I venture to summarize what I see. “So, we don’t take a tour? We’re our own guides?”
“Well, yes. We call the airlines and get the cheapest flight.”
“And book a hotel?”
“Well, if you want one for the first night.”
“For the first night? And after that?”
“We look around. We don’t travel to have comfort . . . we can have comfort at home. And we don’t travel to meet Americans. We can meet Americans at home. Besides, hotel prices are cheaper on-site.”
That was putting it mildly. Arriving at the Mexico City airport, we spot a crowd of travelers huddling around a newspaper stand. The English-language newspaper has a full banner headline: “Peso Drastically Devalued.” A fellow tourist explains that our dollar has just skyrocketed in Mexico; any hotel of our dreams is within reach.
Clearly the hostel-like lodging we reserved can be replaced, but there are other ways to save a peso. Rudy recalls reading about the colectivo taxis. Consulting his portable Spanish dictionary, and with some linguistic help from two porters and one policeman, he selects a weathered colectivo already packed with three other tourists (“Think of how cheap this will be”), jams our cases into the trunk (“See why we pack small?”), and asks the driver to take us to a “muy bueno” hotel.
“A very muy bueno hotel.”
This is the fastest taxi ride I have ever experienced and surely with the most sincere of tour guides. While I am in the backseat, trying to ascertain which passenger lap I should land on, Rudy sits in front with the driver, rolls down his window, and all along the route points out key monuments and their historic significance. The driver, enthused by Rudy’s interest, gestures proudly to highlights of his own, barely bothering to hold the steering wheel or note the traffic swirling around us. Our fellow passengers are mute. As we pull up to the luxurious hotel beside the entrance to Chapultepec Park, I say a short prayer of thanks and Rudy turns to me, grinning. “Isn’t it lucky I’m bilingual?”
That night we take a long walk through the elegant neighborhood of our muy bueno hotel. Massive strands of Christmas lights are strung across each intersection, like multiple jeweled necklaces. Either a life-size nativity scene or a live Santa Claus sits on every corner, backdrops for annual pictures of children dressed in lacy holiday finery.
Shortly, I become distracted from the holiday traditions. “Look, look at those store windows—Cartier and Gucci are slashing prices.”
Rudy is uninterested. Looking in all directions, he says, “There ought to be street stands around here somewhere. You cannot believe the bargains I’ve gotten in Tijuana and Juarez.”
I persist: “And over there, there’s Burberry and Bulgari. The big designers are all here. With the peso devalued, those prices are a third of what we’d pay in the States.”
He also persists: “You have to get off the main shopping drag to find the real Mexican clothes.”
Luxury stores don’t attract Rudy. He has eyes only for street merchants and their wares, hungry for the bargain. After one very long, dramatic exchange in which Rudy uses his best Spanish to negotiate a serape for me and huaraches for himself, I hear the merchant ask his companion, in English, “What language was that man speaking, anyway?”
The next morning, after checking to be certain that breakfast is included in our room rate, Rudy invites me to eat in the opulent dining room. I have never before had breakfast served on fine china and under chandeliers, with tuxedoed waiters hovering and my fellow diners looking as if they had not passed up the luxury stores last night.
Rudy’s linguistic skills get us through a quick menu reading, and plates of huevos rancheros arrive successfully. Emboldened, Rudy—in his Spanish—asks the waiter where he can find the men’s room. The waiter hesitates, looking puzzled before he says, “En el parque … en Chapultepec.” A few more rounds ensue of Rudy and the waiter both looking confused and repeating the Q and A, with the waiter finally pointing out the large window toward the adjacent park. In an attempt to be even more explicit, he bobs up and down with both fists closed and says something close to “giddyup.” This waiter looks for all the world like someone riding a horse.
Rudy’s blue eyes open even wider than usual. He furtively consults his Spanish dictionary: “Horse! Caballo! Say, that could sound like caballeros. Maybe I haven’t perfected my accent yet.”
As he returns from the caballeros, the men’s room, located quite conveniently in the restaurant, he encounters the smiling faces of the other waiters as they all bob up and down, fists closed, as in a horse race.
WE fill our days with excursions on local buses or in the colectivos to museums, galleries, the park, and the Zocala. Rudy insists on capping off each day’s touring with a leisurely ride on a local bus, returning home with the tired workers of the city. The strategy is simple: choose a different bus each afternoon to discover neighborhoods no tour group would find, ride to the end of its line, then stay on the bus and ride back to the city with the driver. Lesson learned: make sure it is not the very last route of the day. The last route of the day ends in a dark, deserted bus yard twenty miles from the city center.
In the evenings, we stroll with families in the colorful squares, listening to mariachis and admiring young ones’ dress clothes and shiny new patent shoes. In each place, Rudy’s advance work helps us find the treasures we know await us, like the Diego Rivera murals, as well as the treasures we do not know are waiting, like the tiny boy who sits for hours cross-legged on the floor of the Museo de Anthropologica, sketching the diorama that commemorates his country’s War of Independence.
We have one more sight on our touring list—the grand Pyramids outside the city. They are a distance away and time is running short, so Rudy compromises his rules and agrees with me that we should join a daylong group tour. Good thing we did. How else could we have found the souvenir shop run by our guide’s second cousin by marriage, or the beer-drinking burro out back of the Pyramids? (Note to the curious: the burro approaches a standing, open bottle of Dos Equis, grasps it in his mouth, throws back his head, and gulps.) It’s memorable.
At the end of the week, when it is time for us to leave the hotel, we pay a shockingly low bill at the hotel desk, then turn and make our way toward the front door. Some members of the restaurant staff stand on either side of the doorway, forming a kind of honor guard before they break into grins, close their fists, bob up and down, and say adios to their amigo, their buen amigo.
CHAPTER THREE
I AM A RELUCTANT LEARNER, BUT I AM LEARNING. FOR example, public buses can lead to the public’s treasures. We spend the week before Easter in Oaxaca, a magnificent colonial city in the center of Mexico, staying in a hacienda-style inn high in the hills above the main square.
I have done research at the hotel desk and summarize for Rudy:
“There are two ways to get down to the Zocala, the main plaza. There’s one taxi that’s recommended, and really reasonable, and one taxi that’s not so recommended and a little cheaper. Really, they are almost the same price and you can guess which is truly the better deal.”
“Sure, I can guess . . . right out front there’s a bus stop.”
Our fellow passengers smile or nod as we board the battered bus, making room for us to sit amongst woven bags of produce and crates of poultry. I position myself between lettuce and potatoes, carefully avoiding beaks of roosters that protrude from crates at my feet. Rudy starts a mostly hand-gestures conversation with the people around him.
“Want restaurant, authéntico restaurant.” And emphatically: “No turista.”
I add an idea, “Turista okay, enchiladas buenos.”
Rudy clarifies, “Muy authéntico restaurant, buenos enchiladas.”
Ideas abound and disagreements ensue as our companions argue for their favorite places, some owned by cousins, some not. At last there is a consensus and one of the men gestures to me that he needs a pen and paper. He draws a map, carefully depicting the bus, the bus
stop in the square, and small feet leading in a path to our authéntico restaurant.
Thirty minutes later we get off the coughing bus right at town center, returning the waves of our fellow passengers and brushing a few chicken feathers from our coats. We begin following the little map, but before we have gone more than a few steps, I look up and spot two elegant restaurants perched above the beautiful colonial square, each with a romantic wrought-iron balcony covered with mounds and mounds of purple and red bougainvillea. I am sure I hear soft guitars in the background and smell buenos enchiladas being cooked for me.
“Look at those restaurants, Rude—what wonderful views of the churches and plaza.” I don’t mention the tour buses I see parked along the side streets, or the fact that four out of five patrons going in the front door have an American guidebook tucked under their arms.
“But the map shows authéntico just blocks away, and we have evaluation criteria for restaurants. We’ve agreed on those,” Rudy says.
It is true we have agreed on the evaluation checklist, but that was before I saw the bougainvillea.
Footsteps on the map lead to the recommended taquería. The small, simple restaurant clearly meets criteria: a crowded local favorite, at least two blocks off town center, Spanish menus only, no view, no tour buses or American guidebooks in sight.
We take the last seats available at a long table. It is a fine dinner—buenos enchiladas for me, carnitas tacos for Rudy. He beams, as the cerveza is the cheapest he has ever drunk and the communal table is giving him a chance to practice his bilingual skills. For the most part that is going well. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer puzzled looks as either Rudy’s Spanish or the cerveza improves.
We finish our meal about the same time as the other diners, noticing that the restaurant is gradually getting quiet. Conversations that earlier had been lively and high-pitched are now subdued, nearly still. Then almost as one, the diners begin to rise in silence from their tables, going to the door in what looks like a kind of procession. It is, we remember now, Holy Thursday, and we find ourselves welcomed by our tablemates to join them. We hesitate. We are not in Oaxaca for religious services. We are here because our school vacation is this week. We are, in short, imposters.
But there is no refusing the sincerity of our new friends, so we add to a stream of what becomes hundreds of the faithful, moving toward the plaza, lighting candles against the full-moon night, humming hymns of familiar melody if not words. We progress from the cathedral to smaller churches, moving up the central aisle of each, falling to our knees for a few moments, rising, lighting small vigil candles, and moving on to the next sanctuary.
Once in the midst of the fervent crowd, it is physically and emotionally impossible for us to leave until the last of seven churches has been visited and the pilgrimage dissolves. When that time comes, some hours having passed, we arrive back in the plaza. I look up to see tourists in the two restaurants above us leaning out over the balconies. They are straining to see, to understand what has happened on the streets below. I see what they had missed. They had missed the bus.
CHAPTER FOUR
I AM LOOKING INTO THE EYES OF A GOAT. THE ANIMAL stands high upon the tall rocky mountain, between even taller trees, staring at the little airplane struggling through the narrow passage. I am in that plane.
There is a lesson to be learned here: ask Rudy for more detail when he says, “This route is famous for spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime scenery.”
I could have stayed a good portion of my lifetime in colonial Oaxaca. We take day trips with friendly drivers to Zapotec heritage sites, Mitla, Monte Alban, and Indian markets. On Good Friday, we stand in the Zocala watching the slow, perfectly soundless procession, men laboring under heavy crosses through the streets. On Easter Sunday, we watch the square transform into a joyous parade ground of children in starched dresses and suits, their laughter mixing with a chorus of church bells ringing across the city.
But I note the restlessness growing in Rudy. He is prowling brochure stands and windows of travel agencies, scanning for information about the coast that lies nearly two hundred miles away. Judging from what he reads, the small town Puerto Escondido offers the perfect combination of beautiful scenery, low prices, and few if any tourists. He has heard the siren call familiar to all frugal explorers and is ready to move on.
“Nobody recommends we drive ourselves through the mountain range, but there’s a bus and a plane to Puerto Escondido,” he says. “I’ve talked to a lot of people and it sounds like the bus may not be so good. It takes eight or nine hours and the roads are mostly one-way, winding and steep. But they do say the drivers honk on blind curves . . .’’
I vote for the plane ride, trusting that if not safer it would at least be over sooner. Rudy could not be more pleased, and that alarms me. We will fly in a vintage World War II craft.
“What an honor, honey, to ride in the DC-3. That plane was our workhorse in the war. We owe it so much.”
We are unable to get reservations for the mid-morning flight, but apparently that is not because the flight is so popular. “Just be there,” the hotel clerk tells us, “and see if it goes today.”
At the strip of land that has been designated the city airport, a veteran plane sits in a tin-roofed hangar. It does not look as if it will be going far today: engine parts are scattered on the ground all around the vintage craft, and two workers are deep in consultation.
“It looks like today is maintenance day,” Rudy says.
“Well, yes. I bet most days are.”
As we pick up our suitcases and search for a ride to the bus station, one of the engine repairmen shows us a second, very small plane, just a little larger than a crop duster. I have been blessed in multiple churches and lit votive lights throughout the town this Holy Week. I should be prepared for this flight, but my faith is challenged when my seat in the second row with the suitcases has a temperamental seat belt.
Before takeoff, the little plane roars and roars as it taxies past the mute DC-3. There is some kind of coming-of-age ritual going on here between these two. But after the roars, it sputters.
“Nothing to worry about,” Rudy says. “Oaxaca is at 5,000 feet and it’s hard for any plane to lift off from here.”
Small comfort. We rise slowly, very slowly, with every part of our craft rattling or groaning, beginning a flight that will take us at tree and goat level through narrow, rugged passages of the Sierra del Sur mountain range to the coast. I am thrown about in my small space, hanging on to the window frame and suitcase beside me. Breathe in, 1 . . . exhale . . . 2 . . . inhale . . . 3 . . .
Now if I can just make myself open my eyes, I might see that spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime scenery. But when I do pry one eye open, I see large metal parts in a canyon below. Clearly remnants of the early-morning flight. There is no use attempting to share my innermost thoughts with Rudy; the engine noise covers any communication.
Miraculously, after two long hours, our little plane bounces into Puerto Escondido, coming to rest on an unpaved strip of land.
There is a second lesson to be learned from this trip: beware of tourist brochures that have wet ink and make promises such as, “You can be first to discover this paradise,” or “Enjoy a hidden fishing village,” or “Share the secrets of surfers.”
A worker at the landing offers us a ride to the hotel Rudy has reserved, but when we reach the rather remote address, our driver scratches his head in confusion, looks again at the reservation form, then shrugs his shoulders and lifts our suitcases up to the porch of a seaside bungalow. Our gracious hostess gestures for us to sit in petite rattan chairs while she fetches us soft drinks, then points out two hammocks that line either side of the porch before beckoning us to follow her down a short hallway. Once inside, she shows us a small, obviously shared bathroom, then turns and takes us back to the porch.
In his unique mix of languages, Rudy asks her to show us our room and our bed. It is her turn to now look puzzled, as she
points again to the two hammocks with woolen blankets and mosquito nets adorning them. A lot of understanding passes wordlessly between Rudy and me—it is growing late and dark, we are exhausted enough to sleep anywhere, and we have no car. We will find something else in the morning, but in the meantime, we need two pillows.
I do not usually spend time in a hammock and am unprepared for how responsive it is to movement. My every toss or turn tumbles me out, landing me on the mat below. About halfway through the long night, I decide to stay on the mat and entertain myself until sunrise with the sounds of birds, insects, and Rudy’s snoring.
The birds get louder, and at the very first glimmer of day I waken Rudy. Just as at home, he insists he has not had a moment of sleep all night and that he has not snored. We walk toward town, searching for breakfast, a bed, and a room. Fishermen are already dragging small boats up to the crescent-shaped shore, untangling brightly colored nets and holding aloft the catches of the day. The village is quiet and beautiful, just as advertised. We are beginning to think the port might be too authentic, too lacking in traveler comforts, when like a mirage we spot a few tourists at the end of the crescent shore, eating bountiful breakfasts in a beachfront, open-air, colorfully tiled restaurant. Our path runs in front of the diners, close enough that we can see onto their plates. Rudy spots an entire grilled red snapper hanging off the sides of one earthenware platter.
“Huachinango, that guy has a whole huachinango,” he says, picking up his pace and heading into the restaurant. “I bet it came right out of a fisherman’s net this morning.”
Our waitress Alicia knows enough English to assure Rudy his personal huachinango was netted within the hour and, better yet, the restaurant is part of a small hotel. Her husband Carlos will drive us back to our hammocks to retrieve luggage; room 15, complete with a bed, is ours. Rudy barely looks at the charming room.
Rudy's Rules for Travel Page 2
