El Guero Welcome Guest | Login or Register

The “moto-carros” are unique to Tehuantepec (not found anywhere else in the Istmo–or in Mexico.) They are motorcycles with a pick-up style bed on the back that are used for transporting people (and stuff) around the city.

The one above is carrying two Tehuanas back to the market area from a few blocks south of the market.

We normally walk or drive ourselves around, so we haven’t tried riding one yet–but I think it’s something I should do before leaving.

This week-end we finally bought a real table and chairs (so far we’ve survived with a folding picnic table and lawn chairs.) Although sitting in a lawn-chair is pleasant enough in the short-term—it’s really not ideal for longer stints (or trying to work in front of the computer.)

Saturday was our “food” day…we stopped at the market in Tehuantepec and picked up all our fruits and vegetables (still not mango season yet…) And then headed to the “Bodega” in Juchitan where we do most of our meat/dairy/dried goods shopping (and we finally got ice-cream and freezies for the house.) Our restaurant discovery was the “Asador del Istmo” which is an open-air BBQ restaurant where you dine under a palalapa surrounded by banana trees. We decided to live dangerously and ordered our first steaks in Mexico, which were not quite as tender as Canadian or Argentinian—but they tasted great—so we were happy.

I setup the BBQ yesterday and we treated ourselves to some “barbacoa”…it’s been three weeks without so it was a happy meal… Today I did the fruit and veggie shopping at the market in Tehuantepec—picking up some fresh avocado, cilantro, pineapple, watermelon, etc. Today’s meal was homemade “tacos al pastor” (which should have at least a few of you envious) and the remaining cilantro and avocado will soon be turned into guacamole. So far we’ve been enjoying the food—whether in the restaurants, the fruit from the market (espec. watermelon and pineapple), or the freshly made tortillas from the stand down the street. We’re in the tropical belt and we’re close to the ocean so there is a lot of fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood to eat. We’re drinking lots of water and fresh juices (watermelon juice is the best) to keep from dehydrating. I also get to enjoy the occasional cold beer every now and then (mostly Bohemia and Victoria—as Dos Equis doesn’t seem to be too popular around here.) As well, Danielle can now get her Manzana Lift (which tastes like candy apples) whenever she wants. We’ve tried one of the local specialties (some sort of fruit marinated in sugar cane alcohol) but haven’t yet gotten to the “cow’s head tacos” (they display the cow’s head right at the taco stand so that you there’s no question about where the meat came from….)

Our plan was to go to Playa Azul today (approx. 20km away) but after turning down the road to the beach we discovered that last night’s rain had flooded more of the road than we were comfortable driving through (with a 4Runner—no problem, but Paco doesn’t have the same capabilities.) Instead we drove further up the coast towards Hualtulco and ended up Playa Chipehua. The surf was too rough to go in for a swim—but it was great to sit under a Palapa and enjoy the breeze and a little of spray from the breaking waves. Lunch was “pescado asado” in a chile sauce served with various fruits and vegetables (and was wonderful.) It’s a great little beach. Highly recommended!

Details: Km 359 on the highway from Salina Cruz to Hualtulco, 16 03.88″ N 95 23.85″ W. It’s a few km to the beach after you turn off the highway, once you’re at the beach–take the 3rd road to El Palomar Chipehua where we ate.

After two weeks on sleeping on the inflatable bed, we’ve finally given up (a less than comfortable bed combined with high temperatures really messes up a good night’s sleep.) Yesterday we went bed-shopping in Juchitan (there’s only one place that sells beds in Tehuantepec—and they don’t deliver.) We were hoping to buy a queen-size bed (so that we can use all the bedding that we brought down) however there were no queen size beds in any of the furniture stores (although everyone was willing to sell us a queen-size mattress…?) There were lots of king-size beds available, but fitting one into our 8′ x 8′ bedrooms would be difficult—so we settled on a “matrimonial” (double.) Delivery will be Monday morning. We celebrated with an ice-cream on Saturday night.

We finally moved into our house—it’s a fairly simple two bedroom house in Barrio Pitayal (on the southern edge of Tehuantepec.) It came with fridge, stove, air conditioner, telephone, and cable hookup. It’s great to be able to finally unpack everything, relax a little and prepare our own meals. Having the air-conditioner is great—even though it doesn’t work all that well it drops the temperature in the house by a few degrees at night (making it possible to sleep!) It has been really hot here—warmer than a Southern Ontario heatwave and it doesn’t cool down as much at night and there aren’t near as many thunderstorms to break the heat. Like all houses here, we don’t have hot water—but our “cold” water is very warm (so warm that it doesn’t really help when you try to take a cool shower.)

Our first furniture purchase for the house was a hammock (we have hammock rings embedded in the walls in both the living room and the back yard.) So now I have somewhere to rest when my days start getting too hectic.

We’ve also got a dial-up internet connection which is good enough for email and online banking, etc. It seems that our neighbourhood won’t be getting highspeed internet for at least a couple of weeks (at that point I’ll have gone a month without highspeed—it’s like being back in the 20th century again.)

We also have gecko lizards in the house (although not as many or as big as the university—there must be fewer mosquitos) as well as another scorpion (now deceased.)

We had been told that the university had arranged for a house for us—and went to look at it during our first afternoon in Tehuantepe. Unfortuantely, it didn’t meet our requirements so we settled into the university residence while we looked for a place to live. It was an interesting place to stay (it’s a few km outside of Tehuantepec with nothing nearby except for scrubland.) There were armed guards at the gate that had to let us in/out whenever we wanted to go somewhere—and the apartments where definitely not intended for a long-term stay (a minimum of furniture, no screens on the windows and no telephone or TV.) However to make things more interesting we had a number of geckos in the apartment (good—they eat mosquitos) as well as a scorpion that we killed our first night.

We quickly hit the Telcel store in Tehuantepec and picked up a prep-paid SIM card so that we could make/receive calls (only 430 pesos for the SIM which includes 300 pesos of airtime.) We also picked up a large floor fan—as the apartment was always hot (and the constant breeze/winds didn’t have any sort of cooling effect.)

The local real-estate market is very different (and challenging if you’re neither a local or fluent in Spanish.) There are no real-estate agents and no listings of houses/apartments that are available for rent—everything is accomplished by signs, word of mouth and asking around. To make things even more difficult we wanted a house that came with appliances (normally they’re barebones and the renter needs to buy fridge, stove, etc.) and we also wanted high speed internet capabilities (a lot of houses don’t even have phone lines—let alone high speed internet access.) After a few drives around the newer barrios and talking to one of the local Rotarians and one of Danielle’s co-workers, we were eventually able to find a house in Barrio Pittayal (on the outskirts of Tehuantepec near the university.)