Let the Adventures Begin!

Our first international trip together was to Mexico City. After completing a week of touring in the capital city, singing on national television in the Palace of Fine Arts with our college choir, and being escorted around by a guy who wore sunglasses, had an earphone and carried a suspicious-looking bag we were pretty sure did not contain any type of actual paperwork, we were off on our first real solo travel adventure – a road trip to Acapulco, with a stop on the way in Cuernavaca, via Mexico’s famous Estrella de Oro bus line!

This road trip was doomed from the moment the bus left the station.

The first “crash course” in foreign public interstate travel came when the bus had a close encounter with a VW minibus – you know, the kind that was so popular in the 60’s, painted with flowers and neon color schemes. Bus 1, VW Minibus 0. Forced to exit our victorious bus, we grabbed our luggage and promptly found ourselves on the side of one of Mexico’s busiest highways! Bus number two appeared some thirty minutes later.

We discovered that while the twin to our first bus appeared sturdy enough, that strength did not extend to its windows. Cruising down the highway at 60 mph, we heard glass break right behind our heads as a quarter-sized rock flew through the side window. Apparently, tempered glass was not a requirement on this bus line. Shards of glass spewed across a few startled passengers, cutting the face of one woman sitting behind us. The bus, though, continued on as normal, this incident apparently not something of severe concern. Well, except for the chicken. The chicken did seem concerned, but nobody paid it any attention. Without further excitement, we finally arrived at our first stop where we would spend a couple of days – Cuernavaca.

It is amazing how great satellite mapping programs are today. They can pinpoint your location to a few feet and keep those of us who are directionally challenged from getting lost permanently. However, on that particular summer day when we stopped in Cuernavaca, satellite maps and a smartphone to run it on would not be available for another 25 years or so. The stop on the paper map that looked so close to where we needed to exit the bus actually ended up being a walk of a mile to the hotel with fully loaded suitcases over bumpy, cobblestone streets. No taxi, either. Things were going just great!

Following an interesting, but uneventful, stay in Cuernavaca, we boarded the bus yet again to complete our journey to Acalpulco. College students are notoriously poor, and we were no exception. Our mantra has always been that “all hotel rooms look the same in the dark!” So finding a hotel for $15 a night was perfect with us. It was in a great location, too – high on a hill near the area where daredevil cliff divers thrilled tourists each day. Two twin beds and a private bath were all we needed. Returning to the room late that evening, we found that one of the twin beds was now occupied by a long line of ants. They marched into the room through a hole in one wall, continued up and over one of the two beds, crossed the tile floor, and exited through a gap under the door to the room. Three years of high school and college Spanish allowed me to tell the nice lady at the desk the next morning that we had “hormigas en la cama.” She smiled, then proceeded to give me an answer in rapid fire Spanish that my previous foreign language education had not prepared me to comprehend. I smiled. And went back to the room. Solution? We spent the next 3 nights on the remaining twin bed!

31 years later, we still laugh about our first independent, international vacation. At 18 and 21 we didn’t really know any better. But figuring things our together, experiencing something so different from anything we had ever done before, and, most importantly, being open to the differences and embracing the challenges together was the hook that has kept us traveling year after year!

What was your travel hook? What experiences have shaped your travel interests? We hope you will share with our Walks Your Way community.

Happy Walking!

Walks Your Way