Inspiring Travelers: Ron from Guatemala

Right now I am doing my very best to not freeze to death here in Estonia. As I write this, I am also working the night shift at the hostel I stay at. One of my favorite things about working in a hostel is the wide variety of cultures I encounter in one day. I love hearing or reading stories that inspire me to travel. I always have my eye on a map or on hte horizon, and it doesn't take much to motivate me, but i still love hearing travel stories. I meet so many awesome travelers on the road, or in the hostels, that I thought I would share some of their great stories. One such person is Ron from Guatemal. He is a pretty dedicated traveler, who also writes a travel blog www.nomadicforever.blogspot.com. For my first of many interviews, he agreed to help me out.

Inspiring Travelers: Ron from Guatemala decides to change his life into one big adventure on the road.

 So tell us about yourself.

Ron-
I'm from Guatemala and I am one of the few long term travels that I know from my country, because we don't really have a traveling culture. We don't really go on gap years, just safe, short holidays, because for them traveling is a big expense, and most people can't imagine it being possible to travel with little money, and would rather use their hard earned money for cars or toys, worldly things. I learned early that somethings are more important than social status, and I'm the proof that one can travel with little money. One day i decided i didn't want a regular life, being stuck in a office for my whole life, so i told my parents i was going to go travel, and i left a week later. I figured i would be gone for that long, but that was 3 years and 3 months ago

So what have you been up to? Where have you been traveling?


Ron-
I started out busing from Guatemala to Costa Rica. From there I flew to Florida and started traveling around the east coast of the US for a month, looking for jobs. After a while I went to the west coast to meet a friend I met in Nicaragua, I was getting low on money so i was trying to find work. Not finding any, i ended up going to Mississippi to work with a relative. between working there and again in Florida, I saved some money. My goal was to make enough to get to Europe, so when i finally did i bought a one way ticket to Belgium. I was trying to travel as cheap as possible, but after 4 months i ran out of money. I didn't want to rely on family to keep me traveling, so I started finding work in hostels and picking up ways to travel with little money. long story short, I have been traveling between different jobs around Europe, central and south America ever since. I worked or volunteered in many hostels, I posed nude for an art school, I bartender, and many other things as well.

Were you affraid when you first started out?

Ron-
I wouldn't say i was afraid, more like anxious. I was ready for the next chapter in my life to start.

How do you keep on budget?

Ron-
I have a very small budget always, so I developed many secrets. I always hitchhike. while I am traveling and not working, I don't drink a lot, I never eat out, and I cook my own food. I Couchsurf a lot. Most of the expenses traveling in Europe are transportation and accommodation. I hardly ever pay for transportation, and I've never paid for accommodation yet. I've slept in bus and train stations, churches and fire departments in Latin America, in parks and where ever. not to mention Couchsurfing and working at hostels. When it comes to working, I am good at keeping in contact with people I meet, and that gets me jobs here and there sometimes. A guy I met back home got me a job here in Estonia. A guy I met, who picked me up when I was hitching from Germany to Denmark, offered me a job on his sail boat in the Baltic.

What advise or tips would you give someone who wants to travel but doesn't think they can?

Ron-
leave your comfort zone. don't make excuses just make it a priority and go for it. It's all a state of mind. If you tel yourself you can do it, you will.

Do you have a favorite spot in the world?

Ron-
no.

Least favorite?

Ron-
Maybe Bulgaria. Just because of the mean border police. It was hell. They even told me not to return. But I did meet a really hot Bulgarian girl there.

So what's next?

Ron-
Well you know this answer since we are going together, but after New Years we are going to leave Tallinn and hitch to Ireland to find work and be there for St. Paddies day. We are meeting a girl we met here in Estonia, and 3 guys you met in Australia. just another example of keeping in contact. after a few months we will probably hitch to Georgia and try to get to India from there. Hard to plan that far, but that's our plan.

Mini bus nightmare

I was in Tofo Mozambique, and after a few weeks of scuba diving, hanging out on the beach and eating lobster, I decided it was time to get on down the road. After about 30 hours of hitchhiking, and taking a few long bus journeys, I found myself in a sweltering place called Tete. I was very near the Mozambique/Malawi border, and wanted to make it before night so I didn't have to stay in this town. I finally found a mini bus going to the border and climbed in. This would be my first mini bus nightmare. Bus drivers in Africa do not leave until the whole bus is completely full, and they will not deny anyone a ride, hoping to make more money. I had experienced this before, but not to this extreme. I was seated in the first row behind the driver, which is usually the most roomy place to be, due to the little step in front of you to put your feet. This time however, this little step had four more people sitting on it, facing backwards. I was crammed up against the window, with two old ladies right in front of me, staring at me and obviously talking about me openly, then another guy crammed up against me to my left, with a kid of around eight sitting on his lap. If that wasn't enough, this kid had two live chickens in his hands, hung upside down by their legs, flapping wildly at times, beating my face with their wing, and launching feather all over the place. Then, due to there being no room for baggage, the driver opened the window I was crammed against and shoved my bag through and onto my lap. Now I was being stared at, talked about, chicken smacked, squawked at, crammed, deprived of leg room, and violated all while having a 50 lb bag on my lap, and my knees to my chest. The thing that finally did me in was when the driver put about five water bottles full of gasoline under my seat as spares. They were obviously leaking making the whole bus unbearably fumigated. Even the fact that the big sliding door would not shut , due to people hanging out of the opening and holding onto the luggage rack on the roof, didn't help air out the bus. A bus meant for ten people, now held 28 plus two chickens and a load of gas.
Finally, about an hour into the ride, when both of my legs where completely asleep, one of my sandals was missing and some guy behind me was resting his hands on my shoulders, I asked someone how much further to the border. When the answer came, and it was two more hours, I told my self I just wasn't going to make it. The very next time that the bus stopped to let someone out, I made everyone in my row get out also, to let me the hell off. When I finally disembarked the vehicle of death, I realized I was in the middle of no where, somewhere a couple hours from Malawi. I didn't give a damn. Against many protests from the driver, him telling me that there was no where to go, and I would probably die, I finally got half my money back and started walking.
When the bus finally left be, I looked around and wondered very seriously if I had made a bad mistake. As I was walking down the road, five kids around the age of 20 came running out of the jungle, clearly drunk out of their minds, wielding machetes. I had no idea what the hell they were doing and it scared me out of my mind for about a minute, seeing them running my direction with machetes, yelling and laughing. I was sure not to show my fear, and acted like I was from around those part. I walked towards one of them and extended my hand to shake his, and surprisingly to me, and I think him too, he took my hand and shook it. My actions definitely had them puzzled, and they were no longer laughing, yelling or anything, just standing in a circle around me in the street and starring in bewilderment at the crazy white boy walking down a road in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique. Eventually I just pushed one aside and started walking again, while they followed along, talking to each other in Swahili, probably trying to decide what to do about me. About a minute later I seen a truck coming, and knew I had to get on it. I practically stepped out in front of it, but it stopped. I jumped in the bed, and it took off, just as a beer bottle came hurling by my head. More rocks and bottles were flung in my direction, but I was safely on my way to the border. The funny thing was that we even passed up the bus I had been on, and they honked and waved as the crazy white boy in the back of a truck sped past.