One of the first questions people ask me when they hear about my travels is “Is it safe”. And my answer to them is “for the most part, yes”. I do admit there are many facets to their question such as: is it safe to bike through Mexico, is it safe to travel alone as a woman, is it safe to camp in the woods with bears, etc. Each version of the question has merit, but none of them should discourage a person from doing what they desire and for me that is bicycle touring. I won’t lie, the world is a dangerous place filled with many things that can harm a person physically, mentally, or both. But the world is also full of good and joy and the kindness of our fellow humans that in my experience far outweighs the bad.
The version of the question I probably got asked the most when in the United States was if I would be safe in Mexico. So many people from the United States have such a negative view on this country from the headline news about the drug cartels and from lack of understanding. My time here in Mexico has been one amazing experience after another. While when I have been on main roads often there isn’t a shoulder to speak of to ride on but as a whole the drivers give me more space when passing than almost any car passing me in the US or Canada. I think this is the case because unlike in the US roads in Mexico are not seen as solely the domain of motor vehicles and find many people bicycling, pushing carts, or walking along the road so the drivers are more accustomed to safely navigating around them accordingly. This also leads to a different attitude towards cyclists on the road and I have never felt the animosity that many in the US have towards bicyclists while in Mexico. On numerous occasions while biking in the US I had drivers honk their horns at me, swerve onto the shoulder to nearly clip me with their mirror, yell obscenities, and even stop to yell at me for taking up valuable road space and inconveniencing them and making their trip take longer while I wasn’t even in the freaking lane! The only times drivers in Mexico have stopped me on the road were to give me water or Gatorade or to ask me about my trip and never to yell at me to get out of their way.
I also get asked often from people if it’s safe to travel via bicycle alone as a woman. Women by far have more to fear in the world than men, we get sexually assaulted and raped significantly more. And sadly staying home is not the right way to protect yourself from that since you are statistically more likely to be raped by someone you know in your home than by a stranger. There have been times on this trip where I have feared for my personal safety, worrying that I was about to be sexually assaulted or raped and thankfully I have only had one of those experiences so far on this journey. I had just left Yosemite National Park in California and was staying in the woods near a town like thirty or fifty kilometers from the entrance. I was hanging out at a picnic area cooking dinner when this guy who was likely high on meth approached me verbally harassing me with lewd remarks about my body and asking if I wanted to pleasure him. Sadly I was in no position to just pack up my dinner since I was still in the process of cooking it so I just kept telling him “no” and ignoring most other comments and gestures. When he asked me if I was staying here I told him no again and he kept asking questions about where I was staying. After I ate my dinner incredibly quickly I waited around for him to vacate so I could leave and not worry about him following me which took a long time since he parked his truck at the parking lot entrance for over an hour and just sat there drinking beer in the cab of his truck while I hid behind a dumpster in hopes that he would assume I already left without him seeing me. Eventually he did leave and I quickly biked away with all my lights off out of the town and found a different place to sleep that night. That is an experience I never had when I still presented as male. Does that experience dissuade me from stealth camping or even traveling by bike alone? Absolutely not! Sadly I see it as a small price to pay for the best adventure of my life so far. I wish we lived in a world without rampant sexual violence against women and people in general. No one should be be subjected to that. But if we waited for that world to exist no woman would ever travel.
Wildlife is always a concern when camping and one must learn the best ways to protect yourself from them while in the backcountry. One last ditch way to protect myself is my bear mace/spray, I have only pulled it out on a few occasions and only once removed the final safety measure that prevents you from pressing the trigger. But the best way to protect yourself is preventative: eating and cooking downwind of camp and stashing your smelly stuff elsewhere downwind, also making noise when traveling to not sneak up on and startle animals is an excellent way to help prevent attacks from wild animals. On a few occasions I was singing terribly out loud when turning blind corners in the woods only to come face to face with other travelers which made all of us crack up laughing and my lovely singing voice. Once I moved farther south in to deserts and jungles in Mexico I am now taking precautions from little critters by bringing into my tent each night my shoes to prevent sticking my feet in and getting bitten or stung by something perhaps venomous. Those of you who know me probably know that I sometimes take some extra risks that a normal person would generally avoid; when I was hiking down a path towards another set of Mayan ruins in the jungle in Cobá I heard this hissing from a crocodile in the swamp nearby. At the time I hadn’t seen a crocodile in the wild so I turned off the trail in the direction of the sound looking for my crocodile friend. Sadly I never found it which was probably good for my personal safety; sometimes I wonder how I have managed to make it this long in life.
While some of these dangers are would be easily avoidable if I traveled via different means or not at all that’s not the life I want to lead. If we only did things that were entirely safe and devoid of risks many of the greatest human accomplishments would not have been attempted. We grow a more as people when we face adversity, and how we deal with it is part of what helps define us as a person. When something goes wrong when I am climbing, backpacking, biking, or really with anything people will often hear me say “it builds character”. While that saying definitely has it’s limits, what can’t be limited is the human curiosity and the desire to go out and explore the world in search of those answers not in disregard of the risks but in spite of them.