Hitchhiking in Mexico Part 1: Breaking out of Backpacker’s Purgatory

When you've been ignoring the call to adventure for too long, the first step is always a bit tricky

Sep 01, 2023

Hello! Welcome back to The Mundane Exotic, a monthly newsletter of travel stories, essays, and explorations of the odd in the everyday. As always, thanks for inviting me into your inbox (I like what you’ve done with the place, btw).

Today’s post is a travel story about hitch-hiking in Mexico. In 2014, a friend and I raised our thumbs, took rides from strangers, and zig-zagged around the country for 1,800 miles or so. Along the way, we met some fantastic people, evaded some questionable people, and visited everything from a surreal sculpture garden in the jungle to a ghost town in the desert.

Below is part 1 of a multi-part series recounting that adventure in the style of a 90s text adventure game. I hope you enjoy 🇲🇽

M.M. McGuire

For the past month or so, you’ve kept a leisurely schedule that’s incredibly strict. In the morning, you sip coffee and chat with guests; in the afternoon, it’s reading books and swinging in hammocks; and in the evening, you drink, banter, and dance atop a dinner table at midnight (allegedly).

Although demanding at times, you power through. Not only that, but you see it as a kind of duty. In a world obsessed with aims, you stand up for aimlessness—for the benefit of long, languid days spent chatting, reading, drinking, and watching the rain.

Someone’s gotta do it, right?

Who better than an aimless 20-something with a little money and a lotta time? You’re joined in that aimless mission by a ragtag band of backpackers working at the same hostel in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.

Everything is great … for a while.

It takes about a month for the shine to wear off this joy ride.

You begin to suspect there’s more to travel than drinking, working, and drinking while working. Was that really why you came to Guatemala, or are you trapped in some kind of backpacker’s purgatory, trading work for room and board?

Increasingly, it’s feeling like the latter—you’re a lingering tourist, not an intrepid traveler.

There’s no difficulty, no “travail” in what you do. The few adventures you’ve had—hiking the Indian Nose mountain in San Juan La Laguna or seeing Maximon in Santiago Atitlán—fall far short of Jack Kerouac crisscrossing the U.S. or Bruce Chatwin wandering the Australian outback.

You yearn for something more travel-ey.

Plus, the other lingering tourists you made friends with are leaving, and their leaving creates an absence. You feel like a stranger—the stream of new faces is less exciting than it once was. Now, it’s a humdrum recycling of the same tired talk.

What’s your name?

Where you from?

How long you been here?

How long you been from where you’re from?

You’re losing your ability to effectively recycle these questions. Luckily, you just met S.1, a Canadian backpacker who hates (in a polite Canadian way) such questions. Plus, she’s stuck, just like you. She came to Guatemala for a writing gig, but that gig fell through when it became apparent her Boomer boss was more interested in leering at her physical body than reading her body of work.

So, she left. And now, she’s stuck. But she’s stuck with time, funds, and a desire to write and travel. All told, not a bad way to be stuck. Her delayed dreams and your lingering lostness complement each other. After days of tequila-fueled discussions, the two of you hatch a plan. You’re going to travel around Latin America looking for “weird shit” (the technical term for an off-the-beaten path adventure).

After a brief side-mission to Belize, you settle on the mode and location of your adventure: hitch-hiking in Mexico.

After crossing the border from Belize to Mexico, you search the town of Chetumal for the best spot to hitch a ride.

You fail.

As the daily downpour begins, you settle for a budget hotel with a broken fan whirring overhead. Sweat pours down your body while you sleep.

The next morning, you gobble down a backpacker’s classic—a slice of bread, a dollop of peanut butter, and a ripe mango—and look for an empty road.

You’re ready for round two.

Round two fails.

“Chetumal’s just not a good town for hitchhiking,” you say. “It’s too … Chetumal-ey.”

“Palenque will be better,” S. agrees.

Whether or not any of this is true, you like the excuse. It’s the town, not us, you think as you walk to the bus station on a mission for the earliest ticket out.

It’s barely 10 a.m. The earliest ticket is 10 p.m.

With many hours to kill and the sun sending a steady stream of sweat down your crack, you go for the only air-conditioned option around: the mall.

You’re not proud of it. So you sit outside to inhale your Bob Esponja Oreos. You feel defiant, but it still isn’t the kind of “weird experience” you had in mind when concocting a mad plan to hitchhike around Mexico.

Five Oreos in, you think about it in a new light. It is a bit weird. What the hell is Spongebob doing in Mexico? You thought the life and times of that yellow sponge were confined to U.S. TV. Yet here he is—crossing borders, speaking Spanish, and advertising an (admittedly delicious) package of Oreos.

You realize that “finding the weird” is not only about going off the beaten track. It’s a mental game too. You can travel to weird places, but you can also bring a weird mindset to wherever you are. Wandering around the mall, you do just that—marveling at the oddness of Mexican candy, hot sauce on potato chips, and nipple brushes, which are apparently a thing.

After a few hours, the sun drops in the west and you head for the bus.

“Palenque!” the driver shouts as everyone piles on board.

Settling down, you drape a hoodie over your legs for protection against the arctic AC. Eight hours later, you awake from a deep slumber to the same sound—“Palenque!”

You buy a bag of fresh tortillas and avocados for breakfast, then head to the city’s ancient ruins. For the rest of the morning, you explore the crumbling hallways and hollow rooms of the time-worn structures, watching water droplets slither down the lichen-covered walls.

As the heat and humidity grows, you leave the ancient ruins for a modern gas station, forking over a few pesos for a big bottle of water. You gulp some down, strap on your tattered backpack, and head for the road.

At the bottom of a gentle hill on Highway 199, you try hitch-hiking for the third time—walking backwards, thumb raised, smile pinned back.

The first car zips by. So does the second.

Should you hold a sign? you wonder. Should you smile or look stoic—which one’s less serial killer-ey?

An SUV zips by.

Then slows down.

Then pulls over.

Then stops.

Heart pounding, you run over to the window.

“Where are you going?” the driver asks.

“Ocosingo.”

“Get in.”