Although the dress code here doesn't seem to be formal (like it was in Nicaragua), it's still very uncommon to show leg above the knee. In other words, I've gotten a lot of wear out of these pants featured below. Much more wear than Spencer would like, but whatever, when paired with a lovely scarf and a pair of durable sandals you've got a super fashion-forward outfit that you can wear out any day, anywhere.