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Did you go outside today?

© Hunter Stanford 2014

Dispatch: Star Wagon

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So I’m in the van, a plan 8 months in the making and a few hundred dollars worth of travel. It’s a 1994 Mitsubishi Delica L300 “Star Wagon”, and being Japanese, you likely haven’t heard of it. There’s a law in the States that foreign vehicles must be over 25 years old to import them. Or needs to have been produced for 25 yrs for legal importation, which the Delia hasn’t yet, thus none in the US.  I may have that a little wrong, or completely wrong. ¿Lo me sigas?

It’s been a little over three weeks since I flew into Santiago, Chile and Ian scooped me up. Homeboy is an old friend who I bounced around with in Central America late last year. He left our hostel in Medellín the day after Christmas and I haven’t seen him since. As of now, we’ve made it almost 2,000 kilometers north and we sit on a beach in Iquique now getting ready to pass out in the back. This is the Atacama Desert, the driest (non-polar) place on earth.

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Actually speaking Spanish

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This is how I imagine things go when I try and speak Spanish, based on the bizarre looks/borderline hostile body language I get back. We’ll do it all in English just to get the joke across.

Welcome all! Cue the curtains. And turn off your damn phone.

Scene 1: with character, Me and character, Citizen hoping to be left alone. I will be Me.

Me: Excuse me sir, how are you today?

Citizen hoping to be left alone: only nods, already wishing I would leave him alone.

M: You know what I can take bus for the is street 59?

Chtbla: scrunches face slowly for a 15 full seconds. What?

M: Ah, I must say it differently and more slowly. Sorry. Flash a smile. Which you know bus I can drink for street 59?

Chtbla: My request ever-so-slowly sinks in. Maybe a full minute has passed, hard to say. YessiryoucangrabthebusthatsaysSINAandtakeittostreet35thentaketheotherwithstreet190onthefronttostreet59…

M: I caught none of that. I hate my life. Possibly you can say this little bit a slower? Thank you.

Chtbla: Character now visibly doesn’t like me and his demeanor seems to imply a request to leave this country and never return. Yes, I said, you…can…take thebusthatsaysSINAandtakeittostreet35thentaketheotherwithstreet190onthefronttostreet59…

M: Quick, act like like you understand so you don’t look dumb in front of this total stranger! Flash an even bigger smile! Ah perfect, much thank you sir, great day you have, yes?

Chtbla: Briefly shows the fakest smile to ever grace the Western Hemisphere and walks off, his dislike for gringos amplified by a minimum of 7-10%. Or that’s how it seems to me. 

Cue the curtains. Start sweeping up the popcorn. This is more or less my experience almost every time I speak to a stranger.

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escuela español es el cielo…

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I am going to stop apologizing for these being so late, as much as I want to be the “multiple posts a month” guy it just might not happen. Isn’t it a bit more special if we have one on a monthly basis??? It gives you a chance to completely forget I even exist only to be like, “oh yeah, Hunter isn’t dead yet!” and check this scene out. Maybe??? Anyone???

101_2096Anywayyyyyyyyyy, I spent the last glorious month with Spanish school and lovely host family in Xela, Guatemala. The real name of the city is Quetzaltenango, but it is nicknamed Xela for some reason. There’s a ton of Mayan influence around here and I overheard someone talking about an original name stemming from that. Also cool note, there are something along the lines of 25+ different native languages in this country alone stemming from that Mayan influence. Guatemala is a pretty small country by our standards, so imagine maybe the state of Arizona (which is around the same size) having 25+ different languages throughout the state. Difficult to communicate widely to say the least.

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¡Llego a la ciudad de México!

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Couchsurfing angel Mark!

So everyone gets a little Spanish lesson, my title means I arrive in Mexico City. I think. Questionable grammar for sure, but you gotta start somewhere

In the end, everything I worried about was silly, which, is a solid-gold metaphor for my life. AirTran did not care that I didn’t have a return ticket to the States and Mexican customs did not care that I didn’t really have a set plan for what I was going to do or for how long in Mexico (as in, they didn’t even look at me, here’s 180 days now keep moving. Recall how horrid getting in into Canada was?). And finally, Mark, my Couchsurfing meet up, met me right where he said he would.

Right off the bat this place is nothing to be afraid of. It’s busy, kind of cramped, and everyone is hawking their wares at every corner of the street, but nobody looks like they’re going to bother me. In the States, you only hear really bad news stories about Mexico, so we sometimes get it pushed in our head that this isn’t a very safe place. I’m aware that one neighborhood can’t really represent a whole country, but I felt quite safe walking around at night by myself. As I frequently read online, nobody really cares about you, they have their own lives to live.

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Ready to leave…

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I’m going to keep this pretty short, as I only have a few pictures to go up anyway. I got through TSA checkpoint (and for definitely the first time in my life) no one went through my bag though I have everything ever with me. The initial worry of AirTran making me buy a return ticket has passed for the moment, though I asked the front desk guy and he said they could still make me when I depart from San Antonio to Mexico City. I’m not going to ask anymore, for newfound fear of possibly reminding someone that that, oh, yes sir, you DO need a return ticket.

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This is everything (i think) i will need to survive a few months on the road…

I always like to work backwards with these things, makes the writing easier? The past two months following my internship at the American Horticultural Society (written about here) have been spent very enjoyably at the original home nest in Tampa, FL, with old timers momma Keyne and papa Rupert. It had been about ten years to the month since I left. In fact, sometime around ten years ago this week I moved out of that nest into Gainesville, FL, to start college. I know a lot of my friends’ college semesters start later today.

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