#22 The Long Road Home

For those of you who don’t know, I have returned to Canada. I am now in Edmonton, Alberta, quite safe and sound. My bike trip may have come to a premature end, but the traveling will not be stopping soon. Sorry I haven’t updated in a long time, but I have been short of time and computers in the process of getting home. Here’s the story:

My friend told me about a beach party, and as you may have guessed, I accepted this invitation. I hitchhiked out to a town called Villa Rica on the Gulf coast, just north of Veracruz. I arrived in the late afternoon as the sun was setting with some other random hitchhikers I met on the road. We soon had a cold beer and a swim to kill the heat of the day, and my other friends arrived shortly after.

On the second night of this several day beach party there was an incredible storm. First it was lightning like I have never seen it before, hundreds of shocks. Then the wind picked up and the rain pelted down. Some of us decided to go for a skinny dip and left our clothes on the beach, which may have been a mistake because I now no longer have a pair of pants. It is in the ocean I assume…and in my pants was my wallet…in my wallet was all my money and identification…

The next day, quite poor I headed back to Jalapa. I phoned home and told my family of my dilemma. My mom naturally offered to pay for a plane ticket home. I could have been home 4 months ago if I had taken up her offer, but instead, not out of pride but out of the opportunity to experience what it is like to be so humble, I turned down such an offer. Really just to see if I could do it, I set out to make my way home, pesoless.

My last week in Jalapa was spent working on the street, selling the jewelry I learned how to make there with fellow Artisanos. This proved itself useless so like in all times of crisis I made cookies. Seriously, I went to a friend’s house who kindly lent me the ingredients for the first batch and I made about 70 cookies and sold them all the next day. Then on the way home, I bought more ingredients, and made several hundred cookies that night. I sold them all in a matter of a few hours the next morning. I made money this way for 3 days before hitting the road with 2 lovely lady friends.

The three of us hitched to a town called Mazunte in Oaxaca to work on the beach. As it turns out we worked on nothing but our tans and made much less money than we spent. We met with 5 more girls from all over the world and spent 2 days there before they all went their separate directions. I stayed there for a few more days, working a little everyday just for my hotel room (my tent was quite broken, and still is).

I left 2 days after they did, bound for Puerto Escondido. I didn’t end up working on that beach either as I met a guy just after waking up on the beach who gave me his rented surf board and told me I could collect the deposit. Needless to say I spent the whole day surfing. I slept on the beach again that night and headed to the tourist trap of Acapulco.

It took the better part of the day to get there but I got there in time to work a little on the beach and when night fell, I headed up onto the strip of discos where all the tourists go to spend money in the night. I sat down with my backpack and my drum and work in front of me until a slightly drunk man approached me asking to play my drum. I saw that he was an Artisano as well by the display case he had in his hands, so I took a look at his wares while he sang a song with my drum. He then invited me to come sell with his friends, more Artisanos. I followed him up the street and met a very cool group of people making things in peoples hair called Trenzas de Colores. These are a kind of hair extension made with string kind of like a braid but a little more complicated. It can consist of several different kinds of knots and the people in Mexico are crazy about them. I quickly learned how to make them and was on my way to making money. I stayed that night with some of the people I met and met a girl the next night who I stayed with for the duration of my stay in Acapulco. We did move out of her house after about 8 days to live with another friend up on the hill.

Now, up on the hill is a kind of valley that I was told about. So one day I went for an adventure after work. I went after work because we usually start at 8PM and end around 6AM when the tourists go home. This is a prime opportunity for an early morning adventure. I went up into this valley composed of about 50 prominent and massive boulders, some bigger than most houses. These boulders are set on each other to make a huge network of caves beneath them, almost all of which are well lit. I spent the day rock climbing and spelunking.

The next day I met a very good friend and offered to show him this valley. We were on our way to his house after work when we spotted a police truck. The truck pulled up to s and stopped and 5 police armed with M16’s stepped out of the back. They told us to stop and demanded a bag search. When they found nothing they went on to say they needed to take us in for further questioning. This is really just a con to get a bribe out of us. We refused and another cop got out of the cab and demanded another bag search, this time including my pockets and a search through my wallet. The others did their best to distract us, and it didn’t seem to matter how closely I watched my things get rooted through. They left soon after, probably because they stole most of my money and my digital camera. This was no bribe. This was blatant highway banditry made by sticky fingers. To serve and protect, my ass.

We carried on however, and made it up to the mountain again in the morning. We spent several hours free climbing up and down into caves and up to the tops of massive boulders.

I left Acapulco son after that, still 4000 pesos short of being able to legally cross into the United States. You need to have a certain amount of money in your pocket at the time in order to cross as they don’t want you working in their country. More Mexicans will need to learn how to climb walls now. Here’s to the Great Wall of America.

Anyways, I made it into a town called Zihuatenajo after I left and met a little boy there who told me his mom owned a hostel. I went with him to El Rincon Del Viajero Hostel, roughly translated to “The Travelers Corner Hostel”. If you ever go there I would suggest checking in there with Mali. It is a very beautiful hostel with an amazing host, well worth checking out. I was able to clean there very big and very green garden for a few nights of camping under their patio. I camped there instead of in the garden because my first night I had some funny dreams about swimming and woke up in about a foot of rain water in my tent…

I met a German girl there who lived in her Volkswagen van and traveled to all the cool surf spots. She was heading to one such surf spot in the same direction I was going, so I hitched a ride with her and got back on the road. I caught a good succession of rides for the next 2 days into Mazatlan. My second last ride was in the back of a truck with several surfboards bound for San Blas. They dropped me off in the middle of the jungle there on a half built road. Off in the distance was pitch black at this time as a crazy storm was slowly rolling in my direction. I could see the road for miles to the north slowly become very wet and get closer. I could see forests of bamboo swaying in the gale force winds and the ditch filled quickly with water.

The storm hit before anyone would pick me up (although many people were kind enough to point at the storm in front of them to let me know it was coming, as though I didn’t see it…). The wind hit me and with it the rain. Buckets upon buckets poured from the sky. I had put my bag on top of some rocks on the side of the road and covered it in my rain coat, but this proved useless. Everything was soaked through in a matter of minutes. I stood there for 20 minutes or so becoming saturated with water until a big black pickup stopped. I ran up to him and looking like a drowned rat, asked where he was going. He said Mexicali. At this point I think the heavens opened up and a chorus of angels beckoned me into the back of the truck. If you know your Mexican geography, you will know that Mexicali is a border town right next to Tijuana.

I sat in the back of the truck with my cat for 2 days. We drove into the desert by nightfall and the man and his wife checked into a motel. I slept in the back of the truck until it started raining again and I retreated to the lobby of the motel to sleep on a bench. We got on the road when the sun came up. And it got hot. Very fast. In fact, it was way too hot for a kid who comes from an icebox like Canada. It got up to about 50 degrees that day with the direct sunlight beating down on me. I drank water like a madman, but still managed to stay very dehydrated. I asked to come in the cab, but the man said no, too may bags in there. My cat was in the process of dying and was drinking as much water as I was. With no other options I set my somewhat delirious mind to work and made a tent out of my blanket in the back. I simply hooked it on my feet and my elbows and my head and opened up a flap at the back end so the wind could come through. This kept me out of the direct sunlight and filled my tent with fresh blast furnace like wind. This probably saved me from heat stroke.

They dropped me off right next to the American border. I got my cat vaccinated for rabies and worms, put her in my drum and walked into America. This is how it went down…

I walked into the building and waited my turn in line for a while. I flashed the front of my passport to a guy and he said “ok that’s fine, go check your bags.” So I put my backpack through their scanner and raised no red flags so they passed me through. Then I said, “I have a cat in a drum, what do I do with her?”
They asked “Is it was alive or dead,” but nothing more. Then I asked where to get a visa. And the man said “You’re Canadian, you don’t need one.”
“So where do I go?” I asked.
“Well”, He said, “Just walk right out those doors right there”, as he pointed to the United States. So I said peace and love and left.

You may notice a fundamental step in crossing borders is missing here. I not once showed one piece of ID aside from the front of my passport, and I didn’t have a stamp in my passport. I officially entered the States as an Illegal Immigrant. How applicable to have entered this way from Mexico.

While I was in Mexicali I met a woman there who loved my cat sitting on my shoulder, and because of her, she invited me to stay at her house in the States. I made it to a town called El Centro and stayed at her house to dry out my still very wet bags. I left the next day and started hitchhiking in a place they call the Sonora Desert. It’s really hot there. Having drank all my water I flagged down a short ride into the next town, where I got a ride to a truck stop about 100KM away. Then I waited there on the exit to Interstate 10 for two whole days until a trucker picked me up. He drove me another 600 miles to San Francisco. There I was left at a rest stop and picked up not only at night, but by a woman, which almost never happens. This was because of my cat, once again. Come now, any guy with a cat on hit shoulder can’t possibly be a bad person. We drove together all night and she talked a lot, but she had amazing stories from traveling in Guatemala and Mexico.

She left me at another interstate exit on I 5 after taking me out for 2AM breakfast in a casino. My next ride at 6AM got me into Redding, California at the last big truck stop the man said. I caught a ride from there with another trucker all the way to Seattle Washington. He left me in a nasty spot however. I slept at the truck stop on the back of a flatbed trailer in between some boxes. I had asked the man the night before and in the morning was greeted with half a cantaloupe. I tried hitching at the truck stop until someone reported me to the security and escorted me off the property. From there I went to the interstate exit for about an hour before a police man pulled over, and only on his loud speaker (like the several other cop encounters I had in America) told me to leave. So I went to the road that ran alongside the highway, but was told by yet another cop that I couldn’t hitch in town limits. So I caught the bus downtown. I saw on my map that there was a ferry to Victoria, British Colombia. I walked into the ferry terminal, cat in drum as usual and found out that I had just enough money to get me there and from Nanaimo back to the mainland in Vancouver. Then my cat decided to stick her head out, and the man said “Aww, you’ve got a little kitty. Are you taking her with you? It will be another 20$ for her ticket and if you don’t have a proper kennel for her, you can rent one for an additional 10$.” This news brought my total way higher than I had money for. Luckily the man there was thinking fast and told me about a shuttle service to downtown Vancouver from Seattle for only 30$ and that if my cat just didn’t stick her head out, there was no problem with her. I took this option and on the first of September I crossed back into Canada. This makes a total of 17 months abroad.

When I got back into Vancouver I got in contact with Ira Sutherland, that guy I met 3 times biking across Canada. He was back in town after a huge adventure in South America and said I could stay at his place. I was on my way there when I met some of the local street punks panhandling. I was curious to experience the Canadian busking and panhandling scene so I stuck around with them. It is nothing like Mexico. People in México have respect for each other, they say please and thank you and would you like to buy something. In Vancouver they say “Gimme some money”, and say that people like it rough; it’s a novelty for them. I was pretty unimpressed. I ended up staying with all of them that night and learned places to sleep in Vancouver streets. I met up with another traveler who was with us and went with her to the beach instead of sleeping in a gutter reeking of urine.

In the morning I got a new bank card as soon as the bank opened. I went for coffee with that traveler girl and walked around downtown for the morning. Then I went to Ira’s house that night. Being a traveler himself, he understood fully why I didn’t show up the night before. Plans change all the time.

I stayed with Ira for a few days and went rock climbing the first day, then we went on an epic bike ride, my first time on a bike in 4 months along the entire coastline of Vancouver. My legs loved it.

As luck would have it, Ira’s parents happened to be driving to Golden the next day, so I hitched a ride with them. From golden I got a ride right away into Lake Louise, and from there I was picked up by a cool punk rock guy who drove me down the entire Icefields parkway, a truly spectacular drive and dropped me off in Jasper. From Jasper a man picked me up on his way to Bingo in Hinton and was kind enough to go out of his way to drop me off on my doorstep there.

Now comes the time when I rub in every naysayer and bad wishers face that hitchhiking is a good and legitimate way to travel, although never taken lightly and always with precaution. For example, not once in my life have I ever simply jumped in the front seat. I always leave my bags sitting where they are and run up to the car, ask some questions, scope them out, and then decide if I should get in. Just don’t be stupid and use your head. I made it.

So in total I hitchhiked from Mazunte, Oaxaca, just north of the Guatemala border to my house in Hinton, Alberta, a trip of close to 5000 KM in 23 days, excluding my 2 weeks in Acapulco. Not bad, eh?

So that was the past, now some words on the future. I really can’t be sure at this point that I will take up bicycling again and finish the trip. I feel that I have had an amazing trip, and I have no regrets in 17 months. I traveled a total of close to 20,000 KM by bike and around 10,000 KM hitchhiking. I don’t really know exact figures right now. I have learned so much, met so many amazing people, experienced so many eye opening events and I have successfully broadened my mind to the point that it will never stop getting wider. I also got a wonderful virus in my travels. It’s called the Travel Bug. I’m stricken with it. I can’t stop now, although it may not be quite like I had planned from the beginning, I will still keep moving. My future plans are as such. In the short term I will be returning to Hinton for no more than a day, just long enough to pack my bag there and leave. Hinton is a dead end town for someone like me. I would die inside if I stayed there. I plan on heading into interior British Colombia instead to work on the ski hills for the winter, replenish my funds and next spring there may be a return trip to Mexico. More on that trip later. However, as you know, plans are made to change, and they change frequently.

Lastly I want to thank you all for tuning into my travels. I hope I might have inspired some of you to get out and move your bodies. It’s easier than you think in this day and age of super fast and efficient travel. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way; Everyone who has let me fill up a water bottle, or picked me up on the highway, or allowed me to sleep in their yard. Without the kindness of strangers I might not have been able to make it this far. I have learned that the world is filled with amazing people, even if it takes some time to find them sometimes. Thank you all so very much. Peace and Love, Brothers and Sisters.

Steve Fox, back in Canada