It’s Friday night, R and I are done work and decide we should get a car and disappear for the weekend. Oaxaca City has grown on us but is still not quite what we were looking for.

A cursory (very cursory compared to how I usually research like a crazy person) search reveals there are some neat ruins from the Zapotec Empire a couple hours south-east, towards Guatemala, and also reveals a rental car is $25 so we book it and head to bed.

Saturday morning at the car rental we are informed we cannot have the car because the radio doesn’t work, we assure him we do not care and that we hate music in all forms, we are then informed that we cannot have the car for two more hours because it is dirty, we assure him we could not care less. He tells us “No, it is REALLY dirty” we go out front and see a very sad looking, shaggy and sagging Chevy that is absolutely CAKED in dirt from top to bottom. We assure him we do not care, he demonstrates that we cannot even see out of the windows, we assure him we never look anyway. He laughs and starts wiping the window dirt clean with a rag, and another rag. The car is also very low on gas, we explain we never use gas.

ON THE ROAD! I’ve been all around the world and feel lucky about that all the time, but I have NEVER driven a car in any country other than Canada and the US. Oaxaca is only about 600,000 people but even here I struggle to make sense of the driving. I spend enough time accidentally in the segregated bus lane to qualify for a “Fuck you, I’m a bus now” t-shirt.

We head south out of town and after a while reach the Zapotec ruins of Yagul. It is hotter than I can handle so we book it to the ruins knowing the clock to my meltdown is ticking.

We have the entire site to ourselves, it is just us and the security guard, it is bliss.

A ball court!!! I’ve visited Mesoamerican ruins all over Mexico but have never seen an intact ball court before. Nearly all Mesoamerican cultures left evidence behind of playing the same sport, the ball game. Like soccer except you cannot use hands OR feet. The rubber ball had to be struck with knees, elbows, or most commonly hips. Players would run towards the ball and at the last second drop into this crab-like pose, swinging their hips wildly to strike the rubber ball.

The losing team (though some suggest it was the winning team) would be sacrificed to the gods following the match.

Just exploring Yagul for an hour was enough to overheat me so back into the car and its measly but better than nothing A/C (seriously, this dirty car is struggling, it keeps trying to stall, AC barely works, interior lights are dead, radio is dead, adventure!) and head further south to some sort of mountain top nature area our 3 minutes of research suggested.

Soooo…. Google suggested a road up the mountain but it seemed way, way out of the way, and clearly there was a road right in front of us that appeared to continue up the mountain. What would you do?

We found a tiny village and found a dear old abuela who assured us (I think? I don’t speak Spanish) that the road would take us to the mountain top. So we drove on. The car rental agreement had a typo I noticed that said we agree to not take the car on any paved roads, so I’m choosing to believe that’s the universe telling me to go offroading.

The road is intense, in a lot of ways, wow jesus wow.

We’ve been climbing and climbing and it is so hot, the Chevy sounds sickly, so I pull over every so often to give it a rest. After some time driving R inquires about our fuel level and I realize I have made a terrible mistake.

I try to ask my phone where we might find gas but it laughs at me.

It seems we’ve reached the peak and the road starts to tip down so I start coasting as much as possible o save gas, eventually finding a tiny mountain village where we pull in and start looking for gas.

Gas does not seem to exist here, we ask a few people and seem to only get more and more confused. Eventually a guy tells us to follow him and runs ahead of us, he bangs on what appears to be a random doorway and he and the owner start (I assume) discussing the stupid Gringos and gasoline. Eventually a couple jugs appear, lol and wow.

Back on the crazy mountain road, which by this time is mostly just sand and fear, and after a bit more white knuckling the road starts to improve, eventually we come to another village where the road ends at a cliff, we park the wheezing car and walk to the edge to see below.

The sheer dropoff at the edge is shocking, it appears to just go straight down all the way back to where we started.

We didn’t have proper swim gear as we had no idea this was what awaited us but we went is as far as we could, it was 100% magic.

Shortly after we arrived the sky turned dark and lightning flashed all around us while we were in the water, thunder was constant. Soon enough the sky opened up and gigantic raindrops started to soak us, the thoughts of the road we climbed to get here plus rain filled my mind with dread so we headed out. I attempted to take the better road and promptly got us lost, turned around, drove over something I should not have, and almost crashed into a gravel-pile cliff-edge dead-end, but eventually we found the “easy” road out and rode it down the far side of the mountain.

We picked a village to spend the night pretty much at random and found a hotel.

While looking for what to do on a Friday night in a tiny south Mexico town we quickly realized things close up EARLY here. Eventually we found a hamburger cart and got an amazing hot dog and amazing hamburger and directions from the chef to a supposed place where we could get a drink.

We followed the hamburgerman’s directions down a lot of ever darker streets, eventually becoming alleys, way past any level of sketch I would have followed in Mexico City, or even Oaxaca, telling myself that as this town is tiny it is safer.

Eventually we came to where he said and saw a narrow walkway off an alley, we followed it off the street, into darkness and around a corner until eventually it opened into a small open courtyard of pallets and wood benches making a bar.

I wouldn’t say we got the warmest welcome but by the time we eventually left the thaw had happened.

We managed to avoid a LOT of stray dogs, find all night pepto bismal and found our way back to the hotel through confusingly dark streets and steep hills and crashed at the Judas Motel.

Breakfast! Walked until we found an absolutely perfect spot for breakfast, just a little tin and straw tortilleria that warmly welcomed us in for stunning chorizo empanadas. We were seated with four ladies from a nearby village, Blanca, Lolita, Helena and Coco, who were exactly as their names suggest.

After breakfast we checked out and headed to the Zapotec ruins of Mitla, I love this stuff so very much, and R is so willing to take on that excitement.

Back on the road after, driving without purpose or destination.

Roadside frozen treat, this is “nieve” basically like an Italian ice, just ice and sugar and fruit.

After frozen treats we decided to head back towards Oaxaca and visit Monte Alban, the largest of the Zapotec sites. This required passing through insane Oaxaca traffic and driving again, after driving the wrong way, then in a bus lane, then almost dying in an intersection, then having 20 cars honking at me for something I still cannot fathom I saw flashing red and blue behind us and realized I was, yet again, going the wrong way on a one-way. I performed a 220 point turn on the tiny street and edged back out the way I’d driven in, waving out the window in capitulation to all the cars around the area. This was not enough for the officer however and I could interpret his increasingly agitated megaphone blarings as nothing other than orders to pull over.

We pulled over and awaited doom. It was clear there was no talking him out of the ticket and I had no interest in pushing my luck so I silently accepted the ticket and we tried to figure out how to get back to the highway, even Google Maps was so confused she eventually gave up and instructed us, literally, to make right turns until the end of time.

I turned Maps off, we winged it and eventually made it back out of town and towards the mountains.

Monte Alban is stunning, this post is way too long and I am so tired but yeah, it’s gigantic, better than any photos could tell.

I only lasted about 45 minutes, a shame considering the site has probably a dozen pyramids, but the weekend has been long and so hot.

We drove back to the car rental place and presented a staggeringly filthy car, missing a hubcap, along with the traffic ticket attached to the registration, no idea what they are going to charge me, they said they need to contact the police about the ticket first.

We walked home after the car rental, rested a bit and then headed out again, determined to add more to an amazing weekend before it ends.

First stop, the esquites guy on our corner. Esquites is the simplest, cheapest and loveliest snack. Just a cup of boiled corn, topped with chilis and mayo and lime, in a bit of broth.

For unknown reasons street cart hamburgers are super popular in Oaxaca, I don’t remember ever seeing a hamburger cart in Mexico City. Today I learned the work “todo” in Spanish, meaning “everything”. We ordered two “todo”.

Walked quite a bit after, eventually grabbed a nightcap to close a staggeringly amazing weekend.

So far the mornings here are the fav. The city smells great, the sun isn’t rending the flesh from my bones yet. Birds are going nuts. The mind-blowingly loud nightly mortar-style fireworks have mostly died down. It’s bliss.

Usually I’d have my sidekick along but last night’s explorations were of the liquid kind and she’s not really stuck her head out this morning yet.

Yesterday we dropped off laundry and the laundryman and R ganged up on me for my Spanish skills, or lack of. This morning when I walked in solo and rattled off every single Spanish word I know in one stream he could not stop laughing long enough to find my clothes for a good 3 minutes.

I wandered over to the breakfast place I love, placed the pile of laundry on the other seat and explained to the amazing staff in my shitty Spanish that it would be just me this morning as R was still in last night’s bottle.

I ordered my breakfast and ordered another to go, for R, while pointing at the empty seat. The waiter took it all down, pointed at the pile of clothes and said “Si, clean laundry gets hungry”. It was very funny.

Not a lot to say, I get up in the morning, work a couple hours, go for coffee and sometimes breakfast, work until around 4:30 and then mostly just wander, do some errands, find food and maybe a drink and am usually fast asleep before midnight (which is unusual for a lifelong insomniac).

The rooms here all face an interior courtyard and most people just leave their courtyard doors open most of the time so I’ve been doing the same. Yesterday I fell asleep for a bit and was woken to my feet being licked by a pupper who ran off as soon as I woke up.

I grabbed another nap this afternoon and this time woke up to more licking and…

I got up and moved to the dining area and was followed.

My attempts to explain to it that I’m not a dog person fell on deaf ears.

She took many days and extra flights and missed flights and broken phones and stolen sunglasses and lifesaving strangers and nights in the wrong city and still lost luggage but she’s here, so yay, fun starts now, posts might slow down a bit.

Things went epicly sideways and the kindness of strangers kept putting her back on the path, thankful tonight.

Seven hour bus ride this morning from Mexico City, south to Oaxaca. Line 1 of the subway would take me pretty much door to door from my place to the bus terminal but the supposed relaunch of line 1 on March 1st seems to have never been more than hope.

So I caved and called Uber.

Arrived at the gigantic bus station and my first test of the day, three hallways, one giant sign, the left hallway, to the East Terminal, says ADO buses among other companies, the middle hallway says nothing at all, the right hallway, to the West Terminal, says ADO: Platinum buses, among other companies.

My ticket says “ADO: Premier” sooo… which hallway would the correct choice be? Points if you guessed the unmarked middle one, which I figured out only after humping my 30lb pack all the way to both other terminals. At one point a man was calling after me “Senor! Senor!”, I figured he only wanted to laugh at me, so I ignored and kept moving.

He chased me down, and handed me back my phone I’d left behind on a bench. People here are nice.

I am pissy and hot and sore, but finally in the right place, just in time.

My pack is too big to carry-on so I take out what I need and drop it at baggage, I keep an eye on it and eventually see it loaded onto a bus. Half an hour later I am invited to board, a completely different bus. I half-heartedly try to inquire after my bag but language and all that so I decided to just go with it.

I’m in the first seat in the front row with no one beside me, I setup my stuff and settle in for the trip. I had planned my morning poorly and never got around to getting food for the trip so I had frantically ran around the terminal and found a packet of oreos, some day old mini donuts and a Coke to nourish me on the journey. We leave and fairly quickly I notice the bus displays quite a herky-jerky motion, but it’s Mexico City and traffic is insane so I think nothing of it.

Once we are out on the highway however I notice the weird motion continues, eventually I see that our dear bus driver has one foot on the gas, one on the brake and one or both pedals pressed at any given time. Even on completely open road with no cars in sight he is constantly tapping the brakes, inexplicably, eventually necessitating a tromp on the accelerator to regain lost speed. This repeats for 10 hours.

But YOU said it was a 7 hour bus ride! Yeap, I did, as it was told to me I believed it, just like subway line 1 being reopened on March 1. I am a sweet summer child, far too innocent for this world.

As we leave Mexico City behind, Mr Digital on the Pedals Bus Driver Man turns on the bus’s entertainment system. While my seat at the front precludes me having a screen from which to be entertained what I do have instead is a fully and completely blown speaker, right at my ear, that begins 10 hours of non-stop ,blown-speaker, underwater Charlie Brown teacher voice, insanely loud Telenovelas, interspersed puzzlingly, by Abu Dhabi news highlights.

The Herky-Jerky Man behind the wheel must dislike soap-operas as much as I do, as he has his own music playing, loudly, from his phone speaker, for the same ten hours, and the man loves the ’90’s.

I had earplugs and headphones and everything I could have but I will forever forward associate Mexican soap-operas with Middle Eastern local news and No Doubt’s first album.

A mother sitting further back must have noticed my attempts to block out the barrage of distortion and was nice enough to move herself, and her shrieking tw0-year old, to the formerly empty seat beside me, damn charitable of her.

The lively little tyke was well schooled in the science of distraction therapy and so attempted to keep me from focusing too much on the auditory barrage by ceaselessly kicking my leg, and lest anyone worry about the kicking itself becoming a bother, our little wonder broke up the monotony of kicks with the occasional fist or elbow to my ribs.

Mighty nice of him.

Over the next ten hours our dear bus pilot did most certainly:

• Never stop eating, not once, for the entire ten hours, he utilized a peculiar masticatory style of packing food into a cheek until it could hold no more, ala Wiarton Willie, and then working his way through until enough space was freed to begin again. Tortas, quesadillas, tacos, a beef dip, Cheetos, fruit, nuts, nothing could avoid the maw.
• Never stop waving, not once, for the entire ten hours, he utilized three unique waves: a very elegant QEII parade style hand rocking, a backhand roundhouse motion reminiscent of a frustrated father backseat bowling from the driver’s seat of the station wagon searching for purchase among his annoying offspring, and a forehand sweeping gesture as though dramatically knocking all the glassware in the house to the floor. These waves were not brought on by any oncoming traffic, they appeared to be triggered at random, perhaps by ghost cars only he could see. Often more than one of the styles of waving would be stitched together into a more poetic set of gestures, like a symphony conductor pulling everyone together to begin the charge towards the end of Mahler’s 9th.
• Never stop twitching, not once, for the entire ten hours, the man was never not in motion, a continual cycle of scratching, tweaking, touching, turning, testing, cleaning, wiping, adjusting… every possible part of his own body or any control within his reach in the bus was adjusted at least once per minute.
• Cleaned the dash, steering wheel, and anything else he could, with Armor All, every 3 hours.
• Never used his seatbelt once, I assume his twitching would not tolerate a harness.
• Never let both hands touch the wheel simultaneously, not even for a millisecond, I cannot fathom what fate would have beheld us had this event occurred but it must be an awful one for all the determination our driver put into ensuring it did not happen.
• Pulled the bus over at least three times to sorta just wander off into the field beside the road. (Remember I said the 7 hour trip took 10 hours?)
• Announced at every rest stop that we would be stopping for “cinco minutos” and only “cinco minutos” and every single time we got back on the road no less than 20 minutos later. (Remember I said the 7 hour trip took 10 hours?)

I seriously do not know what was going on with the man, and his driving decisions were often alarming for me in the front seat but he was cheerful as could be all day and got us there in one piece.

Upon arrival at the Oaxaca bus station we pulled in to see a pile of our luggage from the other bus ready and waiting for us there in the middle of a parking lot. Such a good day, honest.

Last night in Mexico City, adios to the CDMX, hasta luego to the d.f., otro dia.

Packed everything up at my place and crossed the street for a last taco meal at the place I found. Pretty sure I could live in Mexico City happily.

19.3852898, -99.1574119

Those are the coordinates I’m standing at currently.

Seven years ago I stood on this exact spot. 19.3852898, -99.1574119 Mexico City, just south of Eugenia Metro Station, it is the furthest south I’ve ever been anywhere in the world.

If I take one more step it’ll be the furthest south I’ve ever been.