Backpacking By Bus
Eight Months On The Road
By David Rice
Backpacking By Bus
Backpacking for Eight Months On The Road
Confessions Of A Traveler

Chapter One, Africa

I live in Missouri care taking an old house in the countryside
where I tend a small garden. I live on the 100-acre farm and I
take a small rent from my house in the city.
I have always loved the hills of Springfield in late winter and
although I live comfortably in the rural house for most of the
year, at times I feel the need to travel. Since this account is a
confession of sorts, to tell you the truth, travel is more
obsession with me than need.
You Pisceans and Sagittarians will, I hope, empathize with
one born under the sign of the compass rose. I have been
around the world more than once and would love to do it
again, this time staying completely on the ground. My tale is
one of the traveler. While I neither boast nor apologize, this
is my story and for convenience rather than contrition I will
call it the confessions of a traveler.

Planting

The warm winds across the prairie in March usually start the
feeling. I will be out planting a vegetable garden and it
comes on like a soft caress at the back of my neck, the suns
warmth like the  breath of a kitten. I know, however, that
before June ends, this kitten will become a tiger that will
claw up the dust in my dooryard and scorch the grass and
garden beyond my toleration. By July, blistering heat will
smother the hills and I will long to be somewhere else. My
thoughts will be all about air conditioning and unfortunately,
my old house has none.
A hot afternoon in April had me sitting on the porch
wondering where I was going to go next. I have made many
long trips throughout the world and I know that to make an
extended trip, I would need to arrange many details. Africa
kept coming to mind as I read the guidebooks and I started
to make plans for a trip to the southern parts of Africa.

Backpacking Details

First I arranged to visit a doctor and get the needed shots.
Rabies topped the list because of the wild dogs in Africa
and it was followed by yellow fever, hepatitis, and tetanus. I
called friends and asked them to collect my mail and to look
in occasionally on the two houses for me while they
harvested my plot of onions, carrots, and corn. I needed a
new passport and ordered one right away realizing that
there could be a waiting period. After many nights through
April on the porch looking over itineraries and Lonely Planet
guidebooks, I made up my mind; I would soon be hiking in
the southern parts of Africa.   

The month of May smothered the land with sticky heat and
as May neared its end, I had made all arrangements to
leave. On the first day of June, I went to the Greyhound bus
terminal and bought a ticket.  

Backpackers Make Changes

Change rules a traveler and a traveler rules change.
Freedom is like the air that I breathe and the world seems
like my back yard. My mother must have swaddled me in a
Rand McNally bunting because a map brings me new life.
Change is part of that excitement, new places, new people,
new customs, new dress, new food, and new music. And the
freedom to change itineraries is at the heart of it all.
I leaned back in my seat on the bus watching as Missouri
sped by the window and I thought back to those nights on
the porch of the old farmhouse planning my trip to Africa. As
it turned out, I did not need the rabies shot, Africa had faded
from my plans. For the next eight months, I would take a very
long bus ride. A drastic change of plans, yes, but this is the
confession of a traveler and that is what a traveler does; a
traveler is free to change plans at any moment.

Penguins

Yes, I would leave the hot winds of Springfield behind me
and backpack for the better part of the next year but I would
not be going to Africa, I would head south instead and take
an extended trip aboard countless local and long-haul buses
on an eight-month backpacking tour of South America and I
vowed not to stop until the roads ran out.
Indeed the road did end at a dock in the southern reaches of
Tierra Del Fuego but I kept on south by boat and fulfilled the
dream of every traveler, planting my hiking boots on new turf.
No turf crunched beneath my boots on landing, however; I
found only icebergs.
Antarctica’s treasured stamp on my passport would elude
me, at the southern end of my backpacking journey, only the
penguins greeted me and they had no customs inspector.   
Backpacker
and Ardent
Traveler
David Rice
Leaves his
Home in
Missouri for
Eight Months
of
Backpacking
Through South
America
www.SoftSeatTravel.com
Backpacking Pages Index