R & R in beautiful Oaxaca

September 11, 2023

What a wonderful rest in my frien David’s apartment here in Oaxaca. After so many nights of fireworks exploding, loud bands playing, roosters crowing, and travel companion snoring, it was amazing to have a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. Immediately I noticed the fatigue and grumbling stomach had left, but perhaps it was just that I hadn’t eaten anything. I decided to give it a whirl with yoghurt and a banana, which should be pretty easy to digest.

I decided to put a little work into uploading some lower definition and minimally edited files to a shared album for the Zocotlán friends whove been waiting and asking for more photos on Facebook. I’d like to just put them in a public photo album rather than responding to 100 friend requests.

I decided to go out for a little serpiginous walk that would end up putting me at a meeting point with an old friend Sharon Winget and her boyfriend Chucho who, by chance, would be in Oaxaca at the same time.

My current location is optiomal for walking my favorite paths, alleys and shortcuts.

My walk turned down the main pedestrian street, the Alcalá.

I continued town to the main square, or Zócalo, where I was to meet Sharon and her friend Chucho. My cell phone was not working, so I could not tell if anything was wrong when I didn’t see them. I decided to go to a restaurant that had Wi-Fi where we could message each other, and they soon arrived to join me. The restaurant was located in a large white atrium that led upwards to a skylight. Waiters were all dressed formally in black and white and one got the impression of a sophisticated place. We placed our orders and got caught up a little. I’ve not seen Sharon for 40 years when we were both interns at Christians for urban justice in Boston, and somewhat of an item at the time. Only in the last couple of years have we reconnected via Facebook. I visited her boyfriend Chucho from San Miguel de Allende last January while traveling there.

After a beautiful meal of black mole chicken and squash flower soup, I headed home for a rest. Unfortunately the rich lunch was more than I should have ordered, so back to simple diet again for me.

Later in the evening I went out for a little walk to the nearby parks that are always filled with families, skaters, skateboarders, vendors, and all manner of happy families and lovers. As was walking I came to what looked like a modernized version of an old VW bus. It was a tight squeeze to pass by, and as I did the man spoke to me . It turned out it was a French family from the Basque region who were traveling in the van for a year , from Canada to Argentina. They had just arrived in Oaxaca that day and would be heading on further tomorrow. We had a great chance over a beer. I watched the children do homework and learned about their home town, very close to where Alice and I had biked in 2017. In fact, as I was looking at their tablecloth, I noticed the red peppers that reminded me of small town, Espelette where it is their trademark, and sure enough the tablecloth was from that town, very close to this family’s home.

After a little walk through Llanos park, I called it a night and headed home.