Shaken and stirred

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Apparently the best way to get to Oaxaca from Puerto Escondido was on one of the frequent express van services. These went straight over the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range rather than taking three hours longer going via the highways and avoiding the high peaks. It was a pretty straight forward choice as we had already clocked up over 25 hours on Mexico’s buses so unnecessary extra hours was certainly not desirable.

If the Americans are in search of an alternative form of torture to the much condemned practice of Waterboarding then we’ve discovered it. Neither of us are easily made travel sick particularly to the point of nearly vomiting but our express van service conclusively did the job. The mountain road was an endless series of hairpin and near hairpin bends and for four relentless hours we were zipped around them at breakneck speed by our driver whose vehicle only appeared to have two settings full-break or full-throttle. Matters were compounded by the Mexican’s penchant for speed bumps through all their towns and villages and they were plentiful on our route. We barely exchanged a word for the journey acutely aware of each others nasty hue of green and that a momentary lapse in concentration on maintaining a steady breathing pattern would be disastrous.

We eventually arrived in Oaxaca thoroughly relieved that we’d avoided finding yet another handy use for our Tupperware boxes.

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