12.8.24 Travel to Tlahuitoltepec and boxing event

I’m entering this a little late as I just found out that my hotel, La Cuarta Estacion, has wifi! This after appearing to not even having cell service yesterday.

Alice got up with me early at 445 to get to the airport for a 7 am flight to Dallas, with a quick transfer across three terminals to find my plane already loading. I grabbed a quick bottle of water and a wrap and quick got on. I hadn’t messed with the whole ‘select your seat’ thing so, of course, I was in the last seat of the plane. I sat with a Mexican grandmother and her daughter and chatted on the way. The flight to Oaxaca was pretty bumpy near Dallas, and again getting close to Oaxaca. But nothing serious.

My seat near the back of the plane turned out to be a benefit in Oaxaca as the plane just opens its front AND back doors there to get off onto the tarmac. “Nice”, I thoughtl, but then stood for 30 minutes in a line to get into the airport through customs. This is not the Oaxaca I remember from 8 years ago where you just walk in and they wave you through. Then I had to find my luggage in an overcrowded luggage pickup room After all of the bags had gone by, none of them mine, I realized that I needed to push througg the packed room to the far corner where bags had been unloaded and there was my red suitcase.

Ernesto presented himself immediately as I emerged into the main waiting area of the airport. I showed him the trick for not being robbed by excessive fees by the ATM when taking money out, and we exited the airport to walk on a very narrow and dirty road that we would walk to the car rental. On either side there were cactus and very little spce between us and the onrushing cars. Mexico is not known for safety regulations. We made it to the auto rental where a young Black woman from the states who knew no Spanish waited on us and did the walk around on the little beat up Nissan car It took a long while to document all of the scratches and dents. I tested the brakes and soon we were ready to go.

I was a little apprehensive about driving in the congested area, but it went fine. Just had to re-learn the 6th sense for detecting speed bumps so that I don’t ruin the suspension hitting them at high speed. We found a clean little lrestaurant as we were heading out of Oaxaca and had some great food. It was a clean place, very well run and gave confidence that the food was safe.

Back on the main highway we headed west, and after passing Mitla, we headed north on the new Federal highway 190, which is a little strange. In a country of heavily traveled roads, here is a new highway to nowhere which is designed at modern freewaylevels. There’s no traffic on it and it cuts deeply into the mountainous landscape. Someone’s construction business must have had a close relationship with the government.

After an hour we came to the turnout to the old highway, which was more like what I expected — narrow, winding road through the mountains with many speed bumps land potholes. I navigated them all reasonably well and didn’t destroy anything. The sun was getting low and now we could tell that the culture was changing to the Mixe culture. There were signs in the Mixe language and women wore the traditional dress with folded textiles on their heads. We also started to get into many more towns with people streaming unknown parties or festivals, many riding in the back of the pickup trucks.

I stopped just as the sun was going down to take a photo of the mountainside with a town nearby.

We jumped back in and, as it was getting dark, we arrived at the entrance gate to Tlahuitoltepec, our destination, We headed up the well constructed concrete roads, tightly twisting around the mountainside and a steep angle, back and forth many times, until we arrived at the hotel, La Cuarta Estacion. Our rooms were modest but adequate. Despite no heat, there were very thick blankets.

Ernesto said that his friend had mentioned a local gathering, sort of pre-festival. So we jumped inour car and his friend hopped on. He guided us through the worst rutted adn semi-washed out roads around the mountain, up and down, until we came to a large tent with couple hundred people gathered, all speaking Mixe, and intenly watchng the boxing matches of local young men who volunteer to fight each other.

Soon after this some men approached us and said we didn’t have permission to be taking photos. People in this community take photography very seriously. So we put the cameras away and learned we needed to find out whe the authority is in any location and ask permission before shooting.

We sat down at a little food stand and again had some wonderful traditional food, and soon left by the way we came,

Overall it was a successful day, and hopefully learned how to navigate our time here.