A little about Mexican Time

As previously posted, our friend Erin is here visiting us from Toronto. She was working remotely on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so evening activities were not too adventurous. We had dinner with friends on Wednesday night, always fun to see other homes in Oaxaca and their set up. We did manage a movie (Percy Jackson and the Lightening Bolt - English with Spanish subtitles, popcorn, candy, drinks) on Thursday night, and as Oaxaca is a big city, there are no intermissions during the movie. So sad! Ralph and I get a kick out of the fact that there are movie theatres who still do intermissions in Mexico. Gives you a chance to stretch, use the facilities and refresh the palomitas (popcorn).


Friday we decided, given the weather was a bit overcast, to go to San Sebastian de las Grutas, we had been before with Angie and Ayla. After a forced leisurely morning waiting for a water issue to be resolved, we headed out. A two hour drive on mostly good road, we arrive to find no guide. To be clear, not that none were available, but that there was no one around, everything was closed. We walk over to the little restaurant and ask the lady there. She explains to Ralph that he just left to have lunch. Not a problem, we'll go into the little village, maybe drive up past Las Grutas to San Fernando de Matamoros to see where that leads. Off we go. We drive into beautiful hill country, discover a community heavily supported by the logging industry (there are more wood shacks here than I have seen in all of Oaxaca). Erin said it gave a new definition to living in the sticks. We turn around, drive back, and Voila! The guide is back from his siesta and lunch and we head up, into and out of the caves, the whole tour is about 90 minutes.

We have become accustomed to showing up at tourist spots via ridiculous roads to find no one there, and we happily sit and wait, or go and wander and then return a bit later, to find the guide returned from lunch, siesta, buying a goat, visiting his girlfriend. We laugh about how what we have come to expect in Mexico would be received in Canada. Imagine, you show up to the CN tower. To get there, you have driven across a dry riverbed, dodged potholes and waited for turkeys to cross the road. You arrive to find out that the guy who runs the elevator just went home, his mother is not well and he went to check on her. You sit and wait, wondering how long you are willing to wait. He arrives, say in 20 minutes, apologetic and ready to now give you his full attention on the tour. It's a great tour, a great site, you enjoy it tremendously, even though there are birds flying around and no safety railing on the decks to prevent you from falling 127 stories to your death.

The question, of course is, would you wait? We do. We hope you would, too!