There is a special magic about first times. The first time that I screwed up my courage, took the leap of faith and jumped outside of my comfort zone, I landed in Xalapa, Mexico. Unaccompanied, I traveled to a place where the only person I knew from home was my faculty advisor, Dr Tony Serna.
The opportunity was a summer study abroad program—a language and literature intensive. Even though I’d studied Spanish from seventh grade through my freshman year at Ohio University, the prospect of immersion in a culture where I wasn’t fluent in the language and customs was daunting.
Four days out of each week between mid-June and early August, Mondays through Thursdays, I attended classes at Universidad Veracruzana. Our instructors, all native Spanish speakers, taught Mexican history, folklore and contemporary Latin-American literature. My classmates were other foreign students. On Fridays, it was customary for us to cut classes and take off on the second class buses for other locales. Sometimes I would travel with my classmates but, as often as not, I would strike out on my own.
My earliest forays were to cities about two hours distant—Veracruz, Puebla, Tecolutla and Xico. By late July, I felt confident enough in my growing language and cultural fluency to hop the second class bus to Oaxaca. I told my classmates, the family I boarded with and Sergio, my Mexican sweetheart, about my plans. Sergio was skeptical about my insistence on traveling solo.
While it may have seemed foolhardy and overconfident in Sergio’s view, everything worked out for the best. By traveling alone, not engrossed with a boyfriend or a group, I was more approachable, more open to meeting new people and having new experiences.
Shortly after arriving in the Oaxaca, I met a Canadian traveler whose name I’ve long since forgotten. We agreed to share lodgings to save money. During my afternoon siesta, I felt my first earth tremor. At first I thought it was an overloaded truck rumbling through the narrow street outside the hotel. My roommate set me straight on returning from his day’s ramblings.
On Saturday I took local buses to the Zapotec archaeological zones of Mitla and Monte Alban. I climbed the pyramids and shopped the local crafts markets for souvenirs. Some locals invited me to a quinceañera that evening .
By late Saturday night, I ran low on funds and waited in the ADO station for the morning bus to Xalapa. A local journalist, Roberto (Beto) Palacios, passed through the bus station on his return home from an out-of-town assignment as I sat in the terminal. We struck up a conversation.
When Beto learned that I was a journalism student, he insisted that I stay the next day as his guest for the Guelaguetza events. We used Beto’s press credentials to get seats in the press section. Before dropping me back at the ADO afterward, we went out for coffee. We exchanged addresses and promised to stay in contact.
The success of the Oaxaca trip emboldened me to attempt an even more ambitious solo adventure once classes ended the first week of August. When I shared my plan with Sergio, he grudgingly accepted every part of it except the final weekend in Mexico City. There he insisted that, for my safety, he accompany me.
There was a brief delay to the beginning of my final odyssey due to a stomach ailment. Once Sergio had nursed cme back to health, he saw me off at the Xalapa ADO, promising to meet me in Mexico City’s main terminal in eleven days.
I made the most of those eleven days, covering as much terriory in central Mexico as time and my budget would allow. Everywhere the second-class buses could take me, I went. I was serenaded by mariachis in the Patio Tapatio in Guadalajara. I stared into the vacant eyes of the mummies in Guanajuato. My main reason for picking the beaches at Manzanillo over Puerto Vallarta was that the bus route to the former passed through Autlan, my guitar hero Carlos Santana’s birthplace.
After watching Pacific sunsets and feasting on fresh-caught seafood in Manzanillo, I hopped a bus for the eastbound trek toward Mexico City. On that leg of the trip, my principal stop was Patzcuaro so I could watch the fishermen cast their butterfly nets on Lake Janitzio. I transited Morelia and Queretaro on the way to my rendezvous with Sergio in the capital.
During our whirlwind weekend, Sergio took me to Teotihuacan, Chapultepec and Xochimilco. He proposed on our final night together. The long-distance romance fizzled but that never tarnished the memories.
Whenever I experience self-doubt, I remember my daring Mexican adventures.
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