After we left Mexico City, it seemed like we had a hard week. We had kind of a rushed visit in the capital, and just seemed to have lots of annoying problems the next few days.
We first headed to Tepotzlan, which I had read in the Lonely Planet is “one weekend trip...that rarely disappoints”. That’s what I get for listening to Lonely Planet. They weren’t wrong exactly, but it kind of glossed over a lot of the travel difficulties and it didn’t mention at all that there is effectively no real budget accommodations in the town. So after a day switching buses we arrive and ask around for a cheap hotel, and are being told the cheapest thing in town is 400 pesos and most hotels in the 700-900 pesos range. We’ve never paid more than 250 a night, and so these really weren’t options. Then we tried to get a bus out to the next city over, but all the next buses were full and the ticket salesman didn’t seem overly keen on helping us out. So we wound up chatting with a taxi driver who said he knew a place that was 250 a night and so we went with him, but it turned out the price was 300 and we declined. So another chat with the taxi driver that all we wanted was barato (cheap) and it was really okay if it had a shared bathroom and no tv, and he took us to a no-name hacienda where we found a room for 200 pesos which we exhaustedly took. We would have stayed another night, but the next day (a Saturday) he wanted 250 so we packed our bags and left.
The town was really pretty, I have to admit. Some neat little boutique shops, a nice market, and beautiful craggly mountains in the background. Apparently the main tourist attraction is a picturesque pyramid on top of a cliff, but we didn’t make it up to see it. We did stop at one of the many lovely restraints and treated ourselves to a queso fundidio, a kind of Mexican fondue made with queso Chihuahua – something I hadn’t known existed. (Later, we found a block of queso Chihuahua and at least I found that one to be pretty bland as a table cheese. But it made wonderfully stringy fondue!) We really enjoyed the atmosphere there and knew that it would be at its best and brightest on the weekend, but it was just too expensive.
So we left the next day to head about 20 km away to Cuautla, from where we eventually planned to transfer for a bus to Oaxaca. But we weren’t in a hurry and decided to try staying the night there. We went looking for a hotel and ran into a guy we recognized from our bus who had a bum leg. We explained we were looking for someplace to stay, and he showed Petra a hotel off the main market behind a popcorn stall for I think 150 pesos a night. We check in and chat with our new friend Armando, who says he used to be a professional soccer player and was Mexico’s national team, until someone ran into his leg with their cleats and shattered his leg. We think he said he was now out scouting for new talent for the club team in Guadalajara. Anyhow, we had a really nice time hanging out with him, drinking mescal and going out to dinner, chatting about soccer and whatever else came up. It was one of those times when he didn’t speak a lot of English and we know very little Spanish, but everyone mostly understands each other and is having a good time. A lovely evening.
Until 6am the next morning when we’re awoken by a knock on our door and Armando pleading outside. The explanation was a little hazy, but after we went to bed he seems to have gone out and found a girl at a cantina to have a few drinks with, then fell over and lost his wallet. Now he had to get back to Guadalajara to get money, but needed to fly and wanted to borrow 2000 pesos. We just looked at him and told him sorry, there was just no way we could give him 2000 pesos at 6am even if we had wanted to. We mentioned having a friend send money Western Union or taking the bus, but for some reason nothing else would work. He sat for a while and told us what good friends we were, which was nice but we finally bundled him grumpily out of the room. We went back to sleep but when we got up we decided we’d had enough drama and decided to catch the bus to Oaxaca.
Which of course only left at 11:30 pm, a fact we learn once we’ve trekked our bags over to the bus station. But it wasn’t the right bus station, so we wandered around to half a dozen other “bus stations” (just little ticket offices that buses pull up next to scattered all over town) and find the right place to buy the ticket, but the bus leaves from a different station and there is absolutely no earlier bus. We’d kind of had it with hauling our luggage around town and so we sat with our backpacks in the bus station all day, watching bad American action movies dubbed into Spanish so what little plot there was remained completely elusive. It was a long, boring day with the bonus of a cramped night stuck in the very front seat of the bus to Oaxaca, the one with no leg room.
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