The road here

I'll backtrack a bit and describe the drive here. We flew into Oaxaca but didn't go into the city. Stayed the first night at a hotel just south of the airport, toward the coast.  It was nothing special but fine. I think we were the only ones staying there, and it took about ten minutes for us to get the guy to come open the door to the courtyard parking and our room. Room number one. We asked if we could get a drink and the guy said he'd have to go out and get us a bottle and some soda water.  He said he'd send out "the kid" but we'd have to give him the money for him to buy it. He looked like a kid himself but guess this was a younger kid. He came back with a large bottle of Bacardi, a large bottle of club soda, and a huge bag of ice. We only used a small portion of the ice, left it sitting in the sink, and most of it was still there in the morning. I hope they had a use for it. 

We drove here on the "new" road which only opened a couple of years ago. But it had been under construction for fifteen years. On the old road, which is actually shorter in distance, the trip would take about five or six hours. This took about three. 

The first part of the drive there was a lot of traffic and a lot of businesses, many hotels and small restaurants. We stopped at one for breakfast. I had been looking forward to some kind of Mexican breakfast, huevos rancheros or something like that. But they didn't have eggs. It was more of a cafe than a breakfast place. They had crepes and pastries and all kinds of coffees and lattes, not exactlly what I'd been anticipating. I had banana nutella crepes, a huge plate and really good although not very Mexican. Loring had the only real Mexican item on the menu. It was chilaquiles, a mound of crisp tortillas covered with cheese and chicken and sauce.  The crisp flat tortllas seem to be the common thing here, rather than soft ones. We've been served them in restaurants and bought them packaged in the supermarket. 

After a while the traffic and commerce thinned out. The road was twisty and downhill. We were going from an altitude of about 6000 to sea level. After about the first hour we began to come across areas where there were washouts and where crews were working to repair the road and reinforce the embankments with netting and concrete. It continued intermittently to the coast. We thought there had to have been serious flooding and looked it up later. There had indeed been major looding not that long ago, about four months  ago back in October. 

We are now on our fifth night here.  The other three apartments have been occupied but we have only seen the folks staying next door to us. They have been here about ten days but left today. The other folks have cars and must still be here. A funny thing, a couple of nights ago a man opened the door and began to walk in, then realized he was in the wrong apartment and got very flustered and apologetic and left. So I guess we have seen  one of the other guests.

 Our days here have been simple and relaxing. We did have to drive about twenty minutes to a town with a working ATM a few days ago after the one in the nearest place was broken. Other than that, it's been up about 6am, just before dawn, not such a different schedule from at home. Then a couple of hours reading the Boston Globe or our books. Then breakfast. Sometime later in the morning down to the beach, just a dozen or so steps down. Choice of the two beaches here, separated by a outcropping of rocks with a path cut between them. Decision between early lunch here at the apartment , then early dinner about 4pm on the beach. Or late lunch on the beach, about 2pm, and light dinner back at the apartment. Our meals have been a ll fish or seafood. Lots of shrimp. All with rice and salad and flat crisp tortillas.