I had a rough night on Sunday but persevered Monday morning,
when Chris and I headed out for the first time in the city without Susan. I
knew I wasn’t feeling my best and Chris did, too, but we just couldn’t give in
to it when we knew Susan was, at that very time, preparing to leave. We had to
find some place other than her hotel for breakfast and settled on a cafe not
far from Independencia 301, where we are staying. We spread our books out
between us to plan the day. A note about travel prep: Chris and I have a guide
book on our Kindle specific to Oaxaca, a print copy of the same book and also
our Mexico book from 2010 in San Miguel. For her part, Susan had a single sheet
of paper she was using as her travel book—it was a map of the city with some
marginalia, and while we poked fun a bit, it turns out it was probably the best
map we had with the most useful information
on it. That said, after breakfast we were able to find the hub for the
Collectivo to Puerto Escondido after making only a few bad turns. Here, rather
than having a singular terminal were cabs or vans or buses head out in many
directions, each destination has its own terminal in some part of the city. We
are fortunate that the terminal for our destination is within blocks and
looking for it brought us to a more working class neighborhood that I think
Susan would have enjoyed walking about in; alas, next time.
While running errands, we made hotel reservations for the
night we return from Puerto Escondido, which will be the night before we return
home. Because they were kind to Susan and so welcoming of us when we joined her
for both breakfast in the morning and drinks in the evening, we will give Hotel
Azucena our business.
One of the requirements—really the only requirement—when we
are investigating places to rent on our trips is internet connectivity; if
there’s a pool: allthe better. Unfortunately, the wifi in our place is not
reliable and it is necessary for Chris to stand right under our caretaker’s
window in the middle of the night (sometimes in his PJs) in order to get a
signal strong enough for us to post to the blog, check our email, read the Trib
or listen to NPR. This has been a bit creepy for him, and we had gone without
these regular indulgences for six days so decided to pop into an internet café
and waste a little time reacquainting ourselves with our Twitter feeds and
trying to get some of our photos up on the blog, among other things. We headed
up towards Santo Domingo and enjoyed terrific lattes and reliable internet
service at Pan y Co.
Unfortunately, no matter the intellectual decision I made to
not give into sickness, my body demanded that I do so and, because fate isn’t
so cruel after all, the sky opened up at just the same time and it poured rain
the rest of the day driving us inside anyway.
Chris and I read our books, he played his guitar and 52000 games of
solitaire and a day later, I’m starting to feel a bit better but we’re going to
wait until morning to book our trip to Puerto Escondido just in case. There are
several ways to get to PE: by plane, by bus, by collectivo, and each have
advantages and disadvantages. Originally, I hoped to fly because I’ve never
been in a little plane and because the flight is only a half hour but the
airfare round trip for both us is about $500. The bus is like a Coach bus—quite
comfortable, safe and the last time we took one we were handed a sandwich, a
cookie and a soda as we embarked—and is only $90 but it takes 12 hours to get
to the coast. We decided to split the diff and take the collectivo which is a
16-seat van, takes six hours and is only $60. It’s much less expensive than the
flight, much faster than the bus, but the books (and everyone we’ve spoken to
about it) say that the ride makes some people physically ill so it might not be
best to begin the voyage already compromised. I’m decided right now
(intellectually) that we’re going tomorrow. Hopefully, my body and mind
connect.
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