I looked at the entry where she rode to Oaxaca with a bus load of farm workers. She wrote: "It took me an hour and half to get a free ride. I need go to Oaxaca . It's a 4 hour drive distance. Eventually A bus picked me up."
https://m.weibo.cn/u/1723208662?uid...11&lfid=1076031723208662&featurecode=20000180
I think if a bus passing through Lagunas Crossing had offered Jenny a free ride, she would probably have taken it. She was down to 40 pesos, and without a working ATM to get cash, so at that point she needed transportation that wouldn't cost her anything.
If she did decide to take a paid bus trip to Cancun, where would she board such a bus? Would she have to go to one of the major cities in order to take one of these buses?
Most people in Mexico don't have cars, they travel around to do all their shopping and visiting by commercial bus (the farm workers were in a private chartered bus, delivering them to a political rally).
There are cheap second-class buses/minivans that run from every tiny town to bigger towns, stopping along secondary roads to pick up anyone who flags them down. These cost, maybe, a dollar or two. Then there are large direct buses between major towns, the fancier the bus (A/C, reclining seats, movies) and the longer the distance, the higher the cost. Might be max $100 US, from Oaxaca to Cancun, following the most direct route, but there could be a cheaper way to do it if you had 4 days.
I remember the story of a Swedish backpacker who disappeared in Panama, he was another one who preferred to hitchhike and sleep in poor people's homes, he'd been all over Africa that way, though he was a gifted scholarship student in the US. He got into trouble by blundering into FARC rebel territory in Columbia.
"The maths student was tough and well-travelled, in his mother´s words fearless and determined. He was also unusually bright, spoke and read Chinese, was learning Arabic, French and Spanish and was set to do a PhD in statistics at UK´s Cambridge University.
He also travelled as close to local people as possible, spending as little money as possible, packing light (his rucksack weighed 2 kilos), walking long distances (often using a map and compass) and seeking lodging overnight with families he met along the way. In the kit listed on his Colombia blog he remarked that ´notably absent is a guidebook (they usually dont contain any information you cant ask the locals about!)´."
http://travelswithmitzi.blogspot.ca/2015/07/lost-in-darien-gap.html
Just saying, there are completely sane, bright, capable young people who choose to travel in a way that may seem outlandish to others. I think they're mostly trying to avoid acting like 'tourists', who all follow the same beaten path in a sometimes Disney-like fabricated environment, and be what's known as 'travellers', who deliberately seek out 'authentic' experiences of the country.
Everything Jenny did and posted about leads me to believe this is what she was doing. She rarely went to a museum or did any other sight-seeing, even to things that are very cheap or free. She was always trying to experience/live like a local.
EDITED to add, it was 2 years before the Swede's wife found out what happened to him in Colombia, and that was a bit of a miracle. She had assistance from the Red Cross/Human rights workers/missionaries who all knew the area well, which Jenny's husband doesn't have.
Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk
