el crispito

Thank God for Charles. I don't say that enough, but it's true. He pulls my fat out of the fire on more occasions that I like to admit.

At my request, he arrived early (he was driving us to the airport too) to make calls and try to fix everything. He called the airline, and for the price of one ticket, he got them to switch both our tickets. Since we had to pay to switch the tickets anyway, Shawn and I decided to extend our trip by a day. This was possible because of a scheduling error on the part of Shawn's employer, wherein he doesn't return to work until several days after when we though he'd have to return to work when we were booking all our travel arrangements. The only problem with extending our stay was that we'd have to change our hotel reservations also. Once again, Charles came to the rescue, calling the hotels and changing the dates around: one extra day in Cuernavaca, and shifting our four days in Puebla by one day, arriving one day later and leaving one day later.

The only hitch was that in Cuernavaca, at the Casa Colonial, we'd have one room for the first two nights, then we'd have to switch rooms. We'd have to get up and pack just to change rooms, but overall, not a big hassle for getting to stay in the same hotel. It would have been worse to have to relocate to another place across town. The hotel even helped out by storing our luggage in a basement in the time where we were out of our room and waiting to take the new room. We didn't want to have to fold up all our clothes that had come back from being ironed the day before, and they took our clothes on hangers and hung them up too, so that we'd not have to stuff them into suitcases just to change rooms.

I sat by the pool, writing and awaiting word that the new room was ready for us to move in, and sure enough, at around 2:30, a nice young lad came over and told me that it was time. He hefted all our luggage and clothes on hangers to the new room, Number 12.

Our previous room had been Number 5, on the third floor, in what seemed like a gussied-up maids quarters. It was nice, but the three flights of stairs we'd have to climb every time we returned from being out, having to cross over the balconies that were adjacent to other rooms, and the small space was a bit of a drag. When I saw that Number 12 was on the first floor, I was relieved that we'd not have to climb what seemed like Mount Everest to get to our room. When I entered and saw the space, I was stunned. It was the same price per night as Number 5, but it was huge, had an extra bedroom and a fireplace! It was so big that it seemed like a small ballet studio with a bed placed on one side. Fancy artwork adorned the walls, and unlike Number 5, it even had a writing desk with a three-prong outlet so that I could plug in my computer. Writer's bliss!

It was so big it felt like we could have our own private lounge in the other two-thirds of the room not occupied by the king size bed.

Shawn and I discussed the difference in quality for the same price. Something had to be wrong with the room. But it seemed so much better in so many ways: hotter water and more pressure than upstairs in Number 5, brighter, more evenly-spaced lighting, a bigger closet, a fireplace, higher ceilings, and did I mention, no three flights of stairs?. I commented that the only thing I could figure out was that the room faced the street, and that the street was pretty busy. Shawn suggested that it would calm down at night, and I agreed, although I pointed out that it would probably pick up again in the morning when we wanted to sleep in.

Now, I don't have much trouble sleeping through loud noise. But what happened to us in the morning was like something out of an "I Love Lucy" episode. I woke up at around 8 am, to the sound of buses driving by to the terminal on the corner. The bus from Mexico City, the very line we were on, arrives every 15 minutes, and other buses from other places arrive at this terminal also. So bus noise was more or less a constant after 8 am.

I had to go to the bathroom, so I did, and upon returning to the main area of the room, I found that Shawn had gotten up and moved into the second bedroom that was adjacent to the interior courtyard so he could sleep. I sat down to write, and then in addition to the bus noise, someone across the street in a business started playing banda music really, really loud. You might have read elsewhere on this blog, of all the musical genres of Mexico, banda is my least favorite.

At one point, people passing by on the sidewalk right below our window stopped to yell at someone across the street, and their ensuing conversation was a series of shouts above the roar of the buses.

I put on my headphones and turned on my iTunes. A little music, perhaps at a volume slightly louder than I'd like, helped to drown out the chaos raging outside the quiet little enclave of the Casa Colonial. I could get back to writing.

Then all of a sudden, a table saw starts up and the blade rings out briefly before the screeching of it ripping wood apart. It sounds like it's right next door to our room. I look through the curtain on the wall that had covered the window overlooking what I thought was just a storage room for the hotel. To my surprise, a hotel employee was sawing pieces of wood in this impromptu wood shop in the storage room, right next to our room, at 8:30 am. It went on for a good ten minutes. I got a reprise at around 10:00.

So if you come to the Casa Colonial in Cuernavaca, unless you're a very heavy sleeper or are one of those crack-of-dawn types, don't get Number 12. And always be sure to double-check the details of your online ticket purchases before you click "Send."