CHICKEN IN CHOCOLATE SAUCE

Sometimes I find myself walking on a dusty road - it is hot, my backpack is heavy, my other bag, full of books (all gifts), rests on one shoulder and then the other. I see people on the streets turning their head to see who is knocking as they hear the sound of my walking stick on the city floor. Most look with surprise, some with admiration, but many also with compassion. "I am living my dream. Travelling around the world," I tell to those who ask. Yes, even in the hard times (which are not really hard times), when there is a stone in my shoe or when I feel so tired I cannot walk any more and there is still no good hitchhiking spot in sight, my choice to travel around the world still feels very right. "What possessed you to do this?" I find my mind asking my heart. "Why couldn't you let her be "normal" and live in a safe (-seeming, my heart adds), well-off, good-job everyday life in her own country among good friends and supporting family?"

I myself don't know if I actually had a choice, though. If I were doing anything else but hitchhiking the world? - No, I could not imagine!



Mexico is different. Than anything. On one hand it is just as I imagined it to be- cactus trees, red sand landscapes, hot sun; but on the other hand it is nothing what I imagined it to be. Every step I take is the first-time-in-my-life experience, and it could well be the only time in life I experience something like this!

People are kind and hitchhiking is easy.

October 26
Walking on a serpantine road, a car stopped for me. I was not even hitchhiking. When we reached Izukar de Matamoros, the driver,a kind man named Mario, offered to buy me a ticket to Oaxaca. Why did I refuse?

I realised it during my next ride - a family of three that saved me from the burning sun. I got to sit in the trunk, wind in my hair, eyes wide open, feeling on top of the world, wishing the ride would not end.

A bus would give you a very different emotion: more like I payed, so you take me to point B, which I know in advance is xx kilometers away from here. I relax, occasionally look out of the window, read a book or take a nap waiting for the destination to come at the appointed time. Yes, very different. But sometimes I still do it - for practical reasons, to get out of town, or when feeling tired.

First night(October 25) I came to a place called Tepexco, some 100 km from Mexico City. I camped in a field under the stars - beautiful experience! The second night (October 26) found me in the town of Acatlan de Osorio. Crossing the town, it started getting dark. I saw a nun in one church-yard and approached her with my spanish hitchhiking notes.

"I am sorry to disturb you. I am a traveller and do not have a place to stay tonight. Would it be possible for me to stay here? I have a tent and a sleeping bag - even a small space in your garden I would be very grateful for. I promice not to be of any trouble" I told the nun.

In turn, the church people fed me, befriended - almost adopted me, the priest took a big cross from his neck and gave it to me, and then they put me up in a hotel. It was so much more than I had expected! Very nice and comfortable in a way, but uncomfortable in another, because they took so much trouble (and money) to host me.

It took me altogether three days to reach Oaxaca, a place just 450 km away from the Mexico City, which I consider very slow hitchhiking - you could do the same distance in a day, and more if lucky.

But Mexico is different, as I mentioned. Its roads are crooked, going up and down the mountains in a serpentine, there are many towns and villages on the way, where in addition to slowing down the speed, you can have rush hour traffic, demonstrations of teachers wanting a higher pay from the government, goats, horses or cows crossing the street and much more I guess yet to be seen.

Oaxaca. (October 27-29) I spent the night in a hostel, paying the price of 150 pesos ($12). I got to meet many nice enthusiastic young people from around the world - all off to discover Mexico at its best...but could not for some reason share their enthusiasm of going to see Monte Alban, or the biggest tree in the world or anything else for this matter. I just wanted to sit and do nothing. Read - escape from my story into someone elses. I can't say I didn't try. I went out for a walk - visited the old churches, strolled up and down the city streets, then thought of leaving - going back to the road, hitchhiking to the ocean, but found myself back in the hostel, paying for another night.

Yes, "found myself", I think this is the most apt description of any activity I undertake. I find myself walking on the dusty road, people looking back or signaling to me from their cars, I find myself trying to give birth to Spanish, which is somewhere inside me, I am sure, I just have to push harder, try better. I find myself twirling a staff above my head staring into a sky of stars - doing the exercises Keith taught me in Alaska. "Do you practice?" He asks me in his every e-mail. And "Yes I do!" is what I want to be able to answer my teacher.

I find myself in church, admiring its vaulted ceilings, old paintings, talking to Renato - an Italian I met, who left his homeland to travel around Latin America for six monthes. I find myself asking if he would like to hitchhike instead of taking buses. Nope! - of course not! I find myself thinking if I was crazy to do this - reflecting the reactions I sometimes get when I mention how I am travelling.

Later that day I found myself in the company of Hiroyuki - a Japanese guy who took me out to try some Oaxacan specialty - chicken in chocolate sauce (!!!) and other foods. We strolled down the narrow streets in several markets, stopped to try one nice treat after the other. Ahh, and after my Spanish struggles, Japanse felt like balsam for the wounds, like water for the thirsty, like a cup of hot tea after a long walk in the rain - yes, it indeed felt great to speak Japanese again!

Besides, Nakazono Hiroyuki is quite a special story himself. Five years ago, at 27, the lad walked the road of Santiago de Compostella in Spain for three monthes, later worked for a year in Brazil and now he is volunteering in Honduras teaching youth about HIV.

"Come, hitchhike with me!" I tell Hiroyuki and he does not look at me as if I was crazy, but promises to think about it. It is a Japanese way of saying No. I meet Hiroyuki for breakfast where he gives me three walnuts, no, two - he decides to keep one. And then he gives me an envelope - a letter is what I am sure it is, but am wrong what I discover later.

"People helped me out a lot when I was on the road" Hiroyuki told me before we parted ways. He leaves, I open the envelope, and find 200 pesos.

So where to now?
I do not know, Puerto Angel?

It seems I am knitting a pattern in the carpet of the earth, which goes from one ocean to the other. The day before I left Canada, I dived into the Atlantic. So now I feel like going to the Pacific?

I am trying to reason here, but to tell the truth, for a very long time already I do not feel my mind is creating this journey for me.