Latin America Collection

Our next step was sheer madness. First, we knew and had agreed that
we should only drive during the daylight hours. We should have accepted
our time loss and headed for a hotel or motel, even if it required some back-
tracking. We were too far down the road when we discovered the next sizable
town had no hotel or motel. We were sort of beyond the "point of no
return" at that time. The only thing we could do was to hope and pray
that it would work out in our favor.

To compound our problems, we did not have enough gas to get us all
of the way to Oaxaca, and we were back down to just travellers checks. It
was getting dusk when we came to a little town called "Acatlán". It had
no hotel or motel, but it did have a Pemex gas station.
We drove into the station and asked if the owner or boss was there. A
very nice young lady came forward. Audrey explained our plight. We
needed $20.00 worth of gas to get us to Oaxaca, and all we had was a
$20.00 travellers check to pay for it.

She took us into the office and got on the telephone. She was obviously
talking to her boss. She talked for a while, then she read every word on
the travellers check, then every word on my passport. She finally got
approval--but not thanks to Karl Malden. We sold this one ourselves. We
put in $20.00 worth of Pemex regular (no Magna Sin), and drove off into
the sunset.

As darkness fell upon us, we found ourselves on a twisting two-lane
road cut into the sides of very rugged mountains, with a large number of
trucks. The road had no markings, neither a center dividing line or outside
markers. Fortunately, very few cars or trucks were going our way, eliminating
my need to pass. We did meet a lot of them in the early evening, however.
Every time we would meet one, I would pull over as close to the edge as
I dared, and would dim my lights and let them pass by me.

We had been struggling along for several hours, when finally a car
passed me. They apparently knew the road, as they were going much
faster than I had been driving. By keeping them just ahead of me, I could
get a better view of the road ahead, and was able to safely increase my speed
to keep up with him. Also, it was getting so late that the trucks had stopped
for the night.

It was nearly l0:00 p.m. when we came out of the mountains into a wide
valley. We could see the lights of, what we assumed was Oaxaca a few miles
ahead--a most welcome sight. When we arrived in town, we found the
street we were on led us to the plaza, the park in the center of the city. Most
Latin American cities are built around a plaza. In Mexico this central plaza
is called a zócalo.

Once again we had selected a hotel from the AAA book. This was the
Senorial Hotel, located right on the plaza. We did not know which side of
the plaza it was on, so we found a parking place and took a stroll around
the plaza to find it. Instead of streets facing the plaza, they just came to
the four corners. A large walk-way with businesses and nearly a solid ring
of sidewalk cafes faced it. Even at the late hour (to us), the cafes were filled
with people dining in the moonlight with many Mariachi bands' melodies
filling the night air. How we wished we had arrived earlier to have enjoyed
this festive setting.

We located our hotel facing the square. When we went to check in, once
again they, too, were asking $75.00 for the room. We showed them the AAA
book with its $28.75 price, and miraculously the price became $28.75, and
they took travellers checks. When we had parked in a secured parking lot
half a block away, and entered our room, it had been seventeen hours
since we left our motel in San Luis Potosí. I did not need a Mariachi band
to put me to sleep.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast downstairs in a sort of patio
room. We were completely rested from our marathon drive of the day
before. We checked out after cashing $100.00 in travellers checks, retrieved
our van and reluctantly headed out of town. This city seemed to me, a place
that I would love to see more of. I could even contemplate living here. But
we had no time for sightseeing, so we headed south, out of town.