Friday, March 6, 2009

The Adventure to the Beach: An Epic Saga

So, last night around 10 pm Heather, Amanda, and I began our trip to Puerto Escondito. The bus left without a hitch at 11 for our 10 hour journey. The beach is only about 200 miles, but its over windy mountains and far away. At about 3:30 am the bus stops, thinking the driver had to go to the bathroom or take a break I got back into my dramamine-induced sleep. At 4 am he turns on the lights and says "Hubo un accidente, tenemos que esperar un rato". Translation: There was an accident and we're going to have to wait for a while. We all fell back asleep sort of, listening to people walking around outside in the dark. When the sun came up around 6 we decided to take a look outside to see what was going on. At this point many of the people on the bus (who were mostly Mexican) were taking their luggage and walking. We were in the middle of the mountains in who-knows-where-Mexico at 6:30 am. As we're standing thinking of whether to risk just walking down this road, which is stopped up with at least 20 busses full of people and 50 flat bed trucks carrying cargo through Oaxaca's mountains to the shore, two girls come ask us in broken English what is going on. They were two German girls who did not speak Spanish and were very confused. We told them they could stick with us. We walked about a mile until we reached the accident, passed several trucks and busses. Amanda was wearing healed flip-flops, and all of us were in sort of a sleepy haze. A 18-wheeler gas truck had flipped over covering the whole road. Since we were in the middle of no where, there was no alternative way around except walking. Once we got around we were able to get a taxi to take us to the nearest town (which cost about $120 pesos--pretty expensive for a Mexican Taxi), after squeezing 5 of us into it with all of our luggage, we took off for Tehuantepec. About 25 minutes later we arrived, and the driver dropped us off on the side of the road tellling us we had to then take another bus to get to a bus station where we could get a bus to get to Puerto. That bus arrived and took us to Salina Cruz where the first class bus station was. Another 200 pesos later we were on a bus to Puerto Escondito--at about 8:45 am. By this time we should have already been there. 5 hours later we arrived at the beach...but the long journey definitely made everything seem much better.