All,
It begins. This is dispatch Number 1 of a journey into The Americas.
David
Cypress, California
Why I Travel
In Spring of 2008 I announced plans to drive to South America from San Francisco, California.
Since then excitement and fear have swirled about for me as preparations for a long journey are made. It has been a vague and romantic dream since my 20s to drive these remote reaches of the world. I vacated my apartment and kept a few things of sweet sentimental value and trimmed it down to 10 stored boxes. The rest was given away: furniture, books, clothes, kitchenware, plants and other odds and ends you find when digging deep into boxes that have been dragged around for a lifetime. When traveling I'll have an old 4x4 truck with camp gear, a Spanish-English dictionary, and a pair of swim fins and mask. The reductionism lightens the mind and frees the spirit.
I leave San Francisco my home for nearly 10 years -with hardly any possessions kept or taken along. I look forward to living without distractions that come with owning things, such as how to earn ever increasing amounts of money to acquire more stuff and the biggest hidden distraction: the amount of energy spent worrying about how to protect it. Whole industries have popped up around surplus storage and security for all the stuff we accumulate.
My dream of disconnecting everything was partially realized. I tried to go without a forwarding address and found that impossible to do, forced to get a PO Box and impose on a friend for his physical address to satisfy a demand made by the bank. My goal was to have no bills to pay and nothing to manage while out of country. As in most cases, dreams end in some mixture of an ideal outcome and reality. Getting rid of almost all my possessions and having no place to call home was a big step in the direction of my original intent.
Why leave it all?
I have trouble answering that one still. I can tell you that intuition is at the heart of it and I have learned to listen to my intuition more than ever. I am not convinced life in the United States offers full potential for the human spirit to evolve and develop. Over recent years I have developed strong doubts about the "American way" based on observations traveling the country and living in California most of my life. Perhaps it is a realization that I am not a city-boy anymore and the small town life suits me better. I'm left wondering what else there is outside these borders.
My reaction to life in the USA is centered on culture, extreme careerism, competitiveness for jobs and money and an absence of community. It is primarily a land of loners and shoppers that leaves me feeling isolated and uninspiried. I have long been impressed with the social cohesion in Latin American families. I want to see more up close taking the time to amble down dirt roads to live with them and study the language. Driving is the only way. Transit by air limits the traveler and brings change too quickly: the pleasure of new smells and geographical changes are not yours. If I didn't travel by car I would go by train.
When I share my plans to travel this way, 7 out of 10 people tell me how dangerous the region is and caution me to the point that I may have lost my mind by choosing to travel this way. The fretted face, the shaking head. Many of them pile on with a third-hand story of some violent experience in Mexico or Central America with great enthusiasm. The implication is clear: where you are going, there are savages. Nearly none of them can tell me they have actually been to these countries that I am supposed to fear so much. Americans love to tell stories of horrors in far away lands, yet somehow manage to ignore those in their own country. The foreign stories are told in the most colorful language. While I enjoy a long goodbye with friends and family sharing my story of getting off the beaten path, they share theirs of robberies and crooked police.
In the group of people I talk with about my journey who focus on all that can go wrong cling desperately with this final reason not to go when they see their horror stories aren't deterring me with, "Oh, and gas is so expensive right now." Implication clear as another reason not to leave the safety and order of the motherland. As if waiting for the price of gas to change will be the time to go!
I cannot live life through the Discovery Channel anymore, I must see and experience these things myself. If I get robbed you'll know, if I get beat up you'll know that too, if I deal with a crooked policeman I'll share the experience, if I drive over the edge of the 'Death Highway' in Bolivia and plumet 1,000 feet re-read my last dispatch, and if none of that happens, well, there might not be anything to write about.
I want to break away from the cleanliness, orderliness, plainess and franchisemanship of American culture. I don't want to know what happens next. Here in America there are an untold number of laws to govern the slightest nuisance one encounters in daily life. No other industrialized country in the world has as many laws as there are in the U.S. I want to experience other cultures and gain an improved understanding of my own. In the same way that distance has a way of making love understandable, travel has a way of making your own culture increasingly understandable.
One can drive the whole way from San Francisco through Mexico, Central America and South America to the port city Ushuaia in Argentina where explorers to Antarctica depart and sailors round the treacherous Cape Horn. Ushuaia is 740 miles from Antarica and is known as the city at the bottom of the world. You can drive the entire distance except for a 70 mile portion of
impenetrable jungle located between Panama and Columbia known as the Darien Gap.
The Gap is virtually impassable and those that have done it by motorized vehicle can be counted on one hand. The first successful Jeep crossing was accomplished in the mid 1990s and took over 700 days. That bad. I will not attempt a land crossing through the Gap. If money and curiosity hold out I will load my truck on a cargo vessel in Panama and have it shipped to Venezuela or Columbia, then continue the journey on the South American continent.
Is it a mistake to stay away from home so long?
I do not know the answer to that one, but intuition tells me it may be a mistake to stay away too long. For some it's measured in months and others measured in years. I am also open to the
possibility of never returning. I do not seek this outcome; however, it is important to be open to the possibility. I want to let my curiosity run free over a horizon filled with things new and strange, to find stimulation in places and things I seem to ignore at home. I travel to experience this joyful curiosity.
The travel I intend to do is simple and rough, traveling side roads away from tourist havens and avoiding the resort crowd by camping and staying in hostels . The sort of travel I prefer is on the whole rather comfortless and lived day to day. This kind of travel is never easy: you get tired, lost, homesick, receive little co-operation and at times grow lonely, and I am beginning to suspect that if it has any value at all, you go alone.
I have invited friends to join me for early portions of the journey and for various reasons they are unable to make it. At first this brought on fear of traveling alone and reminded me of my last journey -nine months driving alone around the U.S.A. visiting friends, making new ones while jotting down observations on the American life. Self-discovery during this time was an intense joy. I'm not sure the pleasures of self-discovery would have been mine if I had had a travel partner. While it is pleasurable to travel with friends for long stretches, the richest moments seem to happen when traveling alone when you are able to take in what you see without interuption.
Companions blurt out phrases that break your concentration with, "Oh, the trees are so green here." to, "The soil is red." or, "The sky is so blue."
Travel has less to do with distance than with insight. For me it is a way of seeing. When I traveled Southeast Asia in the early 1990s it was at times very dangerous, bizarre, anxiety-making and exotic: land mines in northern Cambodia with gunfire in the mornings, hardboiled eggs in Vietnam that concealed near hatched chicks, racing past night-time checkpoints on motorcycle in Phnom Penh being grabbed by the collar and escaping with a girlfriend, exploring Angkor Wat in the hinterlands of Cambodia when few went, and spending a month on a remote volcanic lake in Sumatra at a guest house with no electricty or running water. I seek adventure in The Americas. This for me is when I am at my happiest and most alive: exploring, learning and writing.
America's mood right now is dominated by fear and loathing, it makes for a convenient time to leave the country for an extended period. I expect little to change in the U.S. and, in fact, expect a further shift to the right politically and socially regardless of who becomes president. Presently, life here is stifling me. It is a challenge for me to live in a culture based on fear and loathing. Our politics and culture show it. Sadly, the dark corners of the American personality are now openly being expressed as unbridled racism, vengeful anger and fear mongering.
There is no schedule, no concrete destinations, only the intent to see and be open to it all along the way. I have invited friends to join me for parts of this roughback adventure -in a span of weeks or months. It's a large truck with room for four travelers at a stretch. If we have not talked and you would be interested in such an adventure email me or call while I still have a phone during my last days in California. Part I, travel in Mexico and Central America is likely to take a year or more.
Pick a time or place of interest and find out where I will be, then make plans to meet. I intend to write regularly of experiences and the affect they have on me. I have shared a story of following my instinct and encourage you to follow yours without too much 'thinking'. When we over-think things we have a powerful way of talking ourselves out of our dreams.
Live now. Live in the present. Live today.
If not now, when?
Yes, yes,
I say to myself, Now is the time.
David
Cypress, California
temporary cell phone: 415/828-8900
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