Yesterday was an exciting day as I became reacquainted with an old travel companion.
Thirty two years ago I was trying to sort out some train schedules at the Ciudad Juarez station in northern Mexico as I wanted to travel to the southernmost state of Chiapas. I was 23 and had a couple of months to kill before I was to head off to the Peace Corps and was hungry for some adventure. I had a book called Backpacking in Mexico and Central America. I chose to do the longest and most challenging trek in the book – the trek across the Selva Lacandona – a remote, roadless and little known area right on the Guatemalan border.
It was my nature in those days to travel alone so I just assumed I’d tackle the jungle on my own. But on that first day in Mexico, I saw a gringo walk past me carrying the same backpacking guide as I had. ‘Hey gringo’ I shouted and that was how I met Hans Stricker. He was a 25-year-old Swiss who had just finished med school and was out for some adventure. By the time the train got to Mexico City, Hans and I had decided to meet a few days later in San Cristobal de las Casas to plan a joint expedition into the land of the Lacandons – the direct descendants of the Maya.
Hans and I completed the trek in nine days – nine of the most gruelling and hardest days of my life. We suffered from heat, insects and exhaustion. But the worse suffering came from our loss of direction. There was no trail beaten down by a parade of tourists. We were the first foreigners that some of the children in the villages had ever seen. We had a simple mud map and a compass and relied on finding a human being to point us in the right direction. There were days we’d wander for hours in a steaming hot milpa (corn field) looking for a trail out. We carried some food but scrounged when we could find some farmers who would sell us tortillas, beans, bananas or coffee, which was about all they ate.
These were the days before electronic devices. We didn’t have a GPS unit and we didn’t have mobile phones. When we walked into that jungle we lost our connection to the outside world. My parents only knew I was ‘somewhere in Mexico’ and probably that’s all the better as they would have worried themselves sick if they had known where I really was.
Conditions like that would test the closest of friends but even though Hans and I had just met we got along famously and never quarrelled.
We eventually made it back to San Cristobal de las Casas and spent a few days recovering. Hans then went south to Guatemala and I hitchhiked north to Southern California and then off to the Peace Corps.
I never heard from Hans again.
I revisited the journey this weekend after I went with Joseph to his Exploration Society meeting where there is always a guest speaker. After the meeting Joe said, ‘Dad, why don’t you talk about one of your adventures’. I didn’t think I’d have any adventures which would interest today’s teenagers but it still got me to thinking and I pulled out my photos and journals from the Selva Lacandona trip in 1981. Much to my joy I discovered a handwritten article I wrote about our trek which I had intended to publish in Outside magazine. In the article, I introduced Hans and gave his last name. That was all I needed to get me started and within minutes I found him on Google and found an email address.
It didn’t take long to get a response from Hans who says he frequently thinks of our adventure together and wonders whatever happened to me. Hans is now a vascular specialist at a hospital in Locarno, which is in southern Switzerland and a professor at the University of Zurich. Not all was good news though as Hans shared with me that his wife passed away three years ago. Last year he went back to San Cristobal de las Casas but the old hostel where we had planned our great trip and where we had recovered was no longer.
I am sure now that Hans and I will remain in contact till we both die as we shared together one of our lives’ greatest adventures and our friendship brings us back to those times when we were both young and adventurous.
