Oaxaca Excursion

Oaxaca is a great city with excellent restaurants and lots to see and do but it´s a twelve hour bus trip from my beach town and I don't go too often. This time I needed shoes.

I found an affordable hotel right away, not too far from the bus stop. Oh look. It's the UMAR Oaxaca campus. I wonder if I've walked by it before without noticing.


This the Hotel Real Santo Domingo. I love the old colonial buildings.



Stairway leading to the roof.


Watch your step. There are a few dangling wires and cables. It's a long way down.

Watch your head. The exit on to the roof is quite low and I gave my head a hard crack on the bar.

Views from the rooftop.


Shopping gets boring quickly. I found new shoes and sneakers and put them to work right away with a walk around the town.

One less tree in the downtown zocalo since my last visit.


I don't know what people were writing but the invitation to scrawl on the temporary wall was popular.


With all of the excellent restaurants in Oaxaca, I chose to have one meal at Burger King. We don't have any fast food chains in Huatulco. That's where I ran into one of our UMAR students, preparing the finishing touches of his makeup in the bathroom. His name is Jahweh (my spelling is probably wrong) and he is hilarious. He didn't seem to repeat himself at all, just kept improvising and reacting to every little circumstance. Even in the rain, his audience stayed there in the middle of the street, to see what he would do next.

Respect for rain and potholes.

We had an impressive rainfall on the last week before vacation. Those of us who hadn’t packed a change of clothes spent a wet afternoon in the office. I hadn’t realized how intense it could be. The walkway from my apartment to the parking lot was deeper than my shoes.

It was beautiful and sunny again by next morning, only two days remaining before vacation. As is too often the case, I left for work at the last possible minute, a bad habit I picked up not long after buying the Italika. It’s always an exciting race against the clock, full speed ahead, maneuvering strategically into the fastest lanes, passing all the sensible drivers; butterflies and other insects pinging and pocking off my visor. Thank God I bought that helmet. I didn’t get far.

The rain had ripped open enormous potholes everywhere. The one that sprang out at the lip of a hill and ended my ride might as well have been an open manhole. I hit it hard at 70 kmh. I wasn’t thrown off the bike but the rear tire went kaboom. Pushing that machine off the road was a struggle. In my head I was still racing the clock. I could grab a taxi and return for it at lunch hour. Reality sank in when I glanced at my watch. I was officially late and a day’s pay was gone. There were no classes. If I had to miss a day, I couldn’t have chosen a more convenient time for me and everyone else.

The scooter had been overdue for a tune-up for at least a month. I kept putting it off because I ride that scooter every day and I never like being without it even for a short while, especially since the same (presumably) thieves who took the front wheel of my bike came back and took the seat. That problem has since been solved by putting a lock on a metal gate but closing the barn door after the fact has left me without backup transport.


Damages to local roads have been so extensive that repairs are still underway and probably will be for quite some time. Remember that when driving around Huatulco and surrounding areas. Keep your eyes open.