#216 / 2011 June Oaxaca: The Long Ride Home

THE LONG RIDE HOME

#216

When AeroMexico began raising fares I decided to take a bus back to the States. This reminds me of when I rode in a VW van from Nashville to Alaska back in the 80s. There again I didn't educate myself on how far I was traveling. On the way to Alaska, when I got to the Canadian border, I figured we just had a few more hundred miles to go. Little did I know the route was two thousand miles further on up the Al-Can Highway.

When I got on the bus to Mexico City the ride was less than eight hours. So I wrongly assumed maybe twelve or fifteen more hours, twenty tops, and I would be pulling into El Paso. WRONG!!! I was on that bus for three days.

The Mexican buses are great, very plush if you take the high-end ones. Most of the scary stuff happens on the small buses that travel from the small towns north to the border. 

One of the aspects of my trip is to guage how safe it is to travel around here and I want to mention that when I went to Monte Alban I met two beautiful young women who DROVE from Mexico City to Oaxaca.

 I was astonished but they said it was no big deal. They did take an autopista toll road and it cost about thirty dollars to get on the road. They went through one checkpoint and had absolutely no problems. One girl was born and raised in Washington DC and was a reporter and editor for Fox News. She worked the graveyard shift.


The other girl or chica was Japanese, worked for an accounting firm in Mexico City, and has lived there for five years. They were both extremely attractive and the Japanese girl Kara spoke three languages.

So it was through their information that I chose the bus with no apprehension whatsoever. My bus was going down the major interstate system. Certainly I encountered no danger and this bus ride was far different than the one from Mazatlan to El Paso which went through so much primitive territory.

The best part of the bus ride is all of the movies the driver shows. I thought it was a sign when the German movie, "Cherry Blossoms" was shown. Joe Somoza and Jill turned me on to this movie. It is about a man who loses his wife. He fulfills her dreams, wears her clothes: All these things I was doing and Joe saw the similarities in me and that is why he told me about the film.

Indeed, I was again wearing the last pair of Joe's underwear, gross jockey shorts. I wore them for good luck and comfort. They served me well, protected me from all harm, but not pain.

So the movies on the bus helped, but it was a very long ride. I might have gotten to Albuquerque in two days but when we finally pulled into Juarez I had missed the bus to El Paso by fifteen minutes. So it was another night sleeping on a hard floor. I got a 5 a.m. ride out the next morning.

Absolutely no danger lurked inside or outside the bus in the entire three days I was on it. I just want to emphasize how overblown I think all the danger reports are regarding travel in Mexico. You have to be cautious; you don't want to hang out in the border towns; but Mexico was my haven, my safe harbor to grieve, to cry, to make a spectacle of myself and my pain. Always, always, I encountered kindness, understanding, and words of comfort.

The striking teachers are the biggest political memory I have. And there protests unfolded with safety, despite what has happened in years past. So don't be afraid of Mexico, just be practical.

The bus pulled up in El Paso and I hopped another bus to Albuquerque. Deborah Coy picked me up at the bus station downtown and I moved into my new home; she is my landlady now. Deb and Jon VerPlough, her husband, are the very people who took Joe and I in when he was dying. They offered him a death bed. And he used it.

Now I live in a small apartment attached to their home. I find comfort in being near where Joe died. I often go into that bedroom when I am in their end of the house to convene with him. 

Pamela Adams Hirst

45 Garden Park Circle NW

Albuquerque, NM 87107