A while
since my last blog, I know. I’ve been
too busy riding bloody buses and squeezing a little shopping in between. At least that’s how it feels. Left Antigua on Monday at 4am (!) to make
Guatemala City in time for the Dorado bus to Tapachula, Mexico. The gorgeous scenery is almost enough to keep
my mind off the artic temperatures inside the bus. I layer on every piece of clothing I have
with me and huddle up to enjoy the show as the vista unrolls outside the window
– miles of jungle, banana plantations, smoking volcanoes, the works. We
stop at a road-side restaurant for breakfast looking, no doubt, quite strange
in our crazy mismatched layers of polar fleece and wooly hats given the scorching
heat of the morning. Arrive Tapachula
around 1pm and my plans for a quick tour of the city evaporate in the mid-day
heat as I realize there is no way to store or check-in luggage at the bus station. Instead, and almost as good, I sit in the bus
station café for 5 hours before, finally, it is time to board the night bus to
Oaxaca.
It has been
a long day and as I board the ADO bus I am desperately hoping to sleep for most
of the 12 hour trip. It is not to be. Blasts of frigid air kept me relentlessly
alert. I fall, from sheer exhaustion,
into a cramped uncomfortable sleep only to be roughly woken by a demanding
voice and a flashlight beam. These two
events will repeat, in a strange and cruel cycle, five times over the course of
the night. Four times my bleary eyes
open (reluctantly) to the unfriendly face of a Mexican army officer requesting
my passport (further shining of flashlight in face as he makes a lengthy
comparison to the passport photo which, as luck would have it, doesn’t look
much like me anymore). The fifth time
they open to a tiny but no less intimidating Mexican woman furiously shaking a bin
bag in my face and shouting “Basura! Basura!”
(as much as I fumbled desperately around my seat I was unable to find any
rubbish with which to appease her and she shoots me a look of contempt before
marching back down the aisle).
On one occasion (I don’t know what time but in
the dark dead of night) army officers board the bus and walk down the aisle herding
us off. Sleep-dopey and light-blinded we
stagger off the bus and into the harsh glare of spot-lights. Military officers with machine guns observe
from truck beds and form a gauntlet through which we must pass as they wave us
to the back of the bus. I struggle to
come fully awake and make sense of the commands being barked to me in Spanish. I can’t see beyond the glare of the spotlights
but it is none-the-less apparent we are on a dark and lonely stretch of
highway. At the open door of the luggage compartment I’m
asked to identify my bags. For a split second my gut twists with fear,
sure that something in my luggage has the potential to send me directly to a
Mexican prison. Then my rational brain kicks
in (breathe, they did not set up this roadblock to check how many jade pendants
you bought in Antigua). We take our
bags, carry them across the highway.
Wait in line. Pass them through a
mobile x-ray machine. Get the all-clear
from the observing officer (slight chin-lift and machine-gun muzzle-tilt to
indicate I should move on). Return to
the bus. Stow the bags. Board the bus. Is that all?
Bit of an anti-climax really. I fall
asleep again.
Wake, disoriented, with
the sense that something is not as it should be. The bus is not moving and bright light filters
through the curtains. Did we arrive? Is
it morning? I look out window. It is still the dead of night. We appear to be parked in a bus maintenance
yard in the middle of no-where. Two men have
the bus jacked up and are removing the wheels.
What the?? Bus driver is leaning
against a stack of tires. Loooking on and casually smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t appear concerned and I don’t really
want to know. I go back to sleep. Wake to a cold foggy dawn as the bus pulls
into Oaxaca. Stumble down the steps
feeling pretty ordinary: tired cold hungry dirty. 6:30 is too early to go to the posada so I huddle
miserably in the bus station having a cup of tea. Looking (as a kind Dutch woman at the posada
later informed me) like a homeless person on drugs.
The
reception at Casa del Sol doesn’t open till 8am, but at 7:15 relieving my
discomfort becomes more important than prolonging the sleep of people who
have just spent a warm and cozy night in a nice bed. So I grab a taxi and get set to hammer on the
door until someone opens up. Thankfully
I arrive at the same time as a trio of lovely German girls who have also arrived
early. I let them do the knocking and just
give Guillermo an apologetic shrug as he opens the door. Guillermo
has my room ready. I really want to hug
him but am afraid it may appear overly (and perhaps inappropriately) emotional so just take the key and go silently to that
blessed sanctuary. I need a recovery program. I take a long hot shower and spend 45 minutes under
the covers watching an episode of Downton Abbey on my laptop. I re-emerge to the sun and flower-filled courtyard
where the breakfast table is laid out. I
am immediately enfolded into the chatter of the other guests. They are filled with happy anticipation of
their day in Oaxaca and so, I realize, am I.
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| Smoking volcanoe! view from the bus window. |
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| View from the bus window |
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| Oaxaca city street scene |
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