Oaxaca . . . At Last

Mexico City to Oaxaca is about 460 kilometers by bus. After a leisurely breakfast featuring good strong coffee and bacon scrambled into the eggs--without even asking for it--we checked out of the Hotel Isabel and made our way down the busy streets to the nearest subway station.  Two blocks from our hotel we came on a side street that was completely torn up from one end to the other.  The concussive staccato of the huge Caterpillar jackhammer spilled out from between buildings.  This was our jackhammer from the night before, all night, on and off as crews worked to make a mess and then clean it up before making more mess.

We found the train station no problem and figured our direction from the route maps.  Each stop has a corresponding picture, so we got on at Isabel de Catolico with the picture of the duck and rode past the cake, the apple, the horse (I think) and got off at the image of the train in order to catch our bus.  At ten forty in the morning we were able to by tickets for the eleven o'clock autobus to Oaxaca.  We thought it would take between five and six hours.  Once on the bus we learned it would run about six and a half.  An hour into the ride, and still pretty much in the heart of Mexico City due to traffic and construction, we started to wonder how long it would really take, and when we might be able to stop for lunch.  Lucky for us coffee drinkers there was a bathroom on the bus.

The buses are a pretty nice affair, which is good because they're not very cheap.  Most of the first class buses ($36, Mexico City to Oaxaca) have a toilet on board and a dvd system, and the seats recline.  When the monitors dropped for a movie while we were still in the city I thought it would be a welcome break from creeping and standing in traffic.  After several slow kilometers of signage and graffiti the colors of Mexico City began to blur together.  Garish green, bright orange, washed-out pink.  Spray paint covers every available surface.  The handful of empty walls are newly coated in white or gray or green, but it's likely only a matter of days until they are tagged all over again.  I'm watching the artwork and the city go by while nine lanes of traffic are slowly being strangled into one single-file southbound passageway.  It was incredible to see the trestles and spans erected by work crews, but maddening to see it from the seat of the bus.  During the delays vendors came out between the lanes selling Coca-Cola, bottled water, fruit, tortas, windshield wiper blades, rubber hosing, screwdriver sets, emergency flashers, gorditas, water filters, nutritional regimens, racing gloves and stuffed animals.  Finally, after an hour, we get through the bottleneck and begin to gain ground. 

The movie showing on this route is "The Dark" with Sean Bean and Maria Bella.  Instead of playing in English with Spanish subtitles the soundtrack is dubbed.  Which is pretty funny when you consider Sean Bean is an Irishman.  The sonorous baritone of his new Latino voice was incongruous for the entire ninety minutes of the movie, which I watched intermittently while the countryside went by.  The problem with the movie system is that everybody on the bus has to listen to it whether you want to watch or not.  For the first movie it was alright, but by the third I was pretty much out of my gourd.  The trip was taking forever, there were incredible construction delays, and by three in the afternoon there was no indication that we would stop for anything more than five minutes at a convenience stand.  Jenna and I felt like neophytes for having gotten on the bus without sandwiches.  Vendors approached the bus and I bought a tamale, which was good and filling but badly misshapen due to the gnarly, knuckled end of a chicken leg inside the corncake.   

Oaxaca finally came into view twenty minutes into the fifth movie.  I'm not kidding.  In fairness, though, Adam Sandler is still very funny en Espanol.  The ride took so long we even got to see a dubbed version of "The Planet's Funniest Animals," which is when I pretty much wanted to start crying.  The mountain scenery was beautiful but I couldn't escape the soundtrack piped over the PA system.  Our driver was cautious, which is a good thing on the narrower stretches of road, and I never actually wished we were on a dangerous third world chicken bus but I would not have minded picking up the pace a little bit.  These coaches actually have governors on that sound an alarm when the driver passes a certain preset speed.  The gentleman next to me leaned over and started on about how long we'd been on the bus.  I got that it was normally a five hour trip but the traffic and construction were awful.  He also said we were twenty minutes from the bus depot, which was music to my ears.  I grinned and nodded and did the stupid American thing--pretend to understand perfectly without understanding much at all, and he let it drop.  Later he would lean over an say to me, in excellent English, that he recommended the Hotel Real Santo Domingo, and that if we wanted to take a tour of the old church we should do so in the morning, early, when it's quiet before the tourists come out.   

The bus ride took eight hours but we got here.  I had a nice mole dinner and now we're in a clean room with hot water and a wireless internet connection.  I can't really complain, although I do still feel a little like I'm in the jouncing bus on the mountain roads.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  We felt a tremor beneath us shortly after sitting down to dinner in the zocalo.  First I thought it was a piece of heavy equipment coming down the road, but then it kept up, and we tilted just a little with the earth.  My first time.   

Thanks for reading.  More on Oaxaca very soon. 

Tags: Oaxaca