For a long while I have had this idea to go to Mexico City and then onto Guatemala. I can be really mindless sometimes, and somehow I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to make this trip by land from Seattle. I had the idea that I could Craigslist rideshare from Seattle to San Francisco, stay there a while, then Craigslist to San Diego, cross the border, then bus from Tijuana to Mexico City. After that I imagined myself touring for a while then busing into Guatemala.
The drive from Seattle to San Francisco is 14 hours. The one-way flight is $100. From San Francisco to San Diego the drive is 8 hours. Tijuana is a walk from San Diego – I think – then 48 hours by bus later is Mexico City. The flight from Seattle to Mexico City is $400. The bus from Mexico City to Guatemala City is hours. The flight from Seattle to Guatemala city is about $500. Buses are cheap in Mexico, but not free, and same with Craigslist rideshare. I think that there are no good reasons to not fly directly to the place where one wants to go. I do not know how I ever came to the idea of doing all this land riding.
I did rideshare from Seattle to San Francisco. I wrote to a bunch of people on Craiglist going to San Francisco and none wrote me back. So I posted my own ad saying I had a car, and immediately 15 people wrote me. Of those, I choose the coolest sounding 3 and talked to them about renting a car. I made the arrangements, got lots of insurance, shared the car responsibility with one of them, and we left.
I had reserved the cheapest car at the agency, but when we got there it was unavailable and they gave us a Cadillac. That was a good start. The other three guys were way awesome and it seemed we all shared a lot of interests and views on many things. This was unexpected to me that things could work out so well, but then also, I suppose that only people like me would try to arrange a trip like this.
This guy Dan had lived in Guatemala for a year just recently, and he was on his way to Santa Cruz to catch a flight to live in Nicaragua for a year. He had been staying with an uncle in Seattle doing carpentry work. He told me where I should go when I get to Guatemala, and gave me some convincing arguments for avoiding parts of Mexico because they are overrated and over priced compared to other places in Central America. Apparently he intends to surf all year and teach English while he is there.
Darryl recently got a degree in landscape architecture and was moving to Berkeley to get a master’s degree in the same. He had interesting stories about traveling in Europe and doing forestry volunteer work in Missoula, Montana. Apparently there is a college base there where no one works and life is cheap and every day is a nature hike adventure. He was not familiar with Seattle and wanted to spend more time there someday. He wants to do sustainable architecture including third world projects.
Simon is a computer programmer who had been living across the street from me in Seattle for about a year. He had been unable to connect with other like-minded people in Seattle, and wanted to return to SF where he could have options for jobs, a different social scene, and his familiar ground. He also was into Indian culture and expressed interest in visiting Sai Baba some day. When we got to SF, we dropped off the first two first, then I stayed the night at Simon’s place south of San Francisco University.
I could see myself collaborating on any number of future projects with any of these guys… I hope we manage to stay in touch.