The three of us sped off on our way to Oaxaca city – as we just started to get a handle on Alma (our new car), she started having little jerky hiccups accelerating up hills and then an amber engine sign flashed up intermittently, and then it remained. Around the same time Pippa was flooring the pedal with not much oomph from Alma. Balls. We had made it about an hour out of Mexico City. Luckily Kavaks (where we got her from are everywhere), so we swooped into their branch in Puebla. With a quick fiddle under her hood, we were sent off on our way, she wasn’t ‘fixed’ but apparently the issue needed more time to fix but was not chronic , so we booked her into Kavak in CDMX for our return in 3 weeks time.
We had a night’s sleep in Oaxaca City and then got up early the next day to raid the giant Abastos market for ensure we had enough nutritious fruit + veg supply to start Pippa’s Ayurveda diet on the coast. We then drove down the new speedy carretera, which opened only at the start of the year making the usual 7 hour sick-encouraging journey only 2.5 hours and very smooth. This accessibility will certainly change the coastline in good and bad ways.
We stepped into a welcomed routine for our two weeks in Zipolite – structured around Pippa’s health plan and our afternoons at Spanish school. A slow two weeks with not much to report; Pippa began to feel internally better with her fatigue lifting, our heads started to brim with Spanish and we enjoyed snatched moments on the beach when possible. We also had our 9 year anniversary! Then poof our time was up. The coastline is so beautiful and we definitely will be returning when health and learning are not top of our agendas.
Unfortunately Pippa’s father was not well so she decided to go back to the UK to spend some time with her family – she left on our last day of school, leaving Ana + Alma alone.
(Thanks to BlaBlaCars they were not alone on their journeys, but picked up 3 people to drive from Zipolite to Oaxaca City and then a further 3 from Oaxaca City to Mexico City later on – brilliant.)
3 Days in Oaxaca City with Anna Fogg + Sam
Despite the lack of Pippa, it was very fortunate for Ana to have some days with Fogg + Sam in Oaxaca. Our rendezvous was kicked off with a Temazcal ceremony – a ritualistic Mexican sauna, held by Rocio, a Zapotec healer. A Temazcal is a very small mud hut, heated by red-hot volcanic rocks and infused with burning herbs – entering the Temazcal as if re-entering your mother’s womb and then you sweat, sing, chant, drink tea and wail it all out for a good hour and a half – and then you re-emerge out through the tunnel/’vagina’, reborn! It was Easter Sunday, so a bit of rebirth felt very apt.
The following day we ventured out in the Oaxacan countryside – visiting the cooling waters of Agua de Hierva, popping into a bite-sized ruin called Mitla and doing a spot of textile shopping on the return back to the city.
On our last day we discovered the key to surviving the mid-afternoon heat in Oaxaca City – you do what the local(men) do, you sit in a cantina drinking. Knowing that cantinas follow their mantra of, if you keep drinking, we’ll keep feeding you, we happily stayed.. Though vegetarian food in cantinas definitely means ‘without visible meat’ – Sam was a good sport though, and many hours later we stepped into the cooler streets, drunk and suitably fed. We then rolled straight into a lovely meal at Levadura de Olla, a place famed for their tomato dish and general veg-forward menu – delicious.
After a hefty debate over dinner on whether one should kill for good, we departed from each other, not knowing when our paths will cross again but knowing which of us would kill for good……
What a lovely interlude with Fogg + Sam – they were off to the coast the next day, and Ana back to CDMX to apply for her 4-year non-resident visa the next day.