Bus or Bust
February 12th, 2022
Well, it’s been a pretty eventful 24 hours. My journey from Oaxaca Centro to Puerto Escondido started at around 9pm last night. I trekked about 30 minutes, luggage in tow, to the nearest bus terminal, where I waited about an hour to board my 10:30pm bus to Puerto Escondido. In fact, I almost boarded the wrong bus. Since I got there early, and since there was a 9:30pm bus to Puerto leaving as soon as I arrived, and Mexico tends to work in military time which confuses me, I actually waited in line and almost got on the earlier bus. In hindsight, I should have taken that one. It looked bigger, with comfier seats. They also offered free drinks to passengers, and the bus was equipped with free wifi. Not to mention, that bus was filled with attractive female travellers in their 20’s and 30’s. Alas, that’s not the bus I booked. The one I ended up on, one hour later, was mostly filled with locals, and was much more crowded and uncomfortable.
What made it so uncomfortable? Well, a number of factors. For starters, whoever designed the reclining seats on these things didn’t do a very good job. Having seats that lean back all the way is great for long trips, and especially overnight ones where you’ll want to shut your eyes for a while, but they reclined so much that the seats downright reclined right into the seats behind them. The couple sitting in front of me didn’t seem to care that I, a man with human legs, was sitting there, as they left me very little room to exist. My knees are still aching as I write this.
Furthermore, I was unaware that the ride from Oaxaca to Puerto, listed at 11 hours long, would be such a nauseating one. I don’t know what gave me the idea, but I was under the impression that it would be one long highway-esque road. It was not that. It was, instead, a very narrow, very winding, and very bumpy one through backroads. If I’m being honest, I was fighting back vomit throughout the majority of the lengthy ride. I don’t know about you folks, but I can always tell when I’m about to throw up because I start to get hot and sweaty, and can feel a tightness in my jaw. I was definitely on the verge, but luckily never up-chucked. I wouldn’t even have had anywhere to do it; my emergency contingency plan that I created in my head was to do it into my sweatshirt, worst comes to worst. Luckily, I meditated through it and managed to keep my dinner in my stomach.
I’m grateful that the girl seated next to me managed to find somewhere else to sit. Don’t get me wrong, she seemed lovely, but I don’t think I’d have survived that ride crammed next to someone else. The nearest person was a dude sitting in the row across from me; a generic white guy in his mid-20’s, wearing khaki shorts and a tank top, who got upset when the girl he was flirting with bummed a cigarette from him and then got off at her stop without giving her number. I overheard him talking French and mentioning that he was from Quebec, so I interjected and said I was too. Turns out he was from the South Shore of Montreal, and just got in that same day. What are the odds that I end up sitting next to a fellow Montrealer on an overnight bus through the state of Oaxaca??
Well, the novelty of meeting a fellow Montrealer abroad wore off pretty quickly, as the dude kinda sucked. Maybe that’s harsh and he’s a great guy, but my experience with him sucked. He talked my ear off, then conducted several loud phone calls on a dark bus full of people trying to sleep. Then he finally went to sleep, laying down across the aisle and encroaching his legs into my already-limited space. On about 10+ occasions our feet touched, despite him sitting four seats away. He also snored loudly and farted an awful stench. When we finally arrived at our destination, I knew he’d want to exchange contact information, so I took off before he could.
One fascinating thing I noticed throughout the ride was the amount of random people scattered throughout the countryside of Oaxaca. Keep in mind, this was an overnight bus, so a lot of these observations happened between 3am and 5am. In what was mostly just farmlands and empty fields, there were occasionally just people out there. Random people, standing out by the road. They were probably selling something, if I had to guess, but who knows. There was certainly nobody out there at that time to sell anything to, so I don’t know what kind of business they possibly could have been conducting. Some were standing, some were sitting, but throughtout the drive, I noticed individuals on probably 6 different occasions, just standing around in the middle of the night on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black. Who are these people? What are their lives? Are they okay? Are they even real? Do they have hobbies or a favourite song or family? Do they know what Reddit is, or who LeBron James is? I have so many questions for these people, but I’ll never get to ask them.
There were also quite a few interesting properties just sitting out there, atop small hills, in the middle of nowhere. Some were near villages, but even “village” is a stretch of a term. I mean, there was a nearby gas station, bar, restaurant, and/or corner store, and maybe 100–200 people live in these villages. And there certainly isn’t much going on in these places once the sun goes down. I can’t image a two-story house in the vast nothingness goes for more than $20,000. And I venture to guess one could live pretty easily off of $5,000 per year. That doesn’t sound like a bad back-up plan, should everything fall apart and I prefer to just disappear and spend my days painting and meditating and owning a bunch of dogs. Good to know. If it ever comes to that, don’t come looking for me.
Finally, after an excruciating 11 hour bus ride where I slept a total of 45 minutes and spent most of it holding back vomit, we arrived in Puerto Escondido. It’s a really awesome beach town, floating somewhere between modern and undeveloped. Most of the roads are dirt, but there’s also co-working spaces and high speed internet. They use QR codes, but they’re printed on dirty planks of re-purposed wood. I quite like the aura. Also, the beach is fantastic and this place is a literal paradise. I had lunch at a hotel bar where I had the best vegan tacos and beer of my life. I’m sure that in any other scenario it wouldn’t have been as good, and in actuality it was a mediocre $10 meal, but something about the scenery and the relief of finally being here, made it SO good.
After checking into my hotel and meeting up with my buddy Ken, who’s spending the week with me, we hit the beach. I was taking in the sights, marvelling at the therapeutic nature of the ocean, and I casually said “I want to find some weed”. Back home, I was smoking a lot, but since getting to Mexico I have yet to indulge in any extra curricular activities. I’ve heard that Puerto Escondido is a surfer town and that weed is commonplace here, so I casually mentioned that I’d like to find some. Mere moments after speaking it into the universe, a very drunk man with clear piss-stains around the crotch of his white shorts stumbled up to me, handed me three nuggets of weed, and wandered off, saying something about having to find his kids. The universe provides, man. All in all, a turbulent way in, but a fantastic first day here. Well worth the journey.
