Travel days

Oax Dec 1, 2010

Travel days
I can’t believe our luck in having Ruby and Jack living at our house while we’re away! Leaving was just too easy: we didn’t have to turn off the water heater or water softener. Saved Stuart about 5 minutes. Ruby drove us to the Raleigh airport Monday afternoon. We stopped at the rest stop to change drivers, and the car wouldn’t start. I love AAA. They sent a repair truck pretty quickly, who gave us a jump (remind me to put the jumper cables in both vehicles when we return home), and we drove on. By now, of course, we’re getting into rush hour traffic. We found a shop that sells batteries, and they put the battery in for us. Poor Ruby had to drive back across town in heavy traffic, where she was spending the night with a college friend before driving back to our house. Stuart and I had dinner that night at Carmen, the Cuban restaurant next door to the hotel. Good food!

No full body scan for us the next morning at the Ral/Dur airport. Rats. I wanted to tell about the experience. We arrived in Mexico City, to our surprise, at the new airport. They have some work to do with signage, but we followed the crowd past the many shopping opportunities and found our way to immigration. There are many sights and smells that tell me I’m in Mexico, and one is the highly polished floors everywhere. Slick as ice when wet, but so easy to clean. And so pretty. The initial smell in Mexico City, of course, is the air. Someone Important once said they didn’t want to breathe air they couldn’t see. I think it was someone who lived in Mexico City.

We arrived at our hotel, close to the bus station, about an hour later. The Hotel Faja de Oro. Strip of Gold, or Ship of Gold, depending on who you ask. The water system was closed there, and we could drink the water. I didn’t. We dumped our bags, and hit the street, eager to move after sitting for what felt like several days. The TAPO bus station is about two blocks away, up and over a very tangled and busy highway. We bought our tickets for Oaxaca, using almost all our pesos. But, we saved 50 pesos by paying in cash. We had enough money left to buy some water and papaya at the ubiquitous Mercado next door. This is a not-so-pretty part of town, there isn’t much to see or do. We were tired from inactivity, so we walked a few blocks north, and found a real Mercado. NOW I’m in Mexico! A couple of beers and dinner in the hotel restaurant (we were the only people there), and back to the room. TV? There’s a tv in here, and we watched The Duchess, with subtitles in Spanish. Good language lesson for me.

Our bus left the next morning left at 9am, and we got an ordinary desayuno (breakfast) at the bus station before boarding. The trip was uneventful, and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean, #3. In Spanish, no subtitles. I really need to work on my Spanish skills. The 6 hour trip from DF takes us past Puebla, and through many miles of farming country. I wanted to yell, “STOP!”, and get off the bus to walk through the fields to talk to the farmers and see what they are growing. One day I’ll do that. The second half of the trip is in the mountain desert, with very little traffic on the road. Beautiful and harsh country, country that makes me wonder how anyone can live there. Paths and donkeys and a few children tell me that some people scratch enough food out of the dry soil to live. Six and one half hours later, we arrived in our beautiful Oaxaca. Dan and Tere met us. They dropped us at our apartment, where we briefly saw Maria, our hostess, and then to their apartment in La Noria for dinner. We had a nice visit and a great dinner, Tere is a good cook. She served caldo de pollo, chicken soup, with hand-made tortillas, and plantains for dessert. Dan poured local Mexcal, to welcome us ‘home’.

They live in a neighborhood we are familiar with, and have admired. They walked with us as far as the Chedraui (the supermarket), where we bought breakfast milk and cereal, and walked home. It was good to walk. Tere gave us coffee, her mixture, for tomorrow. She promises she’ll introduce me to her coffee vendor at the Mercado.

Our little courtyard is so pretty, full of plants and flowers. The big grapefruit tree shades everything. Our apartment is on the ground floor, we’ve stayed on the second floor on all our previous trips. Our east/west street is bordered with Fiallo, heading south, and Xicoticotl heading north. If we walk half a block in either direction, and a bus will take us anywhere. Yes, it took me a while to figure out how to say those words, too! Fi-ah-yo. He-ko-tea-cottle. The bus system is great, but it seems that it’s easier to walk to most places we want to go. The Chedraui is not on a good bus route for us, so we walk the 10 blocks one way.