It is 9:33 pm and I am sitting in the service vehicle (Thank you Peter Lambert, for the world's most comfortable service vehicle!) deep in the bowels of the underground parking garage of the Camino Real in Puebla, Mexico's second largest city.
Conrad and Bill, I mean, Memo, have taken off the headers because they have developed another serious crack and we have convinced the maintenance guy to let us use his shop to weld it up...thank goodness we brought our welder!
We had this problem last year and were lucky enough to befriend other crews who would lend us their welder at night.
Today we left Oaxaca at 6am. There is something very peaceful about driving out of Oaxaca on our way to the service stop in Nochixtlan, at that hour. The sun, nor the majority of the city's people are up. The landscape is beautiful and the silence that comes between people who woke up too early is calm and peaceful.
Lalo has rented a car to give him some flexibility through the rest of his visit, not to mention room in the car to travel...he was sardines in the backseat all day yesterday from Huatulco to Oaxaca...a true sport!
He has been a star and has amused us very much with good quotes:
"When I get home, I am going to buy a cheap Studebaker, wash it, and sell it!"
And, referring to the Range Rover:
"This is what this car probably dreams about doing when it goes to sleep at night."
Today Conrad drove and Martin navigated.
Our service stop was at a Pemex we have visited each of the three years we have come to LCP. There is a restaurant where we have breakfast and pretty horrible espresso. We get a chance to hang out with other crew peeps.
Boy! There are a lot of people with the "issue". Quote of this morning:
"NOT SAFE TO FART"
Luckily, we are all doing fine here on Taxi Perdido team! We have a regimen: no sala
Conrad gave us a heads up that he'd be needing to hook up the welder, so Memo and I scrambled to find an outlet to plug in the welder. One was near the pumps....hmmmm. We did manage to find one in a very good spot and the car was suitably stitched in the 1 1/2 hour stop.
After the service stop, we headed to Tehuacan for the town fiesta for La Carrera Panamericana. We went there last year and to our amazement, hordes of people come out and completely fill the streets and engulf the races cars. It is amazing to watch the crowd open up let the cars in and close back up around them! It's like a bizarre consumption!
People of all ages love the postcards and ask Martin and Condenado for autographs and to pose with them for photos. The other noise is bizarre, really ear splitting music, scantilly clad, young girls jumping up and down on a stage to the encouragement of the all male gawkers. The racers are handed beers when arriving into the town.
After the race cars left, Memo and I headed for the ever confusing streets of Puebla, the place we have always relied on real taxis to lead us to our hotel!
Well, I just learned that Martin and Conrad were announced class winners tonight at the drivers meeting! Woohoo! Good job, guys!
Tomorrow, Queretaro! Martin driving and Condenado navigating!
TaxiCrew reporting...
Location:Puebla
"The landscape is beautiful and the silence that comes between people who woke up too early is calm and peaceful."
ReplyDeleteNice! I love this sentence!