My First Backpacking Trip: NYC to Mexico City

# Food, Gambling, and Tits

## Souther weddings are so awesome!

Theses are the words from my journal... I may change the way it is written on hard paper, but I can assure you that the stories are exactly the same as they happened.

I learned at a young age to keep a journal when traveling, and this one is all about my very first backpacking adventure on my own, without adult supervision!

Unfortunately, there are almost no photos from this trip.. but hey we'll get creative, use midjourney and read it like a book!

I've wanted to tell my story for a long time and the time has finally come to transfer these experiences onto the internet. And who knows, maybe you'll let me know whether these stories are worth making a book or not.

I coudln't tell you what it's like today for 20 somethings to travel the way I did, if it's safer or more dangerous, but I can tell you that it shaped the rest of my life and traveling the world became a winter ritual for me and eventually my family too!

These are the stories of my youth, stories I never want to forget. I hope you enjoy them, but most of all, I hope they inspire you.

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Jan-10-2000

It's a little passed noon and I'm just waiting for my buddy Ezekiel. We hadn't done very much at all in the last couple of day... Mostly our usual; TV, pot, monopoly, and video games.

Oh and we got ready to be in my friends wedding party!

On the 6th of January I woke up with a flu, the day of Cort's bachelor party. As the day went on I didn't feel any better, and while I gathered enough strength to the party, I only stayed a couple hours.

It was at their favorite hang out, a pool hall called Clicks. Cort's best man for the wedding, drove me home at around 10:30, I shouldn't have been out there to begin with, so I went to bed!

The boys all went to the Casino after a few games of pool and few rounds of drinks... They won some money and lost some money. It's a casino, you go there to drink and play, sometimes you get lucky and walk out with more cash in hand then you walked in with. After the casino, it was to the best titty bar in Baton Rouge, The Gold Club. You can imagine what went down, I'm sure.

So I missed a proper American bachelor party for one of my best friends!!! But hey I needed to get better, I was in a bad shape that night.

The next day I felt much better actually, sweated out the sick over night, and we were off to run a couple errands. Cort needed some last minute things for the wedding and I needed to get a few necessary items for my trip. Plus, Sandrine and Veronique had changed their departure date from Miami, so I changed my bus ticket too.

This trip through all of Latin America (in 6 months), had been planned for a while by my friends Sandrine and Veronique. It was a trip they had talked about for months and asked me to join. With perfect timing, I found myself in Louisiana for my best friend's wedding with enough time to meet my two friends in Mexico city. Veronique would leave from France to meet with Sandrine in Miami, hang out a few days and fly to Mexico where we were going to all meet to start an adventure of a life time.

In the evening, we had the wedding rehearsal and a dinner to go to (everyone was nice and fresh from the night before...). The rehearsal ceremony took place in a beautiful southern church, of which I couldn't tell you the denomination. The dinner was at a club house with a Mardi Gras theme, where we all ate delicious cajun food and drank heavily. Cort and Cortney (don't make fun of their names they are made for each other from the beginning) had to sneak out to smoke cigarettes, because her parents would freak out if they knew!

After a full evening I had to get back to the house as I wasn't feeling great again from that flu, everyone else went out to the bar. I did wake up at around 1:00 in the morning and did the dishes, watched TV and when they got home we chatted and joked around a bit... but that was it really everyone was tired.

It was time to get ready... though the wedding wasn't until the next day, we picked up our tuxedos and went to a state park to see some alligators and other swamp creatures before leaving Louisiana. We didn't see anything really wild their except birds and Cort's Father who had just gotten in town with his wife, their kids, and Cort's uncle and his family. We had a big group walking through this park... so yeah, all the wild life stayed well clear of us.

On the day of the wedding all the boys went for an easy breakfast at Crackle Barrel. Then we were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off to do al the last minute stuff for the big day and their honey moon!

It was finally that time... we were all in our tuxedos, stopped at a bar for some quick drinks and headed to the church, ready for a photo session that lasted almost 45 minutes. We all had a good buzz on, the photographer did his thing, got us (the groom's men) on film and kicked us out to make room for the bride and her bride's made.

Outside the church, before the big moment, as good citizens of Louisiana, there was a flask full of crown royal being passed around.... and just like that is was time to go inside, walk up the aisle and stand close to the alter on the groom's side.

Cort an Cortney were finally married, everyone congratulated them, everyone was happy and they lived happily every after!

The photographer was eager to take more pictures so everyone played along, but it was quick. Actually the whole wedding went fast really. The reception was also pretty short, the girls got really drunk and so di we. By 9:30pm I was sober enough and I tried to drive the bunch of us home, but the boys wanted to keep going... so we hit up the College Station first, and Gold's Club but I couldn't get in the titty bar because I had no ID, missed out again, damn it! After some Taco Bell, we headed home to pick up my license, but at that point, we decided to turn in.

After what turned out to be a great night, we had to run some errands. We planned on deep cleaning Cort and Cortney's house as a surprise present. On the way Jesse and picked up Cort's grandparents to drive them to the airport, and stopped at Cortney's parent's to drop off the tuxedos. We had a long conversation with her dad about life and other things as we ate part of the wedding cake. We said our farewell and went on to cleaning the married couple's home. That night I fell asleep in front of the TV.

This was the end of this journey for Jesse and Bridget who were heading back to Northport together, but for me it was the beginning of a whole new adventure. The next evening I stayed at by friend Ezekiel's house, my last night before flying off alone like a bird into the wild for the first time. The only difference is that I would do that by bus, from Louisiana to Mexico...

...I had no idea what was ahead of me on this journey, but the excitement began pretty quickly after I left. And you will find out in the next chapter of this blog!