We decided to spend another night to give the kids a chance to enjoy the freedom of some open space. They took full advantage. We spent an hour in the nearby village, finding someone to bleed the brake fluid. A little research online showed that the lack of power was to be expected at high altitude in a diesel, the brakes needing to be pumped was undoubtedly the result of boiling the brake fluid on our first, aborted departure from Puebla.
We spent a couple of hours in the olympic-size pool which was connected to a kiddie pool via four narrow water channels. The place was packed, moms holding on to babies, fathers trying to teach sons how to swim when it was clear they had no idea how to themselves, and, of course, the ubiquitous necking teenage couples. More than a third of the large pool was deeper than 1-1/2 metres and completely empty. This is not is a nation of swimmers. People looked at us in alarm as our kids jumped or dove in to the deep end. After a quick hot shower, we went back to our site and the kids ran around trying to track down a litter of puppies that obviously make the grounds home. Wil put a yummy supper together and I wrote. Bliss. We headed back to the pool after dinner and the kids got their fill. Alice waved me over to the edge of the pool when she stopped understanding a family that was chatting to her. I went over and chewed the fat with them for a while. The conversation took a familiar turn as the dad listed off a bunch of his favourite places to visit in Mexico. The more time we spend in Mexico, the more places on the list we've seen so it's fun to compare notes on cities and towns. He asked me if we'd heard the train. I told him about how it made me think of home. "It just makes us sad', he said, 'when we think about all the people on the train." On the train? No, ON the train. On top of the train. There are so many people from Guatemala and countries further south that ride the tops of the trains trying to make it north to a better life. There is a whole network of Mexicans who live along the tracks who give them water and food on their journey. Tlaxcala is a major train hub and a lot of people jump off here while the train is still going to avoid being caught by the authorities. Desperate parents put their children on by themselves hoping to give their kids a better life. Many, many die on the way." Out the window fly my sentimental thoughts about the train.
After another peaceful night, we got an early start on the drive. We climbed and then coasted down into the high Oaxacan valleys, the soil going from chalk white to deep red, the 20 foot high cactus became pines and then agave and scrub on the rolling hills. At the road's highest point we stopped to make ourselves some lunch by the road. At a tiny little clearing looking out over layer upon layer of hazy mountain, an old man sat in the shade of his little shelter selling refrescos. We spent our lunch wondering just how he got up here with his drinks until Frances looked down the side of the mountain and found a little home hiding in the crook of the mountain below with a well-worn path from there to here.
1 comment:
Didn't you spend Wil's birthday in Oaxaca last year? Are you on your way back to commemorate that by celebrating his birthday in the same place? Don't tell me you are not sentimentalists!!
Post a Comment