Exploring the park in downtown Crucecita, Huatulco

I've been living in Huatulco for over 6 years and ridden past at least one of three entrances to this park every day without entering. This park has no apparent name unless its called Parque Rufino Tamayo but my tourist map says it is distinct from the public performance park across from Pemex.

Parque Rufino Tamayo

 

 

This section of Parque Rufino Tamayo is a small short cut on my way to work

 

so I've been passing this intriguing entrance almost forever

 

 

as well as the second one.

 

 

The third is on the other side by the canal.

 

Last Sunday, after years of postponements, I finally stepped inside.

 

 

 

I love the concrete slides built into the hill.  I want to ride them some day when no one else is around.  Wheee!

 



 

While not exactly a maze, there are countless trails and connections.   You could pick different routes for months.   

 

I took the first left.

 

And up.

 

 

 Keep going.

 

 

First landing.  Up or down?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several of these landings offer barbecue grilles.



 

Sadly, they don't always get the love they deserve.  Eventually, the Fonatur maintenance crew will pick the trash up but it's a big park.   

 

 

Second entrance.  Walking by this entrance on my lunch break one afternoon, pressed for time, I considered taking an experimental short cut but remembered a student telling me she had been lost inside for two hours.  I'm so glad I passed on that plan.  I would have been late for work for sure.

 

 

I've been told there are some great views of town from the higher points of the park during dry season but we've received some good rain recently and everything is green.  This was the most that could be seen.

 

 

I didn't encounter too many people on my hike.  The isolation made me feel vulnerable.  It felt like a good place to get mugged.  If you ran into the wrong person on some of these trails, there would be no witnesses so I felt a bit wary when I heard the occasional person approaching from around a bend.  

 

 

 

This is the boundary of the Cocoa industrial park.

 

 

The only dead end I came across.

 

 

 

At what is probably the highest point in the park is this interesting structure that has seen better days.

I scared a young couple coming up a different stairway as I walked the perimeter.   They startled me too so fair is fair.  They immediately turned around  for a quick retreat but settled down when they decided I didn't look threatening and smoked the reefer they'd brought to enjoy in isolation.

 

 

At least now it serves as a reminder that the park can be a haven for vagrants at night. All of my pictures turned out blurry but this video shows the place pretty well.   

 

If you can imagine what this place looked like before nature and vandals trashed it, it's clear that the original designer had big plans for a picturesque sanctuary for the community.  I like to picture it the way it was planned; bustling with carefree picnickers and joggers;  everybody carrying out their own trash at the end of a happy day, enjoying the shade, maybe holding special community events.  The cost of maintenance and security would be huge.  It would have to be patrolled by police and double at night.  This poor old bathroom is proof of that.  Just imagine if the city budget had no bottom.

 

The park is locked up at night but very easy to break into.  Friends were walking their dogs there one night and found themselves  locked in.  It wasn't a huge problem.  The dogs squeezed through some gaps  and their owners just jumped the fence.   

 

This eyesore is the worst of the place and the park is really quite beautiful and otherwise well-maintained.  I'd recommend a visit some day if you felt like breaking up the beach routine but go with friends if you plan on exploring the trails beyond the wide open entrance areas. 

 

 

 

 

 





Another Day, Another Puncture

A week ago Friday, I came out of the Oxxo convenience store at the Plaza and two taxi drivers were standing on either side of my bike where I locked it to a street sign on the corner. Odd. Their taxis were parked two spots away with the doors hanging open. They acted so casually, just hanging out, having a conversation, it looked damned suspicious. They were the worst actors, practically whistling when they saw me coming and walked back to their cabs. It must be hard to look innocent when you've been a total weasel all your life. You have no reference point.
My instinct told me they must have been up to no good but I've been teaching modal verbs of probability lately so technically I would have to say they might have been tampering with my bike. By the time the slow leak they started flattened my front tire completely, it was a "must have been" situation.
The leak was so slow I didn't bother about it over the weekend, just pumped it up every three hours as necessary. On Monday morning, I had to stop and pump it up four times on my way to work. It's a fast downhill ride to town from school so one pump up might have done the trick if the entire thing hadn't exploded with a bang that the security guards had no choice about investigating. I heard them coming and let them know it was me just in case they had their guns drawn. My 5 minute bike ride was now a 30 minute walk at the hottest time of the day.

The journey begins here. I thought I'd better carry the thing to protect the wheel and managed to draw blood with a slam to the shin with the pedal. Shins are more valuable than wheels. Even better, I took this outstanding opportunity to walk on the wide park like median with shady trees. It begins immediately after UMAR and it's the first tangible sign to travellers that they have arrived in a different, modern and well maintained, world. I always ride on the edge of the road on my way to work and this long green park always looks so inviting. People pull over to the side and have picnics here.






The green sculpture at top of the hill is the logo for Fonatur, a government agency responsible for keeping Huatulco beautiful and that's all I know about it except I pay a water bill to them every two months. Just past it is the final hill, a fast plunge into Crucecita, where you get the first small peak of the ocean.
The mechanic at the bike shop had me fixed up in five minutes. They really know their stuff there. The bike was cheaply made to begin with but every time something breaks, I leave the bike shop with a stronger bike than I started with. I took a look at the old tube. I don't know if the mechanic noticed the source with the exploded rubber ripped right up the seam being so obvious but I checked out the nozzle and sure enough, there was a nice slit just beneath the nozzle where the taxi drivers had jammed a small knife through the gap by the nozzle and slit a hole right underneath. The beauty of a cut like that is that it can't be patched. The tube is trashed forever. Whether the mechanic saw what I did or not, the tube he gave me has a protective nut at the nozzle's base to prevent sabotage. Maybe he did.
Trying to turn a bad day into a good one, I decided to visit Al's restaurant for lunch. Al is a proctor here at UMAR and he runs a great little restaurant in Sector U2 near Mike and Rowena. The reviews are good and I've been meaning to look for it for some time. I couldn't find it so i tried to get out of U2 and ended up getting lost. I followed the canal road looking for an exit but there was nothing but dead ends. I saw a highway overhead at one point and figured I could get to it if I went cross country through the woods but it had a bridge so it wasn't the right one. This was the road to Salina Cruz. All I could do was backtrack before I was late for work.


I found Al's restaurant the next day. Mike drew me a map. It was excellent. Good restaurants are a bit sparse in this town. Most charge tourist prices and the portions are small. Not at Al's. He calls them tacos but he serves huge things like burritos on fresh homemade tortillas that he fills with the specials of the day like "pollo tinga" "mole" or "calamari". Ten pesos each, less than a dollar, and two will carry you through the day. I felt like I'd stepped back into real Mexico again. I call it Al's restaurant but it doesn't have a name. Take the main drag into U2 by the ADO station, pass the market, cross the canal bridge with the pink railing and look for the place in this picture.


What a difference a day makes. We still haven't seen a lot of rain this season. It must have been a strong breeze that knocked this big branch down overnight.


People had to wonder why the drivers did that to my bike when I told them the story. Lots of potential answers. Number one: they were miserable guys with litytle conscience. It could have been a racist thing; revenge for telling them off one day when they cut me off on the road (that happens a lot around here unless the traffic cop is around and then everyone starts acting like human life really does mean something to them; boredom; or they thought I would call for a cab as soon as my tire was flat, thereby earning a whole twenty pesos. All of these come under one umbrella; they were jerks. To people like that, others just don't count. If i could have proved it, I would have called the cops but I couldn't. I wouldn't even recognize them again. Very average looking young guys.
Ah well. had a great walk through the park and I found Al's restaurant. In your face, taxi drivers.