This is a big drive – 9.5 hours 600km roadie so we are splitting the journey up again by overnighting in Juchitan, the midway point of the journey.
The road was good, up and down the mountains we traversed, Rosie couldn’t believe how high we actually were in San Cristobel. The Mexican plains were laid out below us and the clouds just above us. The further down we travelled the hotter it got…when we finally arrived in Juchitan the temp was back to the familiar 36c.
As we were approaching the city The Operator pondered on all of the piles of rubble that lined the roadside. There were continual lines of it dumped on the side of the road. We couldn’t work out why they were there for or what purpose they served.
We knew the history of the city and didn’t click until we arrived in town….and saw the decimated houses, buildings. Some still with these exact same piles of rubble still sitting in piles, just swept off the roadside.
Hold on, we were in the car stopped at an intersection. The Operator looks at Rosie and says,’do you feel that?’….the car was swaying and jigging….no, said Rosie, it cant be….oh yes it is said the Operator, welcome to Juchitan. When The Operator looked it up online later…sure enough at that exact time a 5.2 earthquake had struck. Oh,dnerve wracking times ahead for Rosie and The Operator.
Let us fill you in… on September the 7th 2017 an 8.1 magnitude earthquake, the biggest to have struck Mexico in the last 100 years decimated the region. It destroyed one third of Juchitan and killed 36 people. Rosie knew this when she booked the accommodation…online it said the town was OK and open for business. Well, to be honest the town still looked pretty much like an active disaster zone.
Rebuilding was being carried out on every single street, so many buildings were shored up into a standing position and were still being lived in or worked out of.
Buildings which had half fallen down, like the City Hall were still standing there in a half collapsed state.
The busy market was across the road from the damaged town hall, hundreds of people shopping and with stalls in the drop zone if the rest of the building decided go too.
Our hotel, The Hotel Central, was freshly plastered and painted bright blue in the middle of town. But the courtyard still had rubble in it and the hotels neighbors were still empty and being rebuilt. The concerning thing was that there was no emergency evacuation procedures on what to do or where to go if there was another quake…..and no one in this town spoke English.
We were hungry after our drive and it was recommended to us that we dine at the local restaurant La Inter. We walked up the street. Pretty much with our mouths open not believing how devastated this town was. The restaurant was newly painted and perfect, surrounded by the cracked and wonky. The air con inside was bliss, so we made ourselves comfy and had an tea there.
During our meal the earth started to shake….Rosie and The Operator looked at each other, thinking yep, we are feeling that. We stayed in our seats, we didnt really think anything of it….what surprised Rosie was the level of panic from the locals…the locals had lived through this big one, they were not going to hang around, they were looking at each other and getting up out of their chairs to go out side. The waiter then put his hands up and told everyone not to panic…they were using some form of heavy duty ground compacter next door and it wasn’t an earthquake….it took a wee bit of convincing some of them to return to their tables. Wow, it makes you realise what a trauma they have lived through and what they may have lost.
We walked around town after dinner and visited the local market, it resembled a shanty town.
It used to be housed in the porticoes behind the market but they were deemed unsafe. Stalls were buried in tight labyrinths with plastic sheeting overhead to try to create shade and keep the market cool for the shoppers…it was failing on both fronts.
It was like an oven in there and the flies…Rosie had never seen so many in her life. She had to try to not look disgusted by the smell and the sights of a crawling black carpet on the meat and fish. Every stall holder had a fly swat and were trying, to no avail to keep the flies off their wares.
My covert ‘shooting from the hip’ photos make it look better than what it was…the heat, the stench the disgustingness. I have never seen anything, anywhere like it in my life, yet shoppers were shopping nonchantly and with a sense of urgency and normalcy, they didnt look concerned in any way.
Its going to be a long road to recovery for this town. But Yes, it is open for business and they certainly do need your business to recover. Glad we stopped there and did a small bit to help.
The second part of our journey was to Oaxaca, once again we started climbing, the terrain dramatically changed along the way with the ground getting dryer and rockier, the jungle and grazing fields disappeared in favor of tall cactus and fields of blue agave. We drive along the winding climbing road and out of nowhere this tiny chapel flashes past us. We turn around and it is like a mirage, this tiny, beautifully chapel situated in the woods on the roadside looking out over this amazing vista. It just took our breathe away…and made Rosie want to go to the loo.
Theres one back here in the woods said The Operator, well blow me down, a new toilet block with its own water supply and a bucket to flush it. No paper goes down the drains in Mexico…it all gets binned as the ancient plumbing cant cope with paper…Rosie always carries a roll in the car and there was even a bin bag to put your used paper in.
Walking back to the car past the chapel in the beautifully filtered light of the trees overhead, listening to the birdsong…..Rosie hears a clip clop, clip clop….a man and a donkey laden with firewood walk past on the empty road.
Get out of here…this location is just getting a bit surreal. Not a further 2 km up the road The Operator said he just passed a turtle crossing the road. We are miles from the sea, we cant see any bodies of water…this day is just getting weirder.
After driving past dozens of Mezcal distilleries on the roadside enroute we finally arrive in Oaxaca The Old Town Centro is full of narrow cobblestone one way streets.
Our Navigation tells us to turn up an immpossable narrow lane and we can’t, it is closed to traffic as roadworkers are relaying the surface. Round the block we go waiting for a recalculation…its not happening. Rosie tries to intervene to save the day, but this is why one of the rules of our holidays is ‘thou must always have satellite navigation’.
Rosie doesn’t get maps, cannot convey directions to The Operators liking or standard of clarity and normally ends in a big argument. Hence why I would rather some other ladies dulcet tones in the Operators ear telling him where to go. See, Rosie knew this would happen, we have an argument and The Operator still manages to still drive like a crazy Mexican local and self navigate.
We arrive and there is no free roadside parking for a mile within the Hotel we are staying at and they do not offer parking. Round the block we go…looking for a paid parking building. The Operator walks away from one…too expensive and this is one Mexican who was not willing to negotiate even though his carpark is empty.
Round the block we go…zig zagging through the one way streets. We find another parking building about 50 metres away from our hotel and this guy is a bit more receptive. Job done, he wanted to keep our keys as collateral and in case he had to move the car….okay….by that time anything was good. We wheeled our cases along the bumpy footpath and checked into our Hotel.
Time to find a happy hour, which of course we did very easily in this town. Tomorrow we will show you around this beautiful town, Oaxaca, The Cultural Capital of Mexico.
