This man travelled from Canada to Mexico on only public transport

This man travelled from Canada to Mexico on only public transport

William Hui William Hui's journey from Vancouver, British Columbia to Tijuana, Mexico lasted nine days

William Hui has been fascinated with public transportation for as long as he can remember. So it only made sense that the 40-year-old systems engineer would challenge himself to travel from his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, solely on public buses and trains. On 24 June, Mr Hui set out to do just that, taking a nine-day journey along the US Pacific coast. Mr Hui told the BBC he only had a few rules for his trip: absolutely no Greyhound buses or Amtrak trains were allowed, and walking between bus stops had to be kept to a minimum.

“At no point in this trip did I have to walk more than maybe 15 minutes from one bus stop to another,” he told the BBC on Friday. “It was just remarkable to see how the different services connected, especially in rural areas,” he added. This was not the first time Mr Hui set out on an unusual journey. In 2013, he tried to travel as far south from Vancouver as he could, but only made it to Salem, Oregon. “I wanted to go further, I just couldn’t because there was no transit pretty much crossing Oregon into central California,” Mr Hui said. But earlier this year, he learned of a new, four-hour bus route that links Eureka, a city in northern California, to another city named Ukiah, about two hours north of San Francisco. He called that route “the missing link”, which finally allowed him to make the journey all the way to Mexico more than a decade later. Mr Hui said a lot has changed from that initial trip, including how more public transit buses now are equipped with WiFi and accept credit or debit card payments. Some, however, still only accept cash. “I went to the currency exchange before I set out on this journey and asked for 50 $1 bills just so I had exact change,” he said. Another thing Mr Hui noted was the difference between public transport in bigger cities, like Seattle or San Francisco, and smaller rural areas, where one bus would travel several hours to link people over the span of hundreds of kilometres.

William Hui Mr Hui said he crossed the international borders by foot