Salina Cruz, Mexico

After two nights of sleeping on buses, I finally got to spend more than 12 hours in one place. I indulged myself with a $20 hotel room with a shower, air conditioning, cable TV and a big bed for lots of sleep.

In the evening, I took a walk through the streets of Salina Cruz. I walked up a steep but short hill that had an asphalt road all the way to the top; asphalt roads are the type of things that impress me. At one point, after I passed a young boy, I heard him say "gringo" and "guero" to his mom, at which point I turned around and smiled at him, and he cracked up. I continued to walk down a road that I thought would take me to the ocean, but it instead took me to an industrial harbor that seemed not to have any actual beach. Either way, it was a nice way to get some exercise.

Speaking of exercise, I seem to be combining a small level of it with a change in diet that is causing me to lose weight. The belt that I started the trip on its second hole now is very comfortable on its third, and for a few hours yesterday I even needed to go to the fourth hole to keep my pants up comfortably.

At this point, for budgetary reasons, I have pretty much given up on reaching South America. I am also tired of traveling with no roots anywhere. I'm looking forward to getting to Quetzaltenango on Monday, where I can stay with Steve, a family friend. Assuming I'm not immediately appalled by the city, I'm hoping to find a cheap place to live and some sort of work to do. It seems that my vagabond days on this trip are coming to a close, but not before a late-night bus right tonight. I wonder what the movies will be.

Acapulco, Mexico

I'm in Acapulco, having just gotten off an 18-hour bus ride from Puerto Vallarta. I've already bought my ticket for this evening's 13-hour ride to Salina Cruz. I'm getting closer to the Guatemalan border, and I'm glad for the change.

Here were the movies on the bus:

• The Gods Must Be Crazy II, subtitled;
  
• The Dark Knight, dubbed;
  
• Blood Diamond, dubbed and showing scenes of African civil war at 7:15 in the morning; and
  
• The Notebook, dubbed and boring.
  

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

The way I figure, there's Good Gringo and Bad Gringo. I enjoyed the Good Gringo yesterday, and sampled some of the Bad.

First was the Good. I stayed at the Oasis Hostel in Puerto Vallarta, and met a handful of interesting folks. I love talking to just about anyone, so I enjoyed listening to John, my 27-year-old roommate, talk about his time in the army and his opinions on what went right and wrong in Iraq. I asked him his opinion of Rumsfeld, and it was unprintable.

I also met four girls who were headed to a beach that day. So I went down to the beach with Nikki from England, Brit from Canada, Alexandra from America and Savita from Ireland, a very good sampling of the English-speaking world. It was a fantastic time, and it felt great to swim in water much warmer than in Santa Cruz, California. It dawned on me that it had been eight years since I had last been in a tropical paradise, so I took in every ounce of sun I could get. In hindsight, it was too much sun, since it now hurts to touch my shoulders or stomach. Even though the beach we went to was way too commercial and had Mexicans trying to sell everything from jewelry to hash pipes to hammocks, it was beautiful weather and I could order a beer on the beach. Not bad. Not necessarily what I came to Latin America for, but not bad. Officially Good Gringo.

Later that night, I was happy to sit around in the hostel and get some sleep. That's when the Bad Gringo activities started. A group of people wanted to go out salsa dancing, and although I was reluctant, I trusted Nikki and Alex's judgment that they knew a good spot. So Nikki, Alex, John, a Mexican traveler named Isabel and I packed into a taxi and headed toward the center of town.

It turns out no one knew where there was salsa dancing, so we went to Hilo, a gringo club. As we walked in and heard Sean Paul playing, John was stoked, Isabel and Alex were smiling, and Nikki and I were exchanging looks of, "Jesus, what are we doing here?" The five of us ordered drinks and sat around the table, screaming in each other's ears whenever we wanted to say something. The B-52s played, followed by Xzibit. Nikki's face was showing increasing disgust, and she shouted, "Wow, I really feel like I'm in Mexico!" I leaned over and yelled to her that we should have one drink here, and if we don't like it, we could leave.

Our drinks arrived, and with our margaritas and rum-and-cokes, Alex, Nikki and I headed to the dance floor.

Oh God.

The first 15 people we saw dancing all seemed to still be teenagers, and most of them were girls. Three years ago, I might have really enjoyed dancing with them. If you don't understand why a 25-year-old wouldn't want to dance in a club with a bunch of teenagers, I recommend you watch this very funny (but also very vulgar) clip of comedian Louis C.K. talking about the differences between girls and women. When a short, chubby and clearly drunk girl turned to Nikki and Alex and started grabbing their hands to get them to dance with her, I locked in my assumption that this was not going to be a fun place to stay. To appease the girl, I danced with her for about 30 seconds until she stumbled backwards; I helped her balance, and said into her ear, "Stay on your feet, little girl."

It was then that Isabel came over and said that we had to go back to the table to pay for the drinks. Evidently, there's not a lot of trust in these clubs. So we went back to the table and asked for the bill. The waiter screamed into my ear a number that seemed incredibly high. I told him to write it down, because I couldn't believe it. He wrote it down. 415 pesos, which comes out to roughly $30 for four drinks and a juice.

The first thing that came out of my mouth was a popular Spanish phrase about the waiter's mother. He said, "¿Qué?" and I told him that it was way too much, and he knew it. He smiled and laughed, as if to let us know that he was in on the joke that are prices in Vallarta, and he thought it was hilarious, too. We paid and left. As we were leaving, I heard a whistle blow. A waitress was blowing a whistle at a 19-year-old boy, ordered him to sit down with his back to her, then held his head as she poured two shots of some orange liquor down his throat. After she had poured them, she grabbed his head and swished him around. This place was officially Bad Gringo.

After trying for another half-hour to find a good place, Nikki and I gave up, split away from the group, and walked across town back to the hostel, disappointed that we hadn't found anything close to authentically Mexican, and both of us realizing how stupid we had been to think that we would find it in a Puerto Vallarta night club. We got back, I talked a bit with another American staying at the hostel, and I went to bed, trying to figure out how to rest comfortably on my tender shoulders.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

After spending 23 of the last 24 hours in buses, I was sitting on a bench in the Puerto Vallarta bus station at 9 p.m., less than 150 pesos in my pocket, with no idea where I was going to sleep.

I knew there would be days like this.

Back on Monday morning, my plans for the day were still up in the air. I was determined to leave Hermosillo that evening, but I didn't know where I would go. A few days earlier, I had met a Croatian Couchsurfer named Maja (pronounced Maya) who lived in Guaymas, just a couple hours south of Hermosillo. I could call her and see if she could host me. I also had sent an e-mail the previous day to Jacky, a girl in Puerto Vallarta who, despite her English nickname, was Mexican and a friend of my host in Mexicali. I didn't have her phone number yet, but hopefully by the time I checked my e-mail, she would have sent it to me. I had no idea how long the bus ride would be to Puerto Vallarta; I only knew from every person I asked in Hermosillo that, "It's a loooong way."

Those were the plans. If I were traveling with a friend or a group of people, they would have killed me by now for my blasé attitude. But I was traveling alone, so it was okay.

My Hermosillo host, Rafael, dropped me off in the center of town, and I walked around until I found an internet café. Jacky had e-mailed me back, so I wrote down her phone number and address. In the afternoon, I met back up with Rafael and went to his house, where I called Maja first. She said it was too short of notice to host me that evening, since she already had plans. That was fine. I then called Jacky, and asked her if I could come Tuesday instead of Wednesday. She said that would be fine, and confirmed with me that I had no problem sleeping on the couch in the living room, since there wasn't an extra bedroom in her parents' house, where she lived. I said I had no problem with that.

So there I was, all confirmed to go to Puerto Vallarta. All I had to do was get there. At 5:30, Rafael took me to the bus station, where I found out just how arduous this ride was going to be. I bought a ticket for a 7 p.m. bus that would take me to Tepic by 1 p.m. Tuesday. From Tepic, the ticket lady said, I could take another bus to Puerto Vallarta, which would take a couple more hours. I bought a ticket for Tepic, which cost 780 pesos, or about $55. (Mexico, my friends, is a big and expensive place.)

The bus arrived in Hermosillo late, and finally started boarding at 7:30. I sat near the back, and was surprised to see a group of Americans in their 20s getting on the bus, all loading musical instruments into the bus's luggage compartment. I sat in the third row from the back, and they filled the two rows behind me. They were the first Americans I had seen in nearly a week, so I was curious to talk to them. They were a band based out of San Diego or Orange County; they didn't seem to have a straight answer. Either they were very tired of explaining themselves, or were not relieved to see a fellow countryman, or were just boring people, but they didn't seem very interested in a conversation, so I left them alone and read.

I hadn't been reading for long before the first movie came on. Nearly every bus I've been on in Mexico shows at least one movie, and this was no exception. The first was The Lookout, an uninspiring movie about crime and brain damage starring the kid from Third Rock from the Sun. It was in English, with Spanish subtitles. The movie was bad, but I lost my ability to read with noise in the background some time near the end of college, so I couldn't concentrate on my book. Forced to watch the movie, I practiced my Spanish by reading the subtitles and comparing it to what I was hearing in English.

The next movie was Daddy Day Camp, the sequel to Daddy Day Care. Not having seen the first one, I was still able to pick up the back story very quickly. I suppose that's one nice thing about formulaic movies. What was cool about this movie was that it was dubbed in Spanish, and I understood nearly all of it. Now, a movie like Daddy Day Care is obviously at a different language level than if I were to watch Schindler's List dubbed, but I was still impressed with my abilities. (After adding the links to IMDB, I just realized that the first movie had Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin, while the new one has Cuba Gooding, Jr. and some random flatulent white guy. But Eddie will do Nutty Professor II?)

The movies finally shut off at 11:30, but then they were back going at around 8 a.m. Before I got off at Tepic, we had watched The Lookout, Daddy Day Camp, Underdog (dubbed in Spanish, which I also understood well), Vitus (which was in German with Spanish sub-titles, so I was able to tune that out and read), and the first half of Stormbreaker (an action movie that completely slipped under my radar while I was in the Peace Corps).

What surprised me on the bus to Tepic was how odd I felt around the Americans that sat behind me. While in Moldova, I always operated under the principle that if someone spoke English in that part of the world, they were good people whom I could trust. That axiom never proved wrong, because the English speakers I met were Peace Corps volunteers, missionaries, Western Europeans there for development work, or Moldovans who were well-educated and friendly to Westerners. Everyone who spoke English in Moldova shared something with me more than just a language; they shared a reason to be in Moldova. In Mexico, few Americans come with the same intentions I do. As a people, we are known here as loudmouths and drunkards. I'm not saying that the Americans on the bus were bad people, but I am saying that here in Mexico, unlike in Eastern Europe, I don't like being lumped in with the gringos.

The bus, which was supposed to arrive in Tepic at 1 p.m., arrived at 3. After nearly 20 hours on the bus, I went immediately to the station's bathroom, where I rinsed my face, put on deodorant, and changed my socks, shirt and underwear. I bought a few tacos from a stand, and after eating, bought my ticket for Puerto Vallarta.

The bus left Tepic at 4 p.m., and took three and a half hours to get to Vallarta, rather than the three hours I had been told. Not a big deal. When I got off the bus, I went to use the bathroom, and then found a phone to call Jacky.

The first time I called her, there was no answer. The second time, no answer as well. I sat down in the station to wait a few minutes before calling again. I thought it was 7:50, but a time change I didn't know about meant that it was actually 8:50. I waited until 8:55 and called again. This time she answered, but the connection was bad and I couldn't hear her well. I understood well enough, however, to know that she was backing out of hosting me. It seems she hadn't checked it out very thoroughly with her parents, and once she talked it over with them, as I was already in transit to Vallarta, they said no. Slightly dejected, I said that it was okay, and after a few more absent-minded pleasantries, I hung up.

So now it was 9 p.m., and even though I thought it was 8, that didn't change the situation much. I had very little money, and I didn't have a place to stay. This wasn't good.

Then I remembered Pinja. Pinja was a Finnish Couchsurfer whom I had contacted weeks earlier, but when I had given her my original dates for Vallarta, she said she couldn't host me for those days. She had been more than happy to give me her number, in case I wanted to meet up during the day time with her and her Mexican boyfriend, Moises. I still had her number, and they were my last hope before having to pay for a hotel.

I dialed her number.

"Hola," came a voice on the other end.

"Hola, Pinja. Te habla Peter de Couchsurfing." She instantly remembered having sent e-mails back and forth with me. I continued in English. "I'm in a bit of a bad situation. I'm here in Vallarta and my host just told me that she can't host me. Do you think I could stay with you for the night?" I took a deep breath and hoped.

"Well, it would have to be just for tonight, because we have another surfer coming tomorrow night," she said. "Let me call my boyfriend and check with him. I'll call you back in about 10 or 15 minutes."

"Okay. I'm at a pay phone, so why don't I call you in 15 minutes?"

She agreed, and we hung up. One problem: my phone card had less than two pesos left, and I would need at least six to have a two-minute call with her. Most of the shops at the bus station were closed, but I was able to find one selling phone cards, and I bought the cheapest one possible, 30 pesos worth. This gave me a 30 peso phone card and 90 pesos in my pocket.

I sat in the station for the next 10 minutes, amusing myself by watching people from afar and guessing if they were Mexicans or Americans. You couldn't base it on skin color, I decided, except in the most extreme cases. No, it was better to base it off clothes and behavior. If they came close enough for you to listen, of course, it would be a dead giveaway. I concluded that the couple who looked like they were in their late teens or early 20s were probably Americans, based on the guy's Jamaica t-shirt and the girl not knowing which turnstile to go through for the bathroom when they were clearly labeled entrada and salida.

9:15 came around, and I called Pinja. She said it was no problem, and that she and Moises would meet me in the center of town, at the Oxxo at Hidalgo park. I could take the blue line bus there.

I hung up. Now I had to find a blue line bus. I asked a taxi driver and a bus station worker, and they directed me to two different places to pick up the bus. I followed the second one's directions, and walked a few blocks to the main avenue. After hailing the wrong bus twice, I decided to get a cab, even though it would probably take all the money I had left. I hailed one and asked the driver, a man in his early 50s with graying hair and a mustache, how much it would cost. He said 100 pesos, more than I had. Let the haggling begin. I low-balled him with 70, he gave a smile and said that that was just too little, and I smiled back and offered 80. "¿Lo hacemos?" I said. "Sí," he said. Safe, with 10 pesos to spare.

During the ride, Enrique and I talked about all the changes that had happened in the 12 years since I had last been to Puerto Vallarta. There had been lots of development, he said.

"Development for everyone, or just the tourists?" I asked.

"I think for everyone," he said.

We also talked about the drastic drop in spring break tourism this year.

"I talked with many students who are afraid of the drug wars," I said, putting a mocking emphasis at the end of my sentence to show that I thought it was a pathetic thing to be afraid of. "But I think the bigger reason is that no one in our country has money available right now with our economy. I'm no longer a student, but I think that when most students are at university, their money comes from their parents. Right now, their parents don't have money, so the students don't have spring vacations in Mexico." Enrique agreed that that made sense, and said he found it surprising that many university students in American don't work while in school. I said that students are working more and more these days, but that he was basically right.

We arrived at Hidalgo park, and I called Pinja from a pay phone again. She and Moises came to meet me, and we walked to their studio apartment a few blocks away. At that point, as I communicated in Spanglish, I was basically broken down. They offered me a shower and a couple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then we talked for a half hour, switching from Spanish to English and back again every couple minutes, and even venturing into Finnish from Pinja and Romanian from me. We then watched Hellboy II until we fell asleep.

Today, Wednesday, I'm sitting in an internet café in downtown Puerto Vallarta. I'm going to do my best to not do gringo things here, but we'll see what happens. Oh, and I still have to find a place to stay for tonight. That's one thing that hasn't changed from the day before.

Hermosillo, Mexico

I have lots to say about my stay in Hermosillo, but an internet cafe is not conducive to long writing sessions. I'll keep it simple, and say that my language is improving quickly, and today I'll be heading either on a short trip to Guaymas or an incredibly long trip to Puerto Vallarta. I just don't know yet.

The past few days, I've been staying with the owner of El Pescadito, a chain of four fish taco stands around the city. The food was great there, and Rafael has taken me all over town to eat excellent food. The meat here in the state of Sonora is exceptional; Sonora is basically Mexico's Texas.

Well, that's all for now. I have to make some phone calls so I know whether I'll be sleeping on a couch or a bus tonight.

Mexicali, Mexico

Yesterday, Claudia, José, their friend Liseta and I went into the mountains between Mexicali and Tijuana. I think the photos themselves will do the day justice.



Me in the mountains.



A sign pointing toward Mexicali in the middle of the Laguna Salata, which used to flood with water from the rivers around it, but is now a huge, flat, salty surface.


Claudia and me in front of the Mexicali sign.

About that late bus

Yesterday, I mentioned that my bus was more than an hour late leaving Tijuana. It turns out my bus wasn't late. I was just early. Mexico either has not or will not enter daylight savings time, so when I thought my bus was late at 1:20, it was in fact leaving at the correct time of 12:20. Luckily, Peace Corps taught me to not be a loud Mr. Know-It-All in these situations, or else I would have started ranting about late buses to people who knew that I had no idea what time it was.

Mexicali, Mexico

One of the biggest surprises from my first day was when Claudia, my host, and a friend of hers asked me, "Do you know what the official food is of Mexicali?"

I answered that I assumed it was beans or rice or chicken.

"No," she said. "Chinese food."

Evidently, huge numbers of Chinese settled in Mexicali at the beginning of the 20th century. And now, many Chinese continue to immigrate here.

"Chinese never die in Mexicali," Claudia's friend said. "When a Chinese child dies, the family sends news back to China that they have documentation for a five-year-old boy, and a new kid is sent over to live under that name."

As luck would have it, there was a fashion show of traditional Chinese clothes that night at the city's cultural center. Claudia and I went and joined nearly 400 people in a large room. Looking at the crowd that was about half-Chinese and half-Mexican, I had a hard time remembering that I wasn't still in San Jose until I saw that I was the only white person.

The clothes were absolutely stunning, and ranged from simple yet ornate sleeveless dresses to elaborate get-ups with furs, insane hats and fantastic patterns. While watching the models, sometimes my mind would wander back to a simple, ridiculous fact: I was an American, in Mexico, watching a Chinese fashion show. Before I left, people asked me why didn't just fly down to Peru or some other final destination. If I had done that, I could never have had a surprise like this.

Mexicali, Mexico

As I start writing, it's 11 p.m. in Mexicali, which means it's just past midnight in La Jolla, where I woke up this morning at 7 a.m. When I look back at the last 17 hours, I get extremely tired. Here's my attempt to capture some of what happened today.

At 7, I woke up at my friend Megg's house in La Jolla, California. I showered, we ate breakfast, and we headed to the bus stop. I took a bus to Old Town San Diego, then a trolley from San Diego to the border at San Ysidro. I then proceeded to walk across the border.

Walking across a border feels vastly different from flying over one or even driving across one. Walking across the U.S. border into Mexico is literally walking through a turnstile under a big sign that says Mexico. No one looked at my passport, let alone stamped it. No one cared enough to look inside my duffel bag. I saw a total of two customs officers at the busiest border crossing in the world.

Walking through that turnstile took me to Tijuana, a city which I understand to be a gringo's playground and not anywhere I wanted to spend an extended period of time. I wanted to take a taxi as quickly as possible to a bus station, and be on my way to Mexicali, where my Couchsurfing host, Claudia, was waiting for me. I paid 150 pesos, probably too much, for a cab to the bus station, but the cab driver took me to a spot where I could only see one bus company's station. He probably had some sort of deal worked out with the company, but in the end, it didn't matter much to me. I bought my ticket for Mexicali for another 150 pesos, the equivalent of about $11 U.S. It was unclear exactly what time the bus was leaving; the printed ticket said the bus left at 11:30, but the ticket salesman had crossed that out and written 12:20. To further the confusion, he told me that it was leaving at 12:30. No matter what, I had plenty of time to grab some food.

I circled a two-block area once before choosing a small restaurant with an open front, three tables and no customers. I was drawn to it by the sign, which said in Spanish, "Come and meet us." I couldn't not come and meet them. After I ordered my torta with steak and an orange juice, I talked with the two owners, who seemed to be in their late 40s or early 50s, and their son, who was probably in his mid-20s. They had started the restaurant only three months ago, they said, although this was their second business; they also owned a pharmacy in another part of town. I asked whether it was hard to start a business, since I had grown used to Moldovans telling me how impossible it was to get a loan. The husband said it was very simple for them; they just needed to find a good location, pay a little for some permits, and then buy some used furniture to make the place look nice. They hadn't even needed a loan. We continued to talk about the economies in Mexico and the U.S., and then I headed back to the bus station, since it was noon and my bus would be leaving soon.

Scratch that. I thought it would be leaving soon. At 12:20, there were still three or four men using a grinder to fix something in the cargo area of the bus. At 12:30, more passengers started to show up. At 12:40, they started checking bags, and I boarded the bus. I had already drifted in and out of sleep before the bus finally left the station at 1:20. Finally, we were on our way to Mexicali.

Scratch that. The bus traveled only a few miles before stopping at another of the company's bus stations, and more passengers loaded in. I napped a little more, and at 2:40, the bus finally left Tijuana and was on its way.

The bus right was uneventful, except for the massive, beautiful, and highly dangerous mountains. There were several areas where the posted speed limit was 30 km/h, and I saw one spot on the road where there was still charred evidence of two cars having run off the cliff.

Arriving in Mexicali, I got off the bus, but didn't really know where I was. I had Claudia's phone number, but no idea how to dial it or how to get credit for a phone. As I started to make my way from the bus station to a store where I thought I could buy a phone card, a man selling chocolates called out to me in English, asking if I needed a taxi. I responded in Spanish, saying that I needed to call a friend. His teeth were yellowed, and some of them were missing, and he only had one good hand, but he continued speaking to me in excellent English.

"If you need to make a call, you can use my cell phone," he said. I thanked him and used his phone to call Claudia. I spoke with her mother, who told me she knew where I would be and that Claudia was on her way to pick me up.

Once off the phone, I thanked the man and said in Spanish, "Everyone here knows a little bit of English."

"Well, I used to live up there," he said. It suddenly occurred to me that there were a lot of people with similar stories in the area. It turns out that Juan, as he introduced himself to me, had lived in San Fernando for 25 years, working mostly construction jobs. He had been deported fairly recently, and when I was quick to blame the government for kicking out people who had worked so long in the country, he said, "No, I can't blame the government. It was my own fault; I was drinking and driving, and I knew I shouldn't do it." He continued, "A lot of people here blame the government for being sent back, but we do it to ourselves."

Juan then told me that now he works selling chocolate in the store across the street. "That's pretty different from construction," I said. "Yeah," he said, "but there's no construction here. There's nothing." He ran across the street for a few moments to sell some chocolate, and while he was gone, another man walked by and said cheerfully in English, "My name's Eddie. I've got two sons over there in Los Angeles, but I can't go there."

Juan came back a few minutes later, just as Claudia and her brother, José, came in his car. Since I've been writing for more than 45 minutes and it's nearly midnight, I'll save the details of my first evening in Mexico for another day. I will say, though, that my Spanish is much better than my Romanian was on my first day of Peace Corps service. I'm making grammatical mistakes with verb tenses and my vocabulary needs massive improvement, but even this first day leaves me very optimistic about what level my Spanish will be in in just a few months.

La Jolla, California

These are my final hours within my own country for the next several months. I'm incredibly excited, but also a little anxious. I'll be taking a lot of buses, a trolley and a taxi today to get to Mexicali. The only thing I'm really concerned about today is paying too much for a taxi from the border to the Tijuana bus station. If I can do that cheaply, I'll be set for the day.

So long, America. See you in a while.

Los Angeles, California

Very few people would want to start their dream trip with several days in L.A., and I wouldn't either. Yet here I am, spending my third and final day in Los Angeles, a city for which I have almost no kind words.

My dislike for L.A. may have started as far back as the early-90's basketball rivalry between the Lakers and my hometown Chicago Bulls. After moving to the Bay Area, I spent my teenage years developing certain biases against the city that I considered so culturally different from San Jose. San Jose was peaceful and green, while L.A. was hectic and smoggy. In San Jose, you could meet someone multiple times and never ask them about their job, whereas in L.A., your profession and how close you were to "making it" seemed more important than your character. My distaste for L.A. flavored my choice of colleges, passing up the chance to go to USC or UCLA in order to leave California altogether.

These were the prejudices that I gathered over the course of my life, but because I have many friends from high school and college in the area whom I rarely see, I knew that I had to spend some time in L.A. As my friend Mike and I drove down I-5 Saturday, I felt those anti-L.A. biases creeping in. The first time we ran into minor traffic, I said that this was how it would be all weekend. When my friends wanted to drive the one-and-a-half miles from the restaurant to the bar, Mike and I looked at each other in disbelief that we would move the car over such a small distance, and once we got to the bar, I complained about how loud the music was and how expensive the beer was. When we got to my friend's girlfriend's apartment building, I ridiculed the building's extreme security system, which forced you to buzz security and identify yourself to open nearly every door. Although I didn't realize my mind was working this way, I most likely had an acute sense of homesickness; why had I left so much behind, if I was going to be miserable in L.A.?

Sunday, Mike and I woke up at Janet's and made our way (via freeway, of course) to Venice Beach. After walking up and down a pier, I took off my boots and Mike took off his sandals, and we walked in the sand, occasionally throwing a frisbee back and forth. Suddenly, I was enjoying myself. I turned to Mike and said, "I'm going to be able to do a lot of this on the trip." My smile grew until I was grinning from ear to ear.

Mike and I continued to the outdoor rec center area of Venice Beach, where we ate cheap pizza and watched a couple decent games of pick-up on the beach-side basketball courts. I could have gotten a medicinal marijuana card, too, but those are rather pointless if you don't smoke pot.

When we returned to Janet's, we started thinking about dinner plans. We decided to buy groceries and make dinner, including steaks that Ryan (Janet's boyfriend and my friend for the past 10 years) would grill on the roof of Janet's 23-story building. After the grocery store, we came back, and Ryan and I headed to the roof to grill.

The roof of a luxury apartment building in L.A. is not a place where I feel naturally comfortable, mostly because of all the privilege attached to it that I don't feel I, nor anyone else, deserves, especially when we're in our 20s. I was about to press Ryan as to how he could live like this, in this environment in this city with all of its affluence. Then, I told myself to shut up. My dislike for L.A., I decided then and there, was ridiculous. In my life, I had seen the wonderful sides of Chicago, San Jose, Boston, and large cities and small villages all over Europe; my prejudices, however, were keeping me focused on the bad in L.A., trying to convince myself that I wasn't having fun. So I shut up. I looked out at the setting sun, and I smiled. It was only the second time that day that I had truly appreciated where I was. I continued the conversation with Ryan, but instead of grilling him, I asked him about mutual friends, about his band, and about how the steaks were coming along.

The rest of the night went well, with a good dinner, good conversation, and good sleep.

Tuesday, I'll be heading to San Diego, and then I'll cross the border Wednesday. But in the mean time, I'm going to enjoy my time in Los Angeles, which isn't my favorite city by any means, but it's not the awful place that I had built up in my mind.

What I'm bringing

When I left for the Peace Corps in 2005, it was incredibly difficult to pack my life into just two bags of luggage and a backpack, and I even brought along my large video camera. In my group of volunteers, there was also a guy named Ted, who was in his early 30s and was a Desert Storm veteran. He didn't check any baggage. His entire life was in a medium-sized duffel bag. The rest of us were bewildered; we couldn't understand how he was going to live for two years with just those things. "I've got everything I need for the next week in this bag," he said. "Anything else I need, I'll buy it there, and it'll be cheaper than if I bought it in America."

Ted had a wonderful approach, even if I didn't see much wisdom in it at the time. When he did finally buy dress clothes, he bought shirts, pants, and shoes that fit the Moldovan style, allowing him to be accepted faster in the culture than those of us trying to understand why the Moldovans didn't like our rounded shoes with matte polish.

Years later, Ted's example is my inspiration on this trip. I'm bringing a single large duffel bag from REI, and I'm packing the essentials:

• enough underwear and socks to last me for a week without laundry,
  
• one pair of jeans (wearing them),
  
• one pair of boots (wearing them),
  
• three t-shirts (wearing one of them),
  
• a light jacket (wearing it),
  
• one hooded sweatshirt,
  
• swim trunks,
  
• a cheap, simple Timex watch (wearing it),
  
• three Spanish grammar and vocabulary books,
  
• a couple travel books for the countries in which I'm traveling,
  
• a few English books to read in the first few weeks of my trip,
  
• a camera,
  
• a compass,
  
• two flashlights,
  
• shampoo and soap, and
  
• a dop kit with toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, tweezers, nail clippers, and some meds.

In addition, I'll be carrying money, my passport, my immunization record, my medical insurance information, two pens, a notepad and my cell phone with me (the phone is in case I stay in a place for more than a few weeks and want to have a phone number, in which case I can buy a SIM card and put it in).

What's more notable, I think, is what I'm not bringing. No laptop, no iPod, no fancy clothes, no video camera, no jewelry. This is because in many ways, I think Ted's approach to packing was much smarter than mine. I'm glad that I brought my laptop and video camera to Moldova, because it helped me prepare lessons and create incredible video memories of my life there. But I wonder how much more I might have done with my time there if I hadn't been sitting at the computer for hours every day. Whom might I have met that, because I was interested in reading New York Times articles, I never met? What experiences in my village might I have had that, because I was so happy to stay in my room and watch a DVD, I never had? How much weight might I have lost if I had helped my host family in the field rather than play Civilization III?

This is why I have almost completely deprived myself of entertainment and electronics for the trip; I have to force myself outside, into discussions with people and exciting new experiences. I have to get rid of my 21st century digital boy instinct, talk to people, practice Spanish, and absorb every bit of culture I can from the area. Buddhists would call this "right mindfulness," but Bill Withers might just say that if you're going to travel, "You'd better do it, and do it good."

I won't be completely technology-deprived, though. I will be using a USB flash drive loaded with Portable Apps. No matter where I go, all I have to do is find a PC and plug into its USB port, and I'll have my own web browser, e-mail program, FTP client, and office suite. This is how I'll be updating this blog, e-mailing people, and uploading photos. In fact, I'm using it right now.

So that's all my luggage. It fills about half of my duffel bag, and it's down to what I consider the bare basics. Speaking of which, it's time to keep packing; I leave for L.A. on Saturday. Four years ago, I would never have guessed that I'd be packing like Ted.

Where and how I'm going

The glib answer to where I'm going is, "Wherever I can take a bus to in Latin America." In reality, my very loose itinerary continues to fluctuate every day. The basic idea, though, is this: travel down the Pacific coast of Mexico, through Central America, fast as hell through Colombia, and then down to Ecuador and Peru. After staying in South America for a while, I'll head back up the Atlantic coast of Central America and back home. Perhaps the most important consideration in all this: I'm doing it by bus.

Buses always amazed me in my Peace Corps days. They were a way to meet people from all walks of life, to hear hilarious conversations, and once, I even had an attractive aspiring hairdresser put her head on my shoulder for a long bus ride. I also appreciated being able to see the countryside, towns and villages roll by outside your window, which seemed so much more real than looking down from a plane.

There is another benefit to buses; they're cheap. I am most definitely on a budget for this trip, and the cost of plane tickets could easily wipe out a month or more's budget for living expenses. Another way to save money is not to stay in hotels, but in hostels and through CouchSurfing.com. I have been both a host and a guest through CouchSurfing, and I enjoy it immensely. I consider it to be incredibly safe and trustworthy, even though the concept of finding individuals to stay with through the internet may frighten some people. Just like with buses, CouchSurfing allows you to stay with real people and cut past some of the touristy trash that always plagues travelers.

Tuesday, I met Vic and Barby Ulmer, who run Our Developing World, a non-profit that performs many kinds of aid all over the developing world. They were able to give me some connections in Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador, which hopefully I'll be able to turn into interesting stays at co-ops, schools, and more.

This particular entry is short on facts because, honestly, my itinerary is short on facts. Knowing exactly where I'm going is not the focus of this trip. "South" will many times function as the only piece of directions I need. To assume that I already know what I want to see in at least nine different countries spread over two continents would be incredibly arrogant on my part, and would only lead to unhappiness because I would want to stick to the schedule.

So please forgive me if I'm glib and just say, "Wherever I can take a bus in Latin America."

A big lesson for the day

In years of having an internet presence, be it through web sites, blogs, Facebook pages, or more, I have never discussed dating. In my blogs in particular, I've never felt that the relationships I was in were important to the stories I was telling. I particularly never wrote about dating in Moldova because my blog and I were already the subject of enough gossip in the Peace Corps and Moldovan communities without me kissing and telling.

Yesterday, I broke that rule, because I figured that having a long-distance relationship during the trip would be a relevant part of my story. I never meant to focus on it, but it seemed like something reasonable to put in my introductory post.

This morning, my girlfriend told me that she couldn't do a long-distance relationship; she had had them in the past, and didn't have it in her to struggle through another one. We needed to break it off. I don't know what happens at this point, because discussing a relationship is very different from living in the aftermath of the discussion. But I learned a huge lesson today. In all my other travels, I've been able to put life at home on hold; I could pause the friendships, the jobs, the apartments, and come back to them months or years later without any real consequences. This is different. This is tough.

For a long time, I had planned on this trip to be my last ever long-term one. After this trip, I had planned on never taking a job abroad, and never doing another trip that lasted more than a month. Today solidified that instinct in me.

I'm going to have an amazing trip; probably the best I've ever been on. I'm ready for the most free-wheeling, most informative, and most fun trip I've ever had in my life. But before I leave for a trip that will include my 26th birthday in May, I can already see the writing on the wall:

I'm getting too old for this shit.

Why I'm going

Going someplace new has dominated my thinking for the past nine years. It's why I chose to leave California to attend college in Boston. It's why I went from Boston to the eastern European country of Moldova to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It's why as soon as I came back from Moldova, I took my car visited 34 states around the U.S. in a three-month span. Travel has been vital to me, but all of my other trips were at important transitional times: entering or leaving college, or returning to my home country. Never before have I "had something," decided to temporarily leave it, and then come back to it. I had a job that I enjoyed, although it wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life; I had a livable apartment, shared with a good friend; and I've been dating a great girl for the past three months (for me, that's long). Why leave it?

When people ask me this, I tend to put on an aw-shucks face and give them answers that do little to convince them of my sanity. The first answer I give is simple: To learn Spanish. I've already learned Romanian through my work in the Peace Corps, and I know that there is no better way to learn a language than to go to a country where that language is spoken. I will learn more Spanish in my first two weeks of travel than I have in my semester of study at the local community college. Spanish is important in my life, because I plan on being a high school teacher, and I need to be able to speak with as many students' parents as possible. I have been a foreigner living in another country, and I know how much more comfortable a discussion can be when it's in your own language. Even though many immigrants in the U.S. work hard to learn English, a majority will never feel as comfortable talking about their children's education or behavior in English as they would in Spanish. To be a more effective teacher, I need Spanish.

The second reason I give people is, "I'm going because I haven't been there before." A little-hidden secret is that I had wanted to be in Latin America four years ago for Peace Corps, but the government told me I was going to Moldova instead. In hindsight, I'm incredibly happy to have lived in Moldova, but I'm also excited to finally get my crack at Latin America. I come to this trip wiser, more mature, more talented at languages, and more prepared for life than I would have as a 22-year-old recent graduate.

I'll be describing the framework of my trip in the next week, before I head south. But today, my focus is on getting all the proper vaccinations that I'll need. Should be fun.