Triblog

A few days after our walk up into the Cerro del Fontin, Cheryl surprised me by getting up when I did, a little after six. Sunrise was 7:20, and I had been heading out for my morning runs along the highway at 6:55, just after first light.

“I think I’ll go up with you and look at the sunrise,” she explained.

“OK, I’ll walk up with you, but you’ll need to get back on your own, you know. I’m going to keep running down the hill to the end of the sidewalk.”

We left La Betulia, and headed right, the only out of the cul-de-sac our B&B was in. Uphill about half a block was a road which made a sharp 90 degree turn, allowing us to keep climbing straight to the next street. There, we paused as I pointed out a few landmarks she would need to know when to turn back into La Betulia.

“See on the street sign pole there, it says ‘Es Mas Facil’? And over there, the community development office? This is the only turn you’ll have to make, to the right, first block after the busy street you’ll have to cross just uphill. I pointed out all these key landmarks to her, and waited to see if she understood. She seemed satisfied, so off we went, still trudging up the concrete hill towards the parking garage. There, we snaked under a corner, and emerged onto the ramp leading from the highway. Turning left, we hit the sidewalk, and continued up towards the stairs leading to the pedestrian overpass. I reminded her we had come that way on our walk a few days ago.

“OK, I’m going to start running now. The mirador is about a quarter mile ahead, just at the top of the hill. You can see the whole city, the sunrise, everything from there. Then just turn around and come back this way when you’r e done. When you get to the ramp, just follow it down to the street” – there was really only one way to go – “ and then head back across the busy road, turn right at the next street. Remember, Es Mas Facil?”

“Don’t worry about me, just go ahead and run, OK?”

“OK, I’ll maybe see you on my way back, or run into you as you’re heading downhill, huh?”

Off I went, plodding up to the mirador, then down about a half a mile to where the slope got really steep. I wanted to turn around and be sure to catch up with her, just in case she started to get lost.

But when I got to the Mirador, she wasn’t there. The sun still hadn’t risen over the eastern mountains, but the day was starting cloudy, without much color, and no promise of a real sunrise in the works. I figured she’d probably just looked around, realised there was no photo available, and got back home. It had been probably ten minutes, no more, since I had left her. I thought I would run into her soon as I headed back.

I trotted back down the way I came, growing increasingly concerned when I didn’t see her ahead of me. By the time I hit La Betulia, I was convinced something was seriously wrong. Like she had been kidnapped. I’d read about kidnappings of opportunity, where tourists, or even rich-seeming locals, are highjacked and driven to an ATM for quick cash, or held until their relatives can come up with some dough.

Nervously, I unlocked La Betulia’s front door, and turned right to say, “Hola” to the short, friendly cook staff, busily preparing that morning’s meal.?

“Me esposa es aqui” I tried. Heads nodding no.

In our room, I called her name. Nothing. I searched in her purse, and her phone. I was a bit relieved, because if she were kidnapped, my phone would have been useless, it not being turned on for foreign travel.

But hers was, and so I raced back out the door, this time running up the hill, all the way to the Mirador, playing out scenarios in my head. Should I call the Policia? Would Daniel, our “concierge”, know what to do? How would anyone find her in this maze of a city? Would she realise I had her phone, and get them to call me? How much money would they want? What would I tell our children? How had I let this happen; why hadn’t I just stayed with her at the mirador?

She wasn’t there again, nor anywhere along the route, even on the other side of the garage, where we had walked several days before. I ran back down to La Betulia, convinced I would need to go into emergency mode very soon.

Again, the service staff denied seeing her. But when I got back into our room, there she was – asking what had happened to her phone?

“I took it.”

“Why would you take my phone!!!?” she demanded.

“I thought you were kidnapped. When I didn’t see you at the viewpoint, and you were anywhere along the route back, and not here even, I took the phone and went back up to the mirador…I wanted to make sure the kidnappers could get ahold of me, you know my phone doesn’t work, so I took yours,” I breathlessly spit out.

She laughed, and returned the hug I’d started in relief. “I got lost. I guess I didn’t see where to turn. I got lost, and when I hit the T intersection, I knew I’d gone too far.”

“But how did I miss you?”

“I just turned around at the viewpoint, came down here, got lost, then found my way back about five minutes ago.”

“Well, I guess I know now how much I worry about you – how much I care for you. I don’t want to lose you, you know.”

“I know.”

“You really ought to come with me to my photography course in Oaxaca,” Cheryl announced.

“Uh, I’ll think about it…” My usual delay tactic. New ideas take some time to seep into my head, especially when I’ve got some momentum on another track. Like wanting to do another Ironman in October or November.

But I checked the participants in those late season races, and found that I might have some real competition. I knew I needed a rest, more spiritual than physical, more emotional than mental, from trying once again to be Number One at an all day endurance event. I next looked at half-Ironman races – “70.3” – and discovered that the conflicting one in Arizona was already filled.

“We can take a Spanish immersion language course – stay with a host family, and really learn Spanish. Annie and I did it 15 yers ago . She really enjoyed it, and I think you would, too.” Cheryl kept pushing. Clearly I was not going to find an easy weasel out of this. I was looking at going back to Cuba, without her, next March, and then on to Spain in April. It might actually be useful to have some practical Spanish available in my brain.

After what seemed like months of tortured delays, I finally admited I would have to go to Oaxaca. No races pulled me away. Keeping on the good side of my wife outweighed any fear I might have of foreign travel. And the weather down there promised to be, well, perfect.

Oaxaca sits in the midst of the Isthmus of Mexico, a narrowing between the Caribbean and the Pacific, where the country bends eastward after falling to the south below the Rio Grande. Set about 18 degrees above the equator, farther south than Hawaii or Cuba, Oaxaca enjoys a sumer monsoon much like the Four Corners states in the US. Winds from the east bring warm moist air which meets the mountains rising upwards of 3,000 meters (13,000 feet), causing frequent afternoon summer thundershowers to fall into the fertile valleys below, at about 5,000 feet. The storms peter out around mid-October, just about the time we would arrive. This is not the the Sonoran or the Chihuahuan Desert of northern Mexico. The hills are verdant, with evergreens growing up their slopes; crops grow lustily in the volcanic soil. Temperatures above 82 and below 50 are unusual at any time of year. The more I learned, the more my resignation at going became anticipation.

Cheryl’s primary motivation was Dia de Los Muertos – the Mexican Day of the Dead festival which achieves full flower in Oaxaca’s Zapotec and other indigenous communities. She had signed up for a week-long photography course centered on capturing the festivities in the village cemetaries. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a fifth wheel to that, so I begged off, and we compromised on a ten day day visit for me: three days of sightseeing, then then five days in Spanish school, plus a day of travel on either end.

One wrinkle cropped up, though. I had, for reasons still obscure to me, begun a program of daily running, hoping to make 100 days straight. This started September 2nd, and our trip was planned for October 19-28, just when I would be revving into the meat of the streak. I poured over the internet, scouting the area via Google Maps satellite view, reading reports from traveling and ex-pat runners, and wondering just how I might get from our lodgings to some place runnable.

Oaxaca, like most cities in Mexico, combines a Spanish colonial core, replete with cathedral, temple, and hacienda style closed-courtyard dwellings in the center of town, surrounded by an aggregation of metastatic growth along the valley and crawling up the hills. Streets are narrow, sidewalks sometimes blocked, houses mostly one or two story cinderblock or concrete shell – many with rebar sticking up, like multiple tiny chimneys. There really isn’t any place to run in the urbanized zone. Cars, pedestrians, buildings, and markets take up all the available space.

But I noticed just to the west and north of the Zona Turistica a park-like area, called Cerro del Fontin. A four-lane road traversed the southern edge. An observatory, planetarium, and auditorium occupied the southern section, and trails led into the brush north of there. This looked promising.

Our first morning in town, therefore, I went out at sunrise from our B&B (more of a boutique hotel) to see if I might continue my streak somewhere close. I walked uphill several blocks and found a three story parking structure, for the Auditorio Guelaguetza, just on the edge of the highway. Just as Google Street View had shown, a narrow sidewalk hugged the road, protected from the rush hour traffic by bright yellow railing. On the top of the garage, a small set of exercise machines was in use by several early morning devotees. Dog walkers, strollers, and even a few runners braved the fumes, noise, and headlights on the sidewalk. I dutifully ran from one end of this little path to the other, and garnered about 3 miles with an out and back which included a serious hill of 8-10 % for nearly a mile, smack in the middle. But the views of the city and the sunrise were uplifting.

Later that morning, Cheryl and I came back up, crossing over the highway on one of three pedestrian bridges which had clearly made life safer for the local citizens. We walked up to the planetarium, down and around the auditorio. She was entranced by the view, and vowed to come up at sunrise “in a day or two” to try her hand at early morning  photography.

(to be continued)