Oaxaca is one of my favorite places in Mexico. It’s the state I’ve been to the most. It’s famous for Mezcal, mole, and woven textiles. It’s beautiful. It’s filled with beaches that have soft white sand and warm water. The place I go to most often is Puerto Escondido. It has an off the beaten path vibe but touristy enough to get reliable wifi at the coffee shops.
It’s usually pretty sleepy but the last time I went was during spring break. The place was packed with Mexican high school and college kids getting wasted on the beach and in the dance clubs but I was surprised that I saw almost no foreigners. Because I’m not a planner, I waited until the last minute to buy my bus tickets to come back home and was annoyed to discover that there were no direct tickets left due to said partiers.
So I booked one with a transfer in Pinotepa National to leave Sunday night and arrive in Mexico City Monday morning. What I didn’t realize until I had arrived in Pinotepa and was looking for my transfer is that I am an idiot and the second half of my journey was for 24 hours later. At this point it was 11pm, everything was full, and there were no more buses leaving until the next day.
You would think that as someone who likes to travel alone and cheaply to remote destinations, I would be easy going, roll with the punches, and calmly navigate changes and unexpected situations. But you would be wrong. I am not carefree and I am a cryer. I cry for little things and big things, when I am upset and when I am happy. Basically, I cry a lot. So when the guy behind the ticket counter told me there was no alternative to staying the night in this unknown town, I was only able to make it to the curb to wait for a taxi until I started sobbing hysterically.
Another thing about Oaxaca is that it is extremely poor. The data is limited and unreliable, but estimates range from 20% to over 70% of residents live in extreme poverty, lacking access to basic human needs. There is a lot of narco activity in Oaxaca, and because I had landed in this place unexpectedly, I didn’t know if I this town was safe. A small woman came up to me and timidly asked me if I was ok. As someone who I later confirmed had led a hard life, the depth of which I could never begin to understand, I’m sure she thought something actually terrible and not mildly inconveniencing had occurred.
I told her, yes I’m fine but for some reason, despite my high school drama career, she was unconvinced. The man from the ticket counter came out and explained what had happened. She said that no taxis were coming at this time of night, but she had friends coming to pick her up and they could give me a ride to a hotel. He told her to take me to the nice hotels on the highway, not to the ones in the center of town. The woman was in her 50s and seemed genuinely concerned, plus I had no other options, so I went with it.
A family arrived to pick us up and my strange appearance was once again explained on my behalf. In the car, the convincing began. These hotels are very expensive, and you will be alone, why don’t you stay with us? We’re Christians. You are going to be so sad. You will have to check out, what will you do all day tomorrow? You will have to pay for two nights. I thought about it. If I went to the hotel, I knew exactly what my day was going to look like. I would go to sleep. If the wifi was good enough, I would work in the morning. I would exercise, and then I would watch tv. I would feel really stupid for making the mistake with my bus ticket. And if I went with them? I had no idea.
I decided to lean into the skid and take them up on their offer. The woman who had approached me was a pastor. We stopped at her friend’s house and my Pinotepa National origin story was conveyed once again. “Y el hermano me dijo que esta muchacha tiene una tristeza en su corazón.” And I sat there wondering, who the hell’s the brother? There was a woman there with a heart condition from another town that the church was helping get medical treatment. She asked me if I was a Christian and I told her yes. No one believed me.
We left and the mother of the family told me that I would stay with the pastor, the family had a house but because she has two sons, the neighbors would gossip if I slept there. The pastor was renting a small room with a concrete floor. She had a bed, a tv, and stacks of Salvation Army boxes to give out for Día de Los Niños. We got water from the well on the property and I took a bath by squatting over a hole in the ground and using a bucket to pour water over me. I slept on the ground and worried about my stuff getting stolen while I was sleeping.
In the morning we walked to the family’s house and ate breakfast. The family had a store that they ran out of the side of the house. We talked about the work the pastor was doing there. She told me that she works with children whose parent are alcoholics. She stopped working with organizations because she was tired of the corruption. I went with the pastor to visit her mother. On the way, I asked her why she had chosen such difficult work. She told me that her mother was an alcoholic and it made her life very hard when she was younger.
We arrived and her mother was sitting in a chair. The house was made of concrete and the upstairs was unfinished. There was hardly any furniture. Her mother was a frail and intense woman with one eye and a cane. She didn’t seem surprised by my tagging along and didn’t ask what I was doing there. I got the impression that she was used to seeing the pastor with strays. The pastor talked with her brother about what their mother had been eating and the medication that she was and wasn’t taking.
We left and I was invited to go to the public pool with one of the sons of the family and the woman with the heart condition. I tried to avoid the sun and watched teenagers run around. I told them I had heard recently that free divers train to hold their breath for 10 minutes or even longer. We had a contest to see who could hold their breath the longest and I lost every time. They asked me why I have tattoos and told me that the only women who have tattoos in Pinotepa work in bars. I met someone that asked me if I was Mexican and then told me he had never spoken to a foreigner before.
We went back to the family’s house and they showed me how to eat mangos without a knife. The woman with the heart condition played guitar and they sang worship songs in a passionate harmony that reverberated through the house.
I went back to get my things from the pastor’s house and she asked me if I was Christian. I told her yes. and she said, “No, no tu familia, tu.” I said yes and we looked at each other and she still didn’t believe me. The family took me back to the bus station, told me to be careful, and left.
Leave a Reply