Our plane took off an hour late; United had built in a 67 minute changeover in Houston. So we did the math and started with the usual United anxieties. As it turned out, the pilot made up 30 minutes of the delay and the flight to Oaxaca was…delayed.
On the flight to Oaxaca I sat next to an interesting guy, probably representative of the big block of voters we see as „independent.“ He had a doctorate in geology and had worked for forty years as a consultant in the mining industry in Central America, living for long stretches in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. On the one hand, he was pretty virulently anti-mask (though he kept his on for me) and critical of the excesses associated with „wokeness.“ On the other hand, he was pro-choice and generally what we would call liberal on issues of economic justice. He really knew the indigenous communities around Oaxaca from the inside and was full of fascinating stories of the structure of these societies.
The driver from our hotel, the Parador San Miguel, was at the airport to meet us and we were soon in central Oaxaca. Ricardo is a cheerful guy. He grew up in the state of Chiapas, studied marketing at university there, met his wife, moved with her to one of the pueblas (villages) in the region (Astompa, the village associated with green pottery), opened a photography studio in El Tule (of which more later), and now, after the pandemic destroyed his business, earns his living as a driver and guide. His wife is a teacher and they still live with their little boy in Astompa because they can‘t afford the rising prices in Oaxaca.
The hotel is lovely, with the deep, magical colors of Oaxaca throughout a newly renovated old colonial mansion; there is a lounge in the center that is open to all three stories. Our friends Patti and David had had a very early morning, but stayed awake long enough to hand us a bag of tamales so that we had something for dinner!
We repeated our stroll from years before, down to and around the Zocalo, but were soon ready for the sack after a long day in the air.