If last week finished off on a down note, this week started on an even lower one!!! As anyone who has ever had a bad case of "traveler's stomach" knows, you spend a fair bit of time sitting on the loo! Thus was the case for Brian and it just so happened that on one of those visits the flush drained the last bit of water from our roof top cistern....NO MORE WATER!!! Needless to say, the "traveler's stomach" does not care for excuses! It turned out that the much larger underground cistern, the one that feeds the roof top one, ran out of water sometime on Saturday and then it was just a matter of time.
Can anyone tell us why, when you rent a place to someone for six weeks that you don't instruct your cleaning staff to check the underground cistern to make sure there is sufficient water or, at the very least, show the tenant how to check it??? How hard can that be? BUT NO... let's just wait until the f'n thing runs dry at the most inopportune time (something about Murphy's Law").
We called the landlady at 8:00 AM and explained the problem. She arranged for a plumero (plumber) who confirmed the situation. Around 10:00 she calls and says that she is trying to get water delivered but there is a shortage in the city. She says it will be delivered between 12:30 and 1:00 PM.
We aren't sure about this so, with Brian's bad stomach, we decided to hedge our bets. If the water did not show up today, say by about 6:00 PM, we decided that we would leave this place and move to a hotel .... with a POOL... for the remainder of our stay here (we leave on Saturday). So we set to doing some of our packing just in case. We got a good trial run at our packing and would have been ready to leave but the water guy did eventually arrive around 4:30 or so. The plumber came back and made sure everything was ok, and it was. We were back in business. So we'll save the money we would have spent on a hotel, although the idea of the pool was mighty inviting.
Since this is our last week here Monday and Tuesday were designated the days to pick up any remaining souvenirs or gifts we wanted to get to take home. Monday was also one last trip to Walmart for wine and any other necessities required by the end of the week. We had met a taxi driver with whom we had struck up a bit of a friendship. We called him to pick us up at 11:00 to take us to Walmart, wait for us there then bring us back home. Much easier than trying to get a taxi there then try to find one to bring us back. Anyway, 11:00 rolls around and no sign of Alejandro! Typical... Mexican time!!! At about 11:20 we were standing outside our door, on the street, when we hear this frantic honking sound up the street. There was Alejandro backing up his taxi the wrong way down our very busy one way street with one arm out the window waving cars and buses to go around him. Good grief, buddy, just go around the block! BUT NO! Not Alejandro!
Anyway, we explain to Alejandro that when we ask for the taxi at 11:00 we really want it there at 11:00. We planned to arrange for him to pick us up on Saturday to take us to the bus station so this was sort of a test on his reliability. So, off to Walmart we go. Everything goes good and it was actually very handy to have him waiting for us. He even took us out of the way to help get Brian's phone time extended for the rest of the week. Nice. Worth a decent tip.
By Tuesday night Brian's stomach was somewhat back to normal so we finally got to do the rooftop pizza at Mezzaluna. Beautiful evening out with just a slight breeze. Nice.
Also on Monday we decided to spend a bit of the money we saved on a hotel by taking one more full day cooking course. This one on Wednesday was at
Casa Crespo just a few blocks from our place. Oscar, the owner and chef of the restaurant/school, was excellent. There were seven of us. He gave us a chance to decide and vote on what we'd like to cook although in the end he clearly knew exactly what was going to be made. After a brief visit to a local market (the one near our house to which we have gone to numerous times) where he spent a lot of time explaining various meats, vegetables, cheeses, etc etc, we headed back to the restaurant where we set to making the many dishes. Oscar made sure that everyone had a hand in making at least some of the dishes. Making the tortillas was a lot of fun but we think he had his staff make new ones in the back as most of ours were a bit of a disaster. The meal ended up being way too big; seven courses in all with 4 different moles and ending with 2 different types of ice cream. Won't need any more food for awhile!
We didn't take any photos but one of the group, a German woman who is a journalist and writes a blog about her travels told us she was going to publish a blog posting about the class. As of the time of us posting this blog she has not yet done so but here is a
link to her blog. If she does post something it will likely be under February or March.
Later that evening we went over to the Quinta Real hotel for our one designated evening of margaritas in the courtyard by their pool. Man, it is nice there. Maybe next time we'll stay here for at least some days to take advantage of the pool etc. Truly an oasis in the middle of the historic center.
Thursday we set to packing at least two of our suitcases. These will be ones that won't need to be opened again until we get home. The other two will be used in transit on the way home. Yes, four suitcases might sound like a lot but they are small ones. Later in the day we went down to the Zocalo for dinner at El Asador Vasco where we easily scored a table on the balcony overlooking the activities going on in the Zocalo. Sometime during the day there were large grandstand seating set up on one end of the Zocalo. Hmmmm, wonder what that is all about. Turns out that Friday is Flag Day (Dia de la Bandera), a national holiday. Oh, Oh... we had decided to return the last batch of DVDs to the Oaxaca Lending Library on Friday morning. They are closed on national holidays!!! Crap, what will we end up doing with the half dozen DVDs we have checked out???
Friday morning we decide to take the DVDs over to the lending library anyway just in case they have a drop box or someplace we can leave the DVDs. Turns out they are open and when we asked, the lady on the front desk didn't even know it was a national holiday. Oh well, in this case all's well that ends well!
For lunch we stopped in at La Olla another one of Oaxaca's nouveau cuisine kind of places. Absolutely excellent lunch. Why the heck didn't we try this place a lot earlier in our stay. We likely would have come back many times. In the heat of the afternoon we returned to the house and finished all but the last minute packing and cleaned out the kitchen etc etc etc. For the evening we decided to go back down to the Zocalo for some wine at Terranova, our favorite place for this trip. There are usually musicians going around the Zocalo playing for tips. Most are pretty good. Here's a short video of one young man who played right in front of us on this evening...
Before we left for the evening, one of the waiters (meseros), Paco, surprised us with a small gift of a couple of wooden page markers...
... That was pretty cool, and appreciated! We might just have to come back here some day!
Saturday morning we were greeted with one last fabulous sunrise...
... as we completed our packing etc etc. We had arranged with Alejandro for a taxi to be at our place before 8:00 AM. Well, what to expect? By quarter after we gave up and just waved a taxi down. We arrived at the ADO bus station with just enough time to order up a latte and a couple of custom made ham and cheese tortas before boarding the bus to Puebla and at 9:00 AM the bus left on schedule.
In Puebla we stayed one night at the quite cute
Andante Hotel, a block or so from the Zocalo. Every room is themed after a great classical composer. We were assigned the Tchaikovsky room. Nice. Quite a bit more comfortable than the room we had at the Villahernan Boutique hotel where we stayed for a few nights on our way to Oaxaca. We had a nice dinner at an upstairs restaurant overlooking the Zocalo
Sunday morning we had a breakfast in the hotel. The breakfast was good but there was a piano about 6 feet away from our table and this dude played it very loudly and, if the truth were told, quite badly. After breakfast checked out, left our luggage at the hotel and after a break at Starbucks we wandered down to the touristy artesans market. Nothing there needed to come home with us, well except for a couple of massive copper pots...
After strolling around the Zocalo for a bit we headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and took a taxi to the 4 Poniente bus station where we caught a mid afternoon Estella Roja express bus to the Mexico City airport where we checked into the Hilton. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:00 AM and they requested check in 3 hours before so we were up at 1:30 AM in time to get ready, checked out of the Hilton and down to the Air Canada checkin shortly after 3:00 AM where there was already a rather lengthy line of people waiting for the counter to open. Ah, the benefit of business class... no waiting in line. We got checked in and were told the flight was delayed an hour. Too bad we had already checked out of the hotel otherwise we could have gone back up and had a bit more sleep. Oh well, we did have access to the business class lounge after going through security so that should make things a little more comfortable. NOT! Man we can now see why they need a new airport. That is the most pathetic business class lounge we have ever been in. Period!
Anyway, our 6:00 AM flight that was delayed one hour eventually got off the ground at about 7:50 making it a two hour delay. On our way home! Looking forward to it.
Well, of course something has to go wrong! One piece of our luggage did not arrive in Vancouver. At least it wasn't alone. There must have been 100 people in line at the Air Canada luggage counter. Apparently the flight crew determined that they might need more fuel so they had to off load some luggage in Mexico City. BUT.... wait a minute... we flew business class and had "priority luggage". How did our "priority" luggage get bumped??? "Not supposed to " said the agent. Well, we knew why... because the only way it was marked priority was the gate agent wrote on our luggage tag, in very small letters "priority", which was practically unreadable. THAT'S WHY! Guess, Air Canada ran out of proper priority baggage stickers :-(
Sh*t happens. After getting registered for lost luggage and a promise that it would be delivered to our door, in Courtenay, the next day we set off through customs then, since we still had a few hours before our connecting flight to Comox, we met up with our friend Marian at the airport White Spot where some good old Canadian comfort food (eg Monty Mushroom Burger) was consumed.
Our flight to Comox was on time and we arrived home shortly after 6:00 PM local time. Long day but glad to be home.
