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Published: January 31st 2008
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Sometimes people like to put a hypothetical question ~ which do you prefer, beaches or mountains? I never really liked that question much in that it tries to make me choose one over the other, and in Oaxaca State, Mexico, I really dont need to choose, as I can quite easily spend a few days on some absolutely gorgeous pacific beaches before taking just a 3.5 hour bus ride ending nearly 3000 meters above sea level at a chilled~out mountain village with a population of only 500 where most of the men wear cowboy hats, and with awesome walks down valleys, up peaks and through indigenous Mexican forest.
My last blog ended with me leaving Mexico city. I had made a new friend at the backpackers in Mexico City in a german girl called Jessi, and as it was her 4th trip to Mexico and she seemed to know the Mexican coast quite pretty well, I ended up tagging along with her on her trip to the beach. She led us to this beautiful little beachside village called Mazunte, which fullfilled everything that I wanted from the first (of many to come) of the beachside chapters of my time in
Central America - cheap beachside cabanas, a lot of fresh seafood, a goregous beach backed by palm trees and a nice warm sea to swim in.
Our days there were lazy mixed with some adventurous-ness. The whole area was made up of a series of connecting bays, and sometimes rocky outcrops would prevent walking directly from one to the other which would mean going "cross country" up and over through forested headlands, with snakes, lizards, and the odd mahoosive spider running away when they heard us coming. Instinctively I'd get a bit nervous when I saw a snake, but it appears that they fear people more, and all they needed to hear was us crashing through the bush and they'd slither off in the other direction pretty promptly.
Mazunte is definitely a bit of a hippys beach, and the whole vibe there was super chilled. Other beaches nearby that I spent time on too were Zipolite (a surfers and "naturists" beach, though I neither surfed nor dropped my pants) and St Augustinilla (which was also very nice, but most of the accom there was a bit flasher and more expensive).
After a few relaxing days days, Jessi
headed south to the small city of San Cristobal de las Casas (somewhere I will get to eventually, its much further south near the border with Guatemala) where she's hoping to become a German teacher at a language school whereas I headed up, up, and up to nearly 3000m above sea level into the highlands to the tiny village of San Jose Del Pacifico which was recommended to me by two young english hippies I met along the way as a seriously chilled place with cool walks through forested mountains. The two english hippies seem to travel the world picking up work at Marijuana farms, and strangely enough they're headed to New Zealand next, and seemed a bit diasappointed when I told them that I didn't personally know anyone involved in large scale cannabis cultivation in New Zealand and therefore couldn't give them any contacts to help them suss out jobs! They seemed like the kind of lads who will follow their own noses and suss it out themselves anyway.
Their enigmatic lifestyles aside, the hippie recommendation to go to San Jose Del Pacifico turned out to be a good one. Life moved so slowly in the 2 street,
San Jose Del Pacifico
Population Approx. 500 approx 500 person village, and it was just so quiet up there. In contrast to the awful air of Mexico City, the air in the tiny village, surrounded on all sides by densely forested mountains, felt like I'd been hooked up to an oxygen tank. On the one full day I had there I went on a fairly mahoosive mission of a walk through the surrounding forest, enjoying the awesome scenery, negotiating a descent of about 500 meters and then coping my best with the 500m back up again, and meeting a few friendly locals along the way who stopped to chat to me in Espanol, it was just a pity I'm not so good at it yet!!!
Since then I've left San Jose and come to Oaxaca (the city) which is the capital of Oaxaca (the state) where I've enrolled in one week's language school which is going fine, but will write more about Oaxaca City in my next blog, as I'm here for a whole week!
Adios!
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German
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hi,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, esta foto si me gusta, esta padrisima, especislmente por que mi papa era de este pueblo