Capn's blog, stardate 2012-13
"I bet it would be easy" I said when asked if I thought it would be possible to hitchhike to South America.
Those words actually came out of my mouth. Easy. I had actually thought about this trip before. Each year I had pushed further and further south. Joshua Tree, in Southern California, then Mexico. It didn't seem out of the question to go all the way. As far as south went.
But easy??? I don't know what possessed me to say THAT. My friend who was asking was Dan. Although born in America he had actually grown up in South America, in Venezuela actually, a child to religious missionaries who taught English. When Caesar Chavez came to power, they left and Dan joined the US army and did two tours in Afghanistan. Now he was an Atheist and a climbing dirtbag, disillusioned with the system. He wanted to go an explore his home continent. He had never actually left Venezuela when he had lived there.
"Well" he said, "Do you want to do it?"
Thats when it started to all come into focus. I went down to northern California in the fall, worked three weeks on marijuana farm, made two grand and decided that was good enough and hitched to Las Vegas to meet Dan. We found a ride from some friends to the North coast of Mexico and we started.
Our first ride was from an ex-pat American who remarked that he never saw 'Anglo hitchhikers' in Mexico. Then a series of locals gave us some quick rides.
We were in a tiny hamlet, when the ride came that would define the first half of our trip. The craziest hitching ride of all time. A ride where someone would literally be set on fire at one point....but I'm getting ahead of myself, we'll get to that.
I saw a ramshackle 1978 toyota RV with a licence plate that read 'peace' and a big logo that said zigzag express.
"New Hampshire" I said, reading the licence plate.
And it pulled over. We ran up.
"Where you going?" Dan asked
"We are going all the way" said a middle aged woman "to Panama! "
We hopped in "we are going to Argentina "
That's how we met Cathy and Sterling....
*to be continued*
"I bet it would be easy" I said when asked if I thought it would be possible to hitchhike to South America.
Those words actually came out of my mouth. Easy. I had actually thought about this trip before. Each year I had pushed further and further south. Joshua Tree, in Southern California, then Mexico. It didn't seem out of the question to go all the way. As far as south went.
But easy??? I don't know what possessed me to say THAT. My friend who was asking was Dan. Although born in America he had actually grown up in South America, in Venezuela actually, a child to religious missionaries who taught English. When Caesar Chavez came to power, they left and Dan joined the US army and did two tours in Afghanistan. Now he was an Atheist and a climbing dirtbag, disillusioned with the system. He wanted to go an explore his home continent. He had never actually left Venezuela when he had lived there.
"Well" he said, "Do you want to do it?"
Thats when it started to all come into focus. I went down to northern California in the fall, worked three weeks on marijuana farm, made two grand and decided that was good enough and hitched to Las Vegas to meet Dan. We found a ride from some friends to the North coast of Mexico and we started.
Our first ride was from an ex-pat American who remarked that he never saw 'Anglo hitchhikers' in Mexico. Then a series of locals gave us some quick rides.
We were in a tiny hamlet, when the ride came that would define the first half of our trip. The craziest hitching ride of all time. A ride where someone would literally be set on fire at one point....but I'm getting ahead of myself, we'll get to that.
I saw a ramshackle 1978 toyota RV with a licence plate that read 'peace' and a big logo that said zigzag express.
"New Hampshire" I said, reading the licence plate.
And it pulled over. We ran up.
"Where you going?" Dan asked
"We are going all the way" said a middle aged woman "to Panama! "
We hopped in "we are going to Argentina "
That's how we met Cathy and Sterling....
*to be continued*
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