Sitting in a dank, bleak Greyhound Bus Station on the wrong side of town in L.A. is an interesting sociological experience. It provides the sort of mix of people that could be politely described as the 'underbelly' of modern society.
Someone, an American, once made the allusion to me that "domestic airline travel in America is so darn cheap these days, so cheap that it doesn't make sense not to fly, and therefore if you meet folks that can't afford to fly intercity, and can only afford bus travel, you're really scraping the bottom of the socio-economic barrel". I thought that this was unfair - hey, I'm one of those folks!! The point being that the difference in cost between a flight from say Los Angeles to Phoenix (90minutes) and a bus (10 hours) is so negligible that you must really be struggling to get the cash together to just get the bus.
Los Angeles being the melting pot of cultures that it is, and the bus station being a major transport interchange hub of extended long-distance travel, based on my limited observations, I can certainly reaffirm the above allusion. There really was a heady mix of strung-out looking folks, ne'er-do-wells and hobos, foreign travelers from all points of the globe, and bedraggled punters looking like they really were down to their last cuppla bucks, splashing a pile of nickels and dimes on the cafe counter hoping they have enough for a cup of coffee. And with the dank, grimy waiting rooms, with sparse but harsh fluoro lighting splashing an eerie illumination on the place, it really wasn't a place you wanted to be for longer than was necessary...Maybe 'Da Management' have deliberately made it that way so that people don't hang around for longer than necessary.
On the up side, I did meet a young Czech couple that was in line for the same bus as me. When I'd ducked off the men’s room, I asked them to keep an eye on my bags. They had noticed on my rucksack a sew-on patch from "The Prague Drinking Team", and were interested to know if I had actually been there. An instant conversation and rapport was built up between us. I knew having those sew on patches on my bag would come to some good eventually, for other reasons than mere bragging points!
Tomas and Hana, both 20 years of age, had been on a 3month working holiday Visa, landing jobs as Amusement Park Ride Attendants in New Jersey, and had finished off that part of their USA adventure. They were now on a whistle-stop Greyhound tour of the country, and on their last few days. San Diego and Tijuana were the last stops on the West Coast before they were to endure 3days and nights solid to get back to New Jersey for flights home. I didn’t envy them.
So these guys were good value. In between short bus-quality (i.e.; not very good) snoozes, we chatted the whole four hours all the way to San Diego, comparing notes on our USA shenanigans and swapping advice, as all good travelers do. When the topic of Tijuana came up, we decided hook up and spend the day down there together. The added bonus was that the coming Thursday was my birthday, and I had planned on heading there anyway, even if it was by myself – shit man, I can make my own fun, but having a cuppla drinking buddies just makes it even better. Also, as both Tomas and Hana were under-aged in the U.S., it gave them an opportunity to show off their Czech drinking prowess, something they had been unable to do in the past 3-4 months.
Finally, the bus pulled in to the San Diego bus station – thankfully right in the middle of downtown, rather than in the dodgy back-blocks like in L.A. Time to say Goodbye again, as I had already arranged accommodation via the Couch Surfing network, but I agreed to meet the Czechs on the Thursday morn for a mad rollicking Mexican adventure…I was actually quite excited about the whole adventure.
More on that later.
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