Taking a Trip to Oaxaca

We are in Oaxaca now.  We’ll be in Mexico for three weeks altogether, our first trip

since 2020 when the pandemic began.  And although it isn’t over, and may never

be entirely gone, we decided just to go.  Though friends who travel have mostly

gotten COVID in transit – maybe at the airport, maybe in the places they’ve gone.

Even so, we were restless, and anxious to Be Somewhere Else.

We haven’t been ANYWHERE since the pandemic, and in the three years since it

began,we’re now three years older.  What that means is that traveling, something I

have always loved, always easy to Just Go Anywhere – Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Brazil –

a process that required very little thought, very little advance planning, is now

Something Else.

Ours is the generation of Icelandic Air and Eurail Passes, of Peace Corps lives and

How to Live on $5 a day (I did, and so did so many of us).  Traveling was something I

have always loved.  One of my absolutely favorite things, along with books and movies

and any kind of chocolate.  What I love hasn’t changed.  But how I love it has. 

Nothing is especially carefree or easy now.

We decided to go to Mexico because it isn’t a hard trip.  Though it was hard enough

getting here.  A morning flight, then four hours  layover in Houston at the Alchemy

Bar, then three more hours to Oaxaca.  Going anywhere takes some unaccustomed

effort now.  Peter has a new hip so walking through the metal detector is more

exciting than it was before.  And everything seems more of a general shlep.  Packing,

for instance.  I no longer take very little when I go anywhere. And no more carry on

luggage.  No more lugging what I don’t need to lug.

We bought regular suitcases, and checked them straight through.

Although I was never the Be Prepared type, I’m more that way now.  Skin cream and

chapstick and so many little things I packed just in case I needed them, just in case

my age and circumstance required Advil or band aids or pocket tissues.

So far though it all seems worth it.

Oaxaca is as beautiful as expected.  And today we met friends of friends at an organic

market a few blocks from our hotel.  We sat at a big table, waiting for them to appear,

and we met a man named Daniel, a 73 year old from Detroit who got his PhD in fruit

growing, especially pears, and spent his life with fruit in Oregon.  His wife didn’t join

him because she got Mexican digestive issues.  Daniel told us that people offered

many suggestions:  activated charcoal,  probiotics, Imodium.  So far though her issues

persisted.

The friends of friends we met were wonderful company and we will see them

tomorrow.  But he fell in Brooklyn recently and though he didn’t break his ribs, they

hurt.  So he’s walking with a cane and told us that tomorrow he would be very slow. 

He got a PT massage when he arrived.

We came back to our room and rested before dinner, a new and welcome activity for us

both.  By nighttime though we were ready to walk to the zocalo, maybe a little slower

than we once did.  But the margaritas in the Zocalo were still as good as they were

when we were young.

If by chance you too are in Oaxaca, let me know.

Esther