San Cristobal to Taxco
May 23rd 1995
Until i'd run into Paula a few days earlier, and got caught up on her trip to Cancún, i'd been planning to go to Taxco and visit my old friend Gretchen who'd been living in Mexico for over a year at that time. Then i could have gone to Mexico City and done my immigration stuff there as it was only a couple of hours on the bus from Taxco. I felt like i should have done that in the first place and i decided that that was where i'd go next.
Sonsoles, who lived in Ana's house too, was going to go to Zipolite that day, so i decided to catch the bus with her and spend a couple of days on the beach before i went to Taxco. She never actually made it to the bus station before the bus left though, so i ended up doing the trip on my own. The next morning when we got to Pochutla, which is where you get off for Zipolite, i decided to stay on the bus and keep going. Somehow i just couldn't be bothered with going to Zipolite on my own for a day or two.
About an hour after Pochutla, the bus arrived at Puerto Escondido, which was the end of the line. I went and had some breakfast and then jumped straight on a bus to Acapulco. That was a seven or eight hour journey and some of the countryside on the way was quite interesting, although nothing spectacular. Acapulco was an ugly nightmare of city, overlooking what looked like it would once have been a beautiful bay. I got on a bus out of there as quickly as i could. This one took me to Iguala, which is about four hours north of Acapulco and from there, it was less than an hour on a local minibus to Taxco.
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What a hell-trip that was! Sixty hours on buses in four days - including three nights! I was shattered, to say the least, but i was there at last. All i had to do now was find Gretchen's place, which actually wasn't so hard. Taxco's built entirely on the side of a hill, and it was a long way uphill from the bus station, but i eventually found it.
It was good to see Gretchen again. It had been a couple of years since we'd seen each other last, and we hadn't spent much time together even then. She was living with Victor, who came from Mexico city, in a small, more or less one room flat on the roof of a three storey building. They were both studying jewellery-making at the art school in Taxco.
Despite the fact that i was totally buggered from the journeying of the last few days, i didn't get to sleep till very late that night. It was nearly ten o'clock when i got there and as me and Gretchen hadn't seen each other for so long, we sat up talking for hours.
The next day, i went down to the art school with them. It was a really good place, in nice surroundings and with good facilities. Mexicans paid a hundred pesos a month to study there and foreigners paid a hundred dollars, which is about six times as much. That was quite reasonable really as it didn't mean that only rich mexicans can go there. Gretchen had managed to get some kind of scholarship, which paid the fees but she was struggling to survive on a few hours of teaching english every week. There was a swimming pool at the spanish language school next door and we went swimming that afternoon.
The following day was Friday and i knew i should go to Mexico and do my immigration stuff, as it was the 26th and my visa ran out on the thirtieth. But as government offices close at one o'clock in Mexico, it meant getting up at about five in the morning to get an early bus to make sure you actually got it sorted out without having to go back the next day. And as it wasn't the absolute last moment, i didn't bother.