She followed us down the street, shouting at us and cursing us in English and Spanish.
Rod and I had stopped at a tourism booth downtown to get a map of the city. When Rod asked for a map, the tourism lady turned to her children and said, "These disgraceful people want a map." That was the beginning of her outburst.
Now, she was following us, getting in our face when she could, cussing at us and shouting that we should be deported.
We finally managed to shake the helpful tourism department worker and buy the things we came to market for--mostly coffee and chili salt.
The day had begun well. Benito walked us to the bus stop. We crossed paths with an innocent man sweeping the sidewalk, and Benito gave him a good barking--just in case.
That was where the good times ended.
After we bought our coffee, a protest broke out in the middle of town. Protesters blocked all the bus routes out of town, so we couldn't catch a bus home. Bus or no bus, we knew we better leave while we could. Rod hailed a cab and paid a ridiculously inflated price for the cab driver to somehow get us out of town. The driver believed he could do it, if he took a back way.
I felt better when I saw we were really going to make it out of town. We zipped down back roads and past out-of-the-way shops. This wasn't so bad. We could still make it home and go to the orphanage to volunteer this afternoon.
That's when we ran into the soldiers.
A regiment had set up a checkpoint, and they were there in full force. The cab driver's eyebrows shot up and he said, "Soldiers? What are they doing here? Something must be going on."
Rod turned to me and said, "We probably better just plan on staying home today."
Here I sit. We made it home an hour ago, and I still feel pretty shook up. I wish I had some yarn or something, so I could knit. Yarn was on my shopping list today, but I couldn't find any.
We planned on coming home from the market, eating lunch, and heading to the orphanage. Now, I guess we can't.
Just another day in beautiful Oaxaca.
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