I Moved To Oaxaca

Monday, July 26, 2004

Back in time, back to Tehuantepec ...

We never did make it out to either of the two moderate hotels on the highway: while driving there G spotted a posada on the main road into town, 5 de Mayo. We stopped to take a look and even though we both knew it would be a noisy location, the people there were nice and the rooms awfully clean, so we decided to stay. And I mean, clean! No tv, but it was too hot to stay in the room so we sat on the walkway outside the rooms and read. And the bed, get this -- real sheets! None of that 60-threadcount shit, and nice pillows, too. Next time I'm in Tehuantepec -- likely, as we both liked the town -- I'll bring ear plugs and stay at the Posada Colonial San Fernando again, no problem.

That night it rained really hard, and we could see that Izzy's kidneys had stopped functioning. The next day, with her sleeping on the bed with the ceiling fan on high, we drove outside town to the turnoff to the Guiengola ruins. Our guidebook said to stop at the Comedor Gema and pick up a guide, but the people sitting around the comedor said, naw, there's a kid up there that can show you around, just drive up. So off we went down the dirt road into the jungle. Only because of all the rain, the road was pretty muddy and wet. But hey, Little Jumbo has all-wheel drive, right? No problem. So we went a couple of miles down the road ... until we got to a spot where water covered the road for at least a hundred yards. Trees and the road's own curves blocked our view of any farther ahead. And AWD or no, I really didn't feel like 1) getting stuck, and 2) walking back through the mud to Comedor Gema and asking for a tow. So we turned around and headed back. We also argued about what to do: stay or go. Which would be better with a cat at death's door? We eventually decided to kind of stay, and not drive helter-skelter up to Texas but take a short drive up the relatively-flat coast road to Zipolite and wait it out there.

We did some asking around and although there's no such thing as a pet crematorium in Oaxaca (if not Mexico), there are for people and folks we talked to seemed to think that it'd be no problem to cremate a cat. Well. It just may be that there is a single crematorium in the state, in Oaxaca-town, and that it is illegal to cremate animals. Which we were told when we drove back home after finding out there were no facilities in Pochutla, the nearest town to Zipolite of any size. It was another of those "gringos ask the strangest things" moments, I must say. So with Juan Carlos's approval, we buried Izzy under the fruit tree on the patio, a pretty spot, now planted with red-blooming flowers. Maybe in a day or two we'll head out again.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home