Our Trip to Colima
Well, things did not exactly go as planned on our first long-distance trip while fasting. We didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before because we wanted to leave very early in the morning. Of course when we got to Chapala we had just missed the 7:00 AM bus, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. From there it is an hour ride into Guadalajara, where the bus stops at what is known as the old bus station.
Most large Mexican cities have two bus stations, one for in-state travel, and one for inter-state. That is the case with Guadalajara. Of course they are located at as much distance from one another as possible, because having them side by side would be too convenient for travelers. From the old bus station we took a city bus to the (what else?) new bus station — another full hour, crawling across the city and stopping almost every block for passengers.
In the new bus station we only had to wait about half an hour for the next bus to Colima, which left at 10:30 AM. That bus takes half an hour just to cross Guadalajara, so about 11:00 AM we were leaving the city — we got up at 5:00 AM for an early start! The city of Colima is about four hours from Guadalajara by bus, but before we got there Isabel began to feel sick to her stomach. We were supposed to break our fast about the time we got to Colima, but by then she felt too ill to eat anything other than a small bread roll. I had a big sandwich and was feeling fine.
From the city of Colima we took another bus to Tecoman, almost an hour further toward the coast. There we got a hotel room and, since Isabel hadn’t eaten much of anything at Colima, we went to a restaurant for her to get a meal. I had some french fries and a beer while she ate a normal sized meal. I had hoped that would solve her stomach problem, but it wasn’t lack of food that was bothering her, as she continued to feel poorly that night and into the next day.
Our schedule called for resuming the fast the next day, but since we were going to our cottage in Cerro de Ortega that day, we had lots of work to do, and Isabel was still feeling ill. So we decided to abandon the fast for a day or two, until she felt better. We resumed our fasting schedule Sunday, when we made the trip back without stopping for food, and ate when we got home. Isabel was feeling fine again by then, and endured the same grueling trip in reverse without problem, so we assume she just had one of the short-term ‘bugs’ we all get from time to time. If she were at home and could rest, I would not consider that enough to stop the fast — indeed fasting might help cure the bug problem faster, but since we had lots of work (cleaning, moving furniture, we even planted a couple coconut palm trees) the combination of sickness and physical activity was too much to support on an empty stomach. I could have continued fasting, but it would be awkward since we were eating in restaurants. Also Isabel felt she would be ‘cheating’ if she ate when I fasted. In the end we only skipped one and one-half fast periods, but that (and the great seafood in Colima), was enough that I gained back half a kilo. Isabel continued to lose weight, since she was eating lightly because of her upset stomach.
The experience left Isabel with the opinion that fasting is just too difficult under the strain of travel. I suspect it would have been OK had she not gotten ill and if we were going for a restful vacation instead of working on refurbishing the cottage. It was more the combination of strains, rather than travel alone, that caused us to break the fast for a few days. I must admit that habit, too, plays a large part, as we are accustomed to ’splurging’ on our trips to Colima, where the shrimp cocktails, ceviche, and various other seafood dishes beckon us to the beach-front restaurants.
