Spanish Language School in Oaxaca Days 1-3
March 12, 2026
We arrived a day late due to our flight being cancelled, but we settled in to our little language school in Oaxaca quickly. The school feels a bit informal - there are a number of small apartments and rooms arranged around a courtyard. Room rental includes a breakfast served in the courtyard, then classes begin. There is also a cafe on the rooftop terrace, and there are a number of tables under umbrellas or awnings up there. Classes are conducted one on one, so the courtyard and terrace look like a bunch of tables which each have two people conversing.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this - so far it mostly consists of me having conversations with the instructors, but they patiently correct my mistakes and help translate when I don’t know how to say something in Spanish. We are taking two hours of instruction in the morning, then there is a lunch break, then we do two more hours with a different instructor.
We finish the instruction at 2:00 so there is plenty of time in the afternoons to explore the city.
On the first afternoon we did some grocery shopping. There is a small kitchenette with a refrigerator and microwave in our apartment, so we bought some drinks and cheese at the “mini super” market, then spent quite a while trying to find a bakery which turned out to have been closed that day. The way they close it there isn’t even a sign to know that a bakery exists.
On the second afternoon we walked up a street that eventually became stairs to a hill overlooking the city. We saw some of the murals that Oaxaca is famous for on the way up.
There is also a big semi-outdoor auditorium in a natural bowl in the hill.
We did some more shopping, looking for salsa matcha. Matcha is an unusual type of salsa which seems like very spicy vegetable oil with seeds and nuts in it. We found a couple brand-named ones and also bought a home-made one from a little old lady at a market. The bakery was open so we bought some pastries and sliced bread and some hummus to go on it.
Later we walked down to the Zócalo, one of the main plazas in the city, on our way to a recommended mezcaleria (mezcal distillery), El Joven Viejo, to taste some mezcals. We passed at least five other mezcalerias on the way. A small town in the state of Oaxaca is known as the home of mezcal.
We returned to the Zócalo looking for a place for dinner and found they were setting up for some kind of musical event.
We settled on eating at Mayor Domo, a restaurant and chocolate drink chain, which has a rooftop terrace overlooking the music in the plaza.
Today I spent my afternoon class going to the Oaxacan Cultural Center, a Textile Museum, and a museum of Oaxacan painters with my instructor. Because the mountains in this area are very rugged a lot more of the indigenous culture and traditions have been maintained by isolated villages in difficult-to-reach places. The textile museum had a lot of information about the different designs and methods that are unique to various villages in the state.
At the museum of Oaxacan painters the phrase in English “Heroic Shart” caught my attention - if I start a band, maybe that will be the name!
After class we decided to look for more murals in the Xochimílco neighborhood.
Flight to Oaxaca
March 09, 2026
We slept fairly well and did not get any messages early in the morning about our flight being canceled. We ate another Best Western breakfast and saw on the news that TSA lines in various airports around the country were extremely long so we packed up quickly and got to the airport almost three hours ahead of our scheduled flight. Fortunately ABQ is a very sleepy airport and the line was longer than usual - we had to wait for five or six minutes to get through TSA.
Unfortunately there was some kind of issue with the airplane - United said there was a cleaning issue, and it arrived late. We departed a bit over half an hour late which made for a slightly stressful layover in Houston, but we made it.
We arrived in Oaxaca a bit before the sun went down. The hills had nice lighting as we approached for landing.
We got through immigration and customs without any issues and took a collectivo (taxi van that makes multiple stops) to the bed and breakfast associated with the language school and got settled in, then we walked around. Julie knew of a reliable street food vendor but wasn’t sure exactly which street they were on. Eventually we found it and got some quesadillas for dinner.
We stopped at a small grocery on the way back to the room. The room features a fridge, microwave, and electric kettle so we can make tea and coffee and keep some drinks cold.
Canceled Flight
March 08, 2026
We woke up to the news that United had canceled our flight from Albuquerque to Houston, which left us no way to get to Oaxaca. We are re-booked on the same flight tomorrow, but it was a long battle with United’s customer service to get even “Economy Plus” seats on the new flights despite our canceled flight being in Business. It seems like their rebooking algorithm should give you either the same class of seats you had on the canceled flight, or the best available seat in the re-booking if the same class is already full but, no, it just re-books you into the worst seat on the plane.
Anyway, after that we had a day in Albuquerque. Gustavo had some good suggestions but my wife was very tired. We ended up walking to a grocery store to pick up a couple things for the trip. On the way back we stopped at Differential Brewing where we had some decent but not amazing beer and a really nice pizza, but they played really loud and harsh punk rock music for all but the last few minutes we were there, then the playlist made a sudden transition to country.
We walked past a large and old cemetery where trees were already blooming.
We spent some time at the hotel trying to accomplish some stuff on our devices, then went for another walk in the evening, eventually ending up at 377 Brewery where the beer was better but the food less interesting.
Helmet Hair
Looking at Gustavo’s Flickr and I see that after almost two weeks of motorcycling every day, I wake up, take a shower, and already have “helmet hair” at breakfast.
Motorcycle Mexico 2026 Day 15
March 07, 2026
We got up early and had a huge breakfast at the Best Western.
We got on the road a few minutes after eight and headed north. It was cool, around 55 degrees, and slowly warmed to the low sixties. We took the toll roads to save some time. It slowly got windier the closer we got to Juarez. There is a lot of sagebrush and rocks, but also some agriculture, including a lot of pecan trees.
There was a military checkpoint where we had to stop and a guy went through our luggage. The sign looks like a computer translation of the Spanish equivalent.
We completed our temporary vehicle import permits and terminated our tourist permit and got exit stamps on our passports at a low-traffic customs station on the outskirts of Juarez. Then we skirted Juarez and headed back to the Santa Teresa border station where we entered Mexico. Unfortunately the line was really long. We spent two hours slowly creeping to the U.S. entry station.
From there it was less than an hour to Ross and Maryanne’s house. It took about an hour and a half to get the bikes loaded up and sort out what would stay in the truck and what Gustavo would fly home with. Then we drove a short distance to Gary and Shannon’s house to pick up a gas tank needing transport to Portland for our friend Tony. Catching up with them took a while - eventually said our farewells and found a place to eat dinner and got on the road to Albuquerque, where the motorcycle adventure part of this trip ends.
This trip was a really fun ride and adventure. We saw a lot of neat stuff, ate great food, and found excellent curvy roads, but we could wish for better pavement on many of the roads.
Motorcycle Mexico 2026 Day 14
March 06, 2026
We slept in a little and then walked down to the end of the block to have breakfast at Tío Molcas, a restaurant with its own hotel attached. The rooms at the Valles Inn Plus are much larger and newer - in general nicer and more spacious than most we have stayed in on this trip, but the bathroom has absolutely no towel racks or hooks. We had a nice breakfast at Tío Molcas - I tried their chilaquiles which were a different style, but still good.
We returned to the room without any hurry - the temperature was only in the forties. We packed up and left at ten when it got to fifty degrees. My tire was still holding air. We left Creel and, despite it feeling like Creel is high in the mountains at 7,700 feet we began climbing, eventually at least a thousand feet higher. While the roads curved around and over ridges, unfortunately the pavement quality was really bad for much of the ride out of the mountains.
We turned off at San Juanito to go to Basaseachi falls. On the road to the falls we could see the cabin where we stayed nineteen years earlier. The bad pavement we rode on today from the turnoff was just sixty-some miles of gravel road back then, and we spent most of the day going from Basaseachi to Creel, but with a few detours and side roads along the way.
We stopped at an Oxxo in La Junta after one thirty to get some cold drinks and a few snacks for lunch. By that time we were out of the mountains and on the plains, although the altitude is still 6,700 feet. The roads got straighter and there was a lot of agriculture in this area, most strikingly big apple orchards arrangements to cover the entire orchards with a net or mesh to keep birds out, and they also help ward off frost.
We arrived in Chihuahua a bit before five and checked in to the Best Western Plus. This is a very upscale Best Western, fancier than any Best Western I remember in the U.S. It is our most expensive hotel in Mexico of the trip on this final night in Mexico, a little over a hundred dollars (we have been between $50 and $60 in most places for a room with two beds). Still cheaper than the much less nice Ramada where we stayed in Las Cruces.
After unpacking lubricating the chains we made our way a few miles further to Gustavo’s sister-in-law’s house. She made us a very tasty dinner using hibiscus, chiles, and nuts with beans and tortillas. We talked for a while with her mother and aunt, and then went to run an errand for them again - a more than fair trade for the delicious dinner.