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.
Some teachers at UNSIS in Miahuatlan applied for tenure recently and three teachers from UMAR Huatulco were invited to observe their classes and review their essays. This is the place where my English teaching career began and I jumped at the chance to see the old place again.
On the day of departure, there were a few snags; nothing seasoned travellers like Caryl, William and I couldn’t handle. Thanks to Mike, we found a new –to-us suburban van service, Huatulco 2000, leaving directly from Crucecita to Oaxaca. They have about ten departures every day. The luxury bus from ADO has one 12 hour late night route once a day and taking that would have meant getting from Oaxaca early in the morning to Miahuatlan without any breakfast.
The Huatulco 2000 route is just as fast as leaving from Pochutla, one hour away. The van leaves the highway at Santa Maria Huatulco, cuts through town and climbs the scariest road I have ever been on. Teachers who use the American Headway texts are all familiar with that picture of the man walking the world’s most dangerous trail. It was a bit like that but in a van. There were places where an entire lane had collapsed from the steep mountain cliff, leaving just enough space for one vehicle and the crumbly edge remaining wasn’t reassuring at all. I doubt it would have been physically possible for a full-sized bus. William asked me to stop talking about it so I cut out commentary like “Wow. It looks like the whole section just dropped down all at once.” Instead, I reminded him that, since I had the breathtaking window seat, I would cushion his fall. Not that it would have saved him. He’d only die slower. No one gets out of a fall like that alive.
The entire trip took no more than 4 hours. We were in Miahuatlan, where UNSIS had arranged for us to stay in the best place in town, Hotel Diamante, long before nightfall. William and I had a double room with a fantastic view of Cerro Gordo. We could even see my old apartment. It’s the tall orange building behind the back of my head. I used to have a panoramic view of the town and the mountains beyond. In rainy season, I could kick my feet up on the balcony and watch distant lightning storms on the horizon every night.
One of the few changes was the decor of La Loma, our favorite restaurant. It used to be open air and some times chilly at night. They've built a glass wall around everything. It's quite cozy now. I went to bed half-wishing someone would have a birthday so fireworks would go off at 5 AM, just for the nostalgia. I was only feeling sentimental. It was a stupid wish. Well before dawn I was wishing for peace and quiet and a decent night’s sleep. Big trucks dragging heavy mufflers roared up and down the street. Pigs screamed in horror as they faced the void at the hands of a moonlighting butcher. I might have had two hours sleep total.
Luckily we scored coffee almost immediately in the morning. It was pre-sweetened but it did the trick and we had enought time left to take a quick walk through town. UNSIS provided the best hospitality. They sent a driver to pick us up at the hotel and Will and I were back at the old school where we first met. There's my old office, the first window to the right of the door. It was good to see our students were in good hands with the teachers that came after us. It's a great school and the students deserve the best. It was all over in no time. We sat in on some classes, wrote some comments, signed a few documents, made some new friends and it was time to go.
We made it back to Huatulco in time for showers and bed. It felt so good to be back here with our beautiful beaches and modern conveniences. It's so quiet at night too. Best of luck to all students and teachers from UNSIS. I enjoyed seeing the old place so much.
I woke at dawn next day. Lots of time to walk around Puerto Escondido and take that road home slowly. So here are some pretty pictures of this beach paradise. Two beaches from one vantage point. Playa Principal Playa Zicatela One more hearty breakfast at Cafecitos I took a break on the way back with a little detour at Zipolite to catch some waves. That little delay ensured I got caught in the rain. It started coming down as soon as I hit the highway. My instinct said that road was slick and I refused to take any sharp turns at more than 30 kmh. Other vehicles were more considerate than ususal and didn't tailgate or try passing on the blind turns. I pulled over whenever possible to clear the way but there were never many people behind me. After such a terrific weekend, my biggest priority was to get home alive. I didn't care if it was going to take an extra 2 hours. Not everyone made the trip intact. I was almost home again, about half a kilometer from UMAR, when I came across a road block with grim faced policemen slowing everyone down to 20. Way down over the bank lay a pickup truck. Looked like the kind that might not have seat belts. It was quite a drop. Probably broke the driver's neck. Either he went around a curve too fast or someone slid into his lane and he took the fall to avoid the crash. Same result as far as he was concerned. It's good to be alive. Drive safely
