i'll also offer some interesting things on both ends of this trip, if you need an excuse to go to either.

mexico
did you visit mexico before 2023? ideally with the same passport you have now? congratulations, if you go now and overstay your allowed days - and you can make sure you get 7 by walking across the border from san diego - then you can apply for the covid era 'regularization' program and get 4 year temporary residency fairly easily, certainly *much* easier than the normal process. after 4 years you can apply for permanent. permanent appears to have most rights of a citizen, outside of voting or getting a passport. unlike most (all?) other countries - mexico also has no days in country requirement to maintain residency. (US requires you be in the country 6/mo a year else you lose it, i believe.) so you could essentially set this up so that for the rest of your life, you could move in and out of mexico freely for work, tax, health insurance/procedures, cost of living, quality of life, etc. or simply choose not to.

joburg
if you are interested in a cool life experience and mini (sort of) vacation, paying to volunteer in africa is not uncommon (voluntourism). make no mistake the programs need your money much more than your unskilled labor and programs can be of quite varying quality. nonetheless i know some folks who run a cheetah breeding center and have worked with them several times. cheetahs are endangered for a number of reasons. if you feel like doing a little less labor, i think they have a more glampy leisurely rate, else the normal rate includes you doing some more work. none of it is terribly back breaking; i'll estimate at least 60% of the folks that do this program are college aged girls from europe. they have other animals too (meerkats, servals) and your duties are typically cleaning enclosures and preparing food. you'll still do a fair amount of effort even just walking around, so, at least for me, it acted as a bit of a diet as well. it's typically monday to monday weekly that you pay for, minimum of 1 week. i've done 2 each time i've done it, which was enough for me each time. most of the cheetahs are comfortable around humans, with the intent of breeding genetically diverse ones whose young they can release into the wild on cheetah friendly reserves. i will describe their general behavior as 'ok behaving dogs' but they are definitely not going to listen to you, because they are cats after all.

here is a serval pissing in a water pool we just cleaned and refilled.


here is me and a spotty cat that purrs very loudly.