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December 2003

Oaxaca City, Mexico

Happy Holidays! It’s a merry time here in Oaxaca, where we are gearing up for the famous Festival of Radishes tonight. I’ve expended quite a bit of time and terrible Spanglish trying to learn the meaning of this beloved tradition, but the only information I have gleaned is that there will be “really big radishes.” I have to admit I am intrigued…

I arrived in Mexico City three weeks ago, too sleep-deprived to navigate the notorious chaos, and hopped on a direct bus to Puebla, a fairly low-key city along my planned route. On the bus to Oaxaca the next day, I met Victor, a young oaxaqueno who has been living in Houston and was en route to visit his family. We chatted for most of the 4-1/2 hour trip, and I accepted his offer of a ride from the bus station with his uncle, whom he planned to call upon arrival in Oaxaca. Our bus got in around 6 p.m., and since I had neither reservations nor any idea where I would be sleeping, I was anxious to get settled. Although my Spanish was (and still is, unfortunately,) minimal, I gathered from eavesdropping on the phone call that Victor had not bothered to tell his relatives in advance that he was coming back to stay with them indefinitely. When he got off the phone, he was all smiles. 

“My aunt says it’s fine for you to stay with us,” he announced, “they have a spare bedroom and it’s only 5 minutes to the center of town.”  I agreed – warily – to go with him to his aunt and uncle’s house and meet them, and check it out. After a 30-minute cab ride through heavy traffic, the driver left us at the end of a dirt alley populated by raggedy, snarling dogs. I knew we were somewhere near the airport, and so felt vaguely secure that (with a big stick in hand,) I could walk back to the main road and hail another taxi, should the situation prove disagreeable in any way. 

While Victor’s family may have been surprised to see him after two years, they were infinitely more surprised that he appeared with a gringa from California. Aside from Victor, none of the Pachecos – an aunt, uncle, and four young cousins – spoke any English. Still, they were incredibly hospitable. When Uncle Simon finally arrived around 9 p.m., he piled all eight of us into his pickup and we went out for dinner at their favorite comedor. Sitting on the curb eating tlayudas (sort of like oaxacan pizza) and drinking warm azole con leche (tastes like runny corn pudding) with a bunch of complete strangers was a great re-introduction to Oaxaca. After dinner, Uncle Simon drove us up to the radio tower on the hill to see the view of the city – a classic night out with the out-of-town visitor, in any city. 

Back at the house, they set me up in the spare room, which was actually a separate building across the courtyard. The Pachecos live in a standard, lower middle-class Mexican home of poured concrete with a corrugated tin roof. After locating an extra blanket and removing a gargantuan spider from my bedroom, we all went off to bed. 

I spent one more night with them before moving into a room at the Instituto Cultural, where I had decided to take some language classes. The kids really warmed up to me on the second night, and since they didn’t have to get up for school in the morning we stayed up late and struggled through several funny conversations…lots of charades involved. The Pachecos very kindly offered to let me stay as long as I liked, but I really couldn’t see myself “camping” in a cold-water cement room for much longer and knew it would be a hassle to get to my class every morning from way across town. Plus, Victor was clearly developing a crush and couldn’t let me out of his sight for two seconds – time to move on! I took some photos of the kids and promised to mail them to the family, along with their requested gift, a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Going back to school was a strange adjustment. For two weeks, my days were packed with classes:  grammar, conversation, and my favorite class, salsa dancing. Although we took a break from 1 p.m. to 4 every day, I found that wasn’t really much time to get anything else done, considering the slow pace of life here and the fact that everyone else knocks off for siesta from 2 to 4. The school is in a beautiful old mansion surrounded by gardens, and my posada was just two blocks away. I dropped into the middle of the term, and it was a struggle to keep up even in the beginner-level class. I met a myriad of interesting people at school and had an immediate set of playmates to explore the city with at night, when we weren’t too exhausted from straining to speak Spanglish all day. 

Our fantastic salsa teacher, Roberto, has thighs of steel and was clearly born to dance. The rest of us knocked into each other and laughed a lot. I met a couple of pals in salsa class who became regular partners in crime:  Martin, a Swiss train operator and his roommate Keith, who became my regular salsa partner. Keith, aka el vaquero, had driven down from New Mexico in his truck, so on the weekend the three of us piled in and took off for Teotitlan, the famous rug-weaving village. We arrived late in the afternoon, when all the tourists were gone and most of the weavers had already quit work for the day. We milled around for a couple of hours, admiring their amazing creations. Sort of made me wish I had a floor… 

On the way out of town, Keith suddenly remembered an old church nearby that he wanted to find again, and we barreled off along an unlit dirt road in the twilight. We found the 15^th century church closed for reconstruction, but as this is Mexico and you are welcome to risk your life any time you like, a worker let us in to look around. The church is being painstakingly restored using traditional methods, which involve hand making each adobe brick, and cooking up some kind of natural limestone mortar that takes months to reach the exact right temperature. As it was now completely dark, we of course chose the most questionable dirt road leading out of town. From the looks of it, a car hadn’t traveled it in a very long time. This suspicion was confirmed when the only other vehicle we passed in the night was an ox-drawn cart. Eventually, our path met up with the highway and we were on our way back to Oaxaca city. 

After two full weeks of classes and an unexpected cold snap, I was eager to get out of the city and hit the beach for the weekend. Problem was, air tickets to the coast had suddenly doubled in price and as we all know, winding mountain roads on a bus are a guaranteed source of sadness for me. In a perfect coincidence, el vaquero was leaving for Acapulco the same weekend, and offered to drive me and another classmate to Puerto Escondido. We set off on what may have been the world’s best road trip:  out of the city through a kaleidoscope of desert colors, over the mountains, through untouched traditional villages and finally dropping down to the sea – just in time to jump into the Pacific, watch the sun set at Zipolite and then feast on fresh fish at a plastic table stuck in the sand.

My return trip to Oaxaca on Monday, via express Suburban, was less superlative. Although I took every possible precaution to avoid motion sickness, stocking up on Dramamine and carefully staking out a spot in the van where I could put my head down for the roughest part of the ride, it all fell apart in the first hour when a woman in front of me vomited onto the floor. The driver barely turned his head, grunted, opened his window all the way, and kept hauling along the curves at 80 kph. Needless to say, after 5-1/2 hours of that, I returned to Oaxaca a little worse for the wear. Fortunately, I met up with my good friends from Santa Cruz, who set me up with a comfy bed and hot shower, and by the time we finished our splendid dinner at a café overlooking the zocalo, the trauma was long forgotten.

Plans for the rest of the holiday week include eating, shopping, sleeping, and enjoying the many local festivities, including the radish thing. Oh, and I’m sure I’ll squeeze in a salsa session or two!

Hope your holidays are equally joyful…and many warm wishes for the New Year!

(c) 2003, Laurie Weed. All rights reserved.