Rich in beauty and Mezcal - Oaxaca City and region

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Tim Version:
* Experienced Monte Alban and Mitla ruins, and the beautiful city of Oaxaca.
* Taste tested every type of Mezcal I could find, all the local beers, and copped a few heavy hangovers because of it!

The version with tired blurry eyes from all that Mezcal:

The bus to Oaxaca City, awesome! Cold but not deadly air conditioning, I got my windoow seat beside somenoe who yet again tried to convince me that I don't know which number is the window. I slept awesomely and awoke to beautiful, dry desert, hilly Agave cacti fields, and other taller Cacti all around. I love the sun, I really really love the sun, and nothing reflects it better than the desert! The road and most life followed a small stream winding through the shallow valley, providing a carpet of green to contrast the surrounding dry hills. When we entered Oaxaca City, I was so happy to see it was a beautiful, clean, quite modern city but still with all the charm of a more colonial town. Here my definition of modern is loose, such as a place that has footpaths that fit more than one person and places with mailboxes, but Oaxaca City is both that and a whole lot more!

Armed with a tourist map from the bus station and my Spanish I set out and found a good hostel called Mezcalito. Oaxaca as a region, famous for its Mezcal, so only fitting that I stay in a hostel with a name like that! I failed at first, only finding some dodgy overpriced places, but this hostel was really nice. I checked out the Zocalo (main park), and it too was beautiful with lots of life going onwith kids playing, all the usual stuff being sold, a tourist bureau, lots of plants and fountains (with water!! Usually they are dry...) and just a generally very happy vibe. The market here is excellent for food, just south of the Zocalo, and there are the usual few churches to take a gander at as well as other buildings of interest. While I'm now avoiding churches a bit, there is one that is outstanding, with an incredible cacti garden in front of it and some other trees around that beautifully represent the surrounding countryside.

Sick to hell of internet cafes and crappy computers and after seeing my host in San Cristobal with his, I decided I'd take a deep breath and buy a mini laptop to travel with. An Acer Aspire One turned out to fit the bill and at about $500 AUS its about the cheapest. So that is now what this blog is being written on =) 6 months without a computer!! I did pretty good didn't I? Considering I'm on them 7 days a week at home... its a strong addiction to kick. They give me the ability to learn, to be creative in a style I'm good at, and to store music and books and all sorts of stuff... so yehhh, back to being computerised now!

With a couple of guys from the hostel we hit up a Mezcal Bar and ended up just a little too drunk on those wicked little shots. Its good shit and its pretty damn cheap, all produced here. The bar was a more proper local Mexican bar too wit very little foreigners so we felt the part even though I'm sure we didn't look it. It had walls painted with Palenque style ruins and war scenes, with one jukebox playing Metallica and the other playing Spanish love songs. Most of the "men", they were in singing the Spanish love songs. Me of course had my ear glued to the Metallica.

Another drunken night in Oaxaca was spent out with a larger crew of people form the hostel crusing around various pubs. The drinks in the hostel beforehand alone had me drunk as a monkey by the time we left, and the rest of the night while a lot of fun was a little bit of a blur. I remember we got sad coz we lost the pretty girls somewhere along the line, but finding a good bar afterwards made us all forget about that. I also had an interesting debate cross Q and A session with a couple from the US, who afterwards with a smile on his face diagnosed me as a Socialist heh. And in some ways I think he was right! Maybe reading that giant Che Guevera book, even though I think Che Guevera as a person was a bit of an asshole and not someone I would want to know, rubbed off some ideas on to me. Maybe not. Who knows. I dislike and really know nothing about politics but it was a funny answer I thought for someone to say about me, but its got me thinking now heh. Its a funny tag beacause of the negativity which surrounds it which to me is what makes it interesting. I would certainly never say I am Socialist, or its opposite, or anywhere inbetween, and I think much of it is a load of rubbish.

Almost my last ruins, I also took a day trip to Monte Alban. Situated on the top of a very large hill, probably more of a mountain really, it has an incredible location. They're apparently Zapotec rins, and are a basic raw style of ruins, much less ornamental than the others I've seen. The killer views though well and truly make up for it. Since I was there early, I also got to duck past the fence into a bit you aren't meant to go into, and walked a while to some ruins that they were just unearthing. Always good to see the process as it unfolds and it is easy to forget just how worn down and almost non existent they can be before they are rebuilt up. Yet again the Chichen Itza style calpping effect was there, so that noise filled the air as I wandered around. I have found that I'm much better at viewing ruins by myself, so thats what I did. There is also one very cool particular symbol there that represents the peoples that they conquered, a symbol with the Monte Alban symbol on top and an upside down head underneath.

A hung over day I did a totally organised tour that the hostel was advertising. It hit nearly everything I wanted, going to a Mezcal Factory, Mitla, Hierva el Agua, El Tule, and one other site. I was the only one from the hoostel who went, heh the rest were just getting up hung over as well, trying to make it down the steps to breakfast. It was like watching a bunch of zombies make a very slow mass attack. Driven from place to place with guides both in English and in Spanish, it was cruisy and good fun. The first bus ride also showed me just how hung over I was... thank god it was a short run! El Tule, a big tree with an incredibly fat trunk that has local significance. Mitla, a zapotec small site with an altogether different feel, though after seeing so many I'm getting picky heh. What else... THE MEZCAL FACTORY! Hell yeh =) Hung over or not, I learnt how they make it then taste tested every flavour they had... mmm so many types we just can't get at home! We saw how they make the dyes for fabrics and how they weave it, although I had no interest and didn't acutally know it was in the tour, and the whole thing finished with Hierva el Agua! Some well situated natural springs with a good view of the surrounding countryside. The main part, not too exciting to me (and apparently the pressure is weakening significantly so it won't be around for too much longer!) but I went adventuring around the area and found some more distant spots minus all the tourists including another spring and that was awesome. Beautiful views from the area I walked to as the sun was setting too. I tried to capture it on film but the magic just never seems to make it into the camera quite how you see it with you own eyes!

* Quick note on AMERICAN TOURISTS *
They have the reputation as being the most annoying right? And the Japanese, they're always the camera toting photos of everything crowd right? Well combine them and you get a Mexican tourist! This is a huge generalisation I know, the same as the other two, but to me and my experiences it holds more strongly than the other generalisations. The number of photos grows significantly by the crowd... a family of 4 can mean a photo of each person in front of the statue, then each combination of two, then each combination of 3, then if there is someone willing to take the photo, one fo the four of them. In the rest of the trip I could wait until people finished taking photos and get a shot without people in it, which is my thing... heh here, that just wasn't going to happen! Now people can be tourists however they want, however they enjoy it most. This is just an observation,...
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Oaxaca City by now was getting far too comfortable with the danger of me just hanging around forever so it was time to pack my bags again and shuffle off to the beach, about 7 hours south... this includes Puerto Escondido, home of some very big waves in the on season! Unfortunately its now off season but still it should rock =)

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Photos

Champion road crossing man
They have the best street crossing displays! Not only does it tell you how many seconds until you can cross but it also has a cool little malk who struts along while you're allowed to cross

Old door
The artistic photo

Monte Alban wheelchair access
A good sign of an area in progress

Monte Alban - you're conquered!
The carvings describing peoples that were conquered

Monte Alban views
The end of the photo is the part that I jumped the rope and went to look at on my own

Monte Alban - ooh the pain!
A carving apparently describing a man with his valuables removed - a capture prisoner

Floral perfection
A flower with a killer view