Doug’s Travels

Finally, am reunited with my dad!  Last night, my landlady called the Oaxaca Airport.  My dad had arrived, and she arrange to have them send it to a down town office where I could collect it.  I was close to having to actually go cloths shopping.  Perish the thought!  I hate close shopping, and Oaxaca does not seem to have anywhere tolerable for close shopping, as far as I’m concerned.

A return to my room with my bag.  I take a nice hot shower, using my soap, and my shampoo.  Then, I call my hair with the comb that doesn’t bend when I use it.  I have a shave with the kind of razor I like, and brush my teeth with a brush  and tooth paste that I like.  There’s more to the simple things and you might think until you miss them.  Nothing like a little traveling to appreciate small things like the comb and a toothbrush!

Another trip to the Internet Cafe.

The first Internet Cafe I visited in Mexico was not a great experience.  For one thing, it was expensive and the keyboard was awful.  I have since found other Internet Cafe is that are much cheaper, and have much better equipment.  Still, using a browser in Spanish is very difficult.  In Spanish keyboard is very confusing for an English speaker.  It took me for ever to find the apostrophe for example.

The next time I went to an Internet Cafe, I used my USB key.  Before leaving for Mexico, I loaded it with portable apps.  It is possible to install software such as Firefox for browsing, and Thunderbird for e-mail, on a USB key.  There are several big advantages to this.  For one thing, all the software is an English.  For another, I can carry my shortcuts in my address book with me.  Another big advantage, his privacy.  All temporary files stay on the USB key.

On previous trips, I travelled for months even years without the benefit of e-mail.  It is really nice to stay in contact with people, both my friends at home and new people and me on the road.

A USB key brings us to a whole new level.  But the USB key into any computer, and within a minute or to have the familiar environment I can work in.  This makes it very easy to compose new e-mails while uploading my inbox.  Great for slow connections.

Them sitting in the courtyard of my hostel.  What a difference for my first night!  I slept very well, and this place is much cheaper.

I find the outdoor courtyard very pleasant.  It reminds me of Thailand in a way.  Part of me wants to go back to Thailand and learn tie.  Part of the wants find it with this place is about.  Of course I am here so there is no decision!

I’m quickly learning how to get by in Spanish.  Already, I was able to ask for directions to the supermarket, and get some idea of what the response meant.  Then I saw some Americans walking down the street, loaded with groceries.  I clarified the directions from them.  Working in an unfamiliar language is like living in a haze.  Actually, more like a heavy fog.  I’m looking forward to the magic of comprehension.

I got basics such as oatmeal, salt, bananas, granola, drinking yogurt, tea, and a can of salmon.  Now that I have some basics to get me started, you not have to worry about starving to death!  To me, there’s nothing more uncomfortable than not knowing where to eat locally, or what might contain wheat leading to severe allergy symptoms.

The tea is not very good.  This is not a country that is big on tea, and the water is not that great either.  Still, it will wake me up in the morning.

The Americans told me that there is another store with much more variety.  I will shop there next time.  There’s also a local vegetable market, but I will wait until I know enough Spanish to tackle that one.

Meanwhile, I continue to await the arrival of my baggage.

And went on an expedition to change money.  The problems were unbelievable!  None of the money changers would accept the Canadian travelers check.  I would have had more luck with Canadian tire money.  Here we are, in a free-trade agreement with Mexico and the United States, and I can’t change the Canadian travelers check in Mexico.  I never had this problem in Asia or India.  Very frustrating.

I decided to change on the very few US dollar travelers checks that I have.  I accidentally signed the travelers check in the wrong place.  The woman watched me sign it and said nothing.  then wouldn’t accept it.  Also, she claimed she didn’t think the signatures matched.  Just being nasty and horrible, in my opinion.

So I took out of fresh travelers check, signing that in the correct place.  The stupid, nasty woman still didn’t think that my signatures matched.  I got seriously angry at her and ordered her to change the travelers check now that I had signed it.  Which he did, amazingly enough.

Meanwhile, no one will change the first travelers check which I had signed in the wrong place.

So, I Canadian travelers checks are useless, and I have very few US dollar travelers checks.

Meanwhile, I cannot find a single ATM in town it will give me a tacit vents on my Visa card.  TD-Visa is not a card to travel with, apparently.  I will have to wait until the banks open in a few days.  Has not yet paid the landlady the rent.  I’m seeking her waiting, until I can get a good reliable source of cash.

December 30 2005-evening

Went foraging for food.  Found a nondescript hole in the wall.  Somehow I had the feeling they would have good food.  Don’t know any Spanish, but through sign language I was able to ask her what she had.  It turned out to be a great slab of chicken breasts and bean sauce  -  it was so good!  The whole meal cost 25 pesos, or about half what raw chicken would cost in the supermarket in Canada.  And the chicken is of far better quality, tasty and tender, then you can ever get in a Canadian supermarket.

Gone is the desperation of not knowing where to go her what to eat.

I still do not have my bags however, and this is frustrating, annoying and inconvenient.  The phone number I was given at the airport is a message saying that all operators are busy, leave a message.  I doubt that will get me far, but I left a message anyways.  The owners of my guest house, despite the language barrier, helped me call Oaxaca Airport.  I then got a local number for Northwest Airlines, but it was too late in the day and they were closed.  I can try again tomorrow.

December 30, 2005

I’m in a much better frame of mind this morning, after a good night’s sleep, and a couple of chocolates.  One good thing about this expensive hotel, is it leaves cheap chocolates by the bedside.  I’m very glad of it now.  I would have eaten in last night, but I was worried that they may contain milk or other allergens.

This morning I had the patience to translate the ingredients of the chocolates word by word from my dictionary.  That was actually fun!  It is fun to use a new language which I am unfamiliar with.  Much easier than entire Chinese, which use a different alphabet in the first case, and a pictorial system which is impossible to understand in the second case.  Spanish is almost identical to English-if you compare it to Chinese!

The chocolates as it turns out, have no milk but do have almonds and cinnamon.  They are excellent!

Until my baggage arrives, I have only one cliff bar left.  I hope this will give me enough energy to fine breakfast.  At least tea or coffee should be easy to buy.

.  .  .

I’ve checked into several Spanish language schools in Oaxaca.  When I reached Vinigulaza, and you I’d found the right place.  The other two schools like checked out were OK, but it Vinigulaza I felt I was speaking to the owner, not to educational director.  At Amigos des Sol, it seems very sociable, but I couldn’t take it seriously.  I did not feel they were interested in being a language school, but rather language party.  OK for 20-year-olds, but this is not what I’m looking for.

It Vinigulaza, I asked some detailed questions about the language instruction.  I was referred to the language director, Enrique.  He spent a great deal of time with me, first explaining how they do instruction at the school, then about more general things.  I notice that the teachers seem to be a tight and sociable group.  It just feels comfortable.  I also like that they have no set activity schedule, they just making up as they go along.

Enrique showed me a home-hostile.  It had a damp room so I rejected it.  Then he showed me a small hotel.  It’s OK, not great but I’ll start here and see how I like it.  I can imagine better, but this is much much better, and much cheaper, and where I stayed last night.  Also, I can cook year.

Enrique also showed me a nice little snack place where I had a couple of corn tortillas with bean sauce and beef.  Very good.  He explained to me how to recognize the difference between weak tortillas, and corn tortillas.  Essential information to manage might weak allergy!  Pure corn tortillas are large and handmade.  Smaller, machine-made tortillas may, or may not, have wheat in them.  Weak tortillas are white rather than yellow.  I now feel fairly comfortable about finding weak free food in Mexico, or at least this region in Mexico.

One of the things I love about travelling is that there is often a lot more to meals than just the food.

I visited a town near Oaxaca, Mexico with a small group of people from my Spanish School. The town has several interesting things to see, including a bustling market, Mayan ruins - unmolested by archeologists - and a priest with an axe buried in his head. Or at least there’s a statue of him in the local church.

The boy who sets the table and brings the food must be about ten or 11. Between restaurant chores, he likes to introduce the guests some of his favorite things.

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I arrive just in time for lunch. In such a small town, at such a small hotel (three rooms), it is always just in time for lunch, providing of course, that the women running the place are around. If not, it is either too early for lunch, or worse, too late. In such a small town, there is no other restaurant.

Lunch is good enough, not bad at least, and I am famished! The chicken is somewhat tough, but nothing like the tough chicken-meat fibers I had somehow chewed an digested yesterday in Tlaxiaco. The tortillas as perhaps as tired as I am. Still, I have had a warm reception, and I am now eating lots of food - most welcome in deed.

Even as I eat lunch, I can see that dinner is on its way.

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8 March, 2000

3:30 am. Can’t sleep. Just as sleep seems likely, I hear a noise. Not the noise of the rats on the roof as they scuffle, scratch and squeak their life away. There’s a rat in my room - I don’t like this at all! The funny thing is, I thought I had blocked the large gap in the corner under my door with that pad lock.

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Is it possible to travel in your own back yard, to see familiar surroundings with the wide-eyed fascination of a first-time visitor?

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