Travel with Kevin and Ruth: I can't believe we made it!

Monday, May 4, 2026

I can't believe we made it!

A bit of a long travel day, but really, considering that we sat on buses for 9 hours, we felt the time went by fast enough.

Our hotel in Oaxaca, the Hotel Posada San Rafael was a bit of a disappointment though.

The rooms are not air conditioned, which we knew in advance, and normally we're quite happy with fans. But the room we had was stifling hot, and only had a window that opened into the hallway, so we couldn't leave the curtain open to let some air flow. So we didn't sleep well.

And, the WiFi was awful. They gave you three different choices to connect, and the best one would only manage 15 mb/s. I'm sorry, but if you're located in the city, there's no reason you can't supply your customers with minimum 100 mb/s internet in this day and age.

My review was written the same. Anyhow, good thing it was only one night.

We did the five minute walk to the bus station and Ruth waited with the bags while I went out to the main street to find some food to go. I bought us four chicken tamales, and we were good to go!

The bus was supposed to leave at 8:00am, but it was about ten minutes late leaving. It took almost an hour to get out of metro Oaxaca city. Couldn't believe the traffic even on a Sunday morning.

It's never easy taking decent photos out of a bus window.

The bus was scheduled to arrive at Mexico City's TAPO bus terminal near the airport at 3:00pm. I was actually hoping it would be a few minutes early because we only had an hour to take the metro subway to get to the Poniente terminal in the west end for our 4:00pm bus to Valle de Bravo.

If we missed the 4:00pm bus, the next one isn't until 5:30pm and we would end up getting home after dark. We really wanted to get the 4:00pm bus, but it didn't look promising when we pulled in to the TAPO station 15 minutes late.

But, we got off the bus quickly, and we know our way around fairly well and had no problem making our way to the metro station. We have a transit card for Mexico City, so it was fast and easy to get through to the track. We only had to wait two minutes and we were on the train.

Google maps said it was a 35 minute train ride, and I thought there was no way we would make it in time. When we got off the train at Observatorio it was 3:55pm., it's still a five minute walk and then we still had to buy our tickets. But we hurried, and again, we know our way around so we knew exactly where to go. There was nobody at the counter, and the guy said "you have to be fast", and we bought the tickets and hurried to the departure gate.

Got on the bus, and literally 30 seconds later they closed the door and off we went. Had we been another 60 seconds later, we wouldn't have made it!

They have done some beautiful murals on the toll road between Mexico City and Toluca.

Really well done.

We pulled into El Arco at exactly 6:00pm. Ruth stayed with the bags, and I walked up to the roast chicken place and bought dinner for takeout. Of course we have zero food in the fridge and we'll have to do some shopping today.

Interesting to see the water level on the lake. We actually had some fairly heavy rain for twenty minutes as we left Mexico City. And looking at the forecast it looks like rainy season is going to begin this coming weekend. That will be good for the water level, and considering the time of year, the water level is actually still quite good.