With a Little Help from Our Amigos

Ann and I went to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, with six friends last week. This was our first international travel since my neurosurgery six years ago. It was also a honeymoon after our state-sanctioned wedding two weeks ago.

I was excited but nervous about the trip. I have loved traveling in non-touristy towns in technologically developing countries since my first trip to Michoacan, Mexico, 25 years ago, and I have mourned that with my disabilities, such travel was over for this life.

Fortunately, our good friends John and Jerry (who also participated in the mass wedding ceremony and thus were also on a honeymoon) invited us to go along with longtime friends Susan and Rod and new friends Megan (who is fluent in Spanish) and Kevin (who is fluent in English).

We stayed in our friends’ Chuck and Mary’s “Casa Loma,” a five bedroom/five bathroom home, a great place with several covered outdoor areas with lots of hammocks and a lovely warm breeze.

Mornings I often slept late, did yoga, and ate at my breakfast at Casa Loma while Ann took an early morning walk with Susan and Megan and some number of them met up for a tasty Mexican breakfast.

Days were hot, in the low 80s, and most days Ann and I took a taxi to a beach and sat in a lounge chair under a large umbrella, drinking beer or pina-coladas, eating guacamole with chips, and reading our books until time for dinner.

The eight of us went to a local restaurant each night for dinner, at one restaurant sitting on the beach as the sun sank over the ocean, at another listening to a local singer who was quite good and at another eating tasty Mexican food like Chile Relleno (that’s what I had). At every restaurant, we had margaritas. Tasty.

It was difficult for me to manage the often steep and uneven surfaces, as I had feared, but Ann and our friends were so supportive that I was always able to manage potential obstacles, and the only time that I was locked in the house was the time that our front gate was locked from the outside while all of us were on the inside. So I was locked in with the others.

I even got to practice my Spanish again, talking with taxi-drivers and restaurant owners. The woman who met us at the home even told me that my Spanish was "sufficente." Quite the compliment, don't you think?

Ann and I learned on this trip that we can travel internationally again, and we don’t have to go to resorts or other touristy places, so long as we go with our amigos.