Nice sauce shame about the alcohol

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We didn’t accomplish a lot on our first day in Oaxaca as we were still feeling the effects of our turbulent mountain traverse the day before. Upon first pass the city of Oaxaca seemed a pretty decent spot. Its Zocalo, the square at the centre of the city, was impressive with its colonial architecture and a teaming crowd of people either enjoying a drink in one of the multitude of cafes or strolling about soaking up the atmosphere. One thing worth noting that was immediately apparent was that for the first time on this journey we’d met our walking match as the speedy Oaxacans showed an unusual turn of pace as they scooted about their city.

Oaxaca is somewhat of a cultural hub for this region and so we had set our sights on seeing its main museums and sampling some of its highly thought of cuisine. The museums element got of to a bad start as most were closed either as part of their normal schedule or some bizarrely motivated industrial action which we didn’t ever properly unravel. Fortunately the industrial action abated and we were able to visit the main museum which excellently charted the history of the region from 2’000BC to present day albeit the ninety plus parts to the tour on our English language audio guides tested our stamina. On the food front we had our Mole Negro for lunch (chicken in a chilli and chocolate sauce) and it was expectedly rich but definitely an intriguing culinary experience. Our cooking (90% of all our eating) also came up trumps as we quickly reached perfection in our quesadilla making and the local in season fruit (ruby red grapefruit, mango and papaya) were ridiculously good.

The other cultural facet that was meant to be a must before departure was sampling Mezcal a tequila like spirit made from Agave cactus. We dutifully tried it one evening and we’ll not be loading our packs with it to bring home. Perhaps we got a duff one but its peculiar / vile smoky after taste was causing our brains to make some close and unfortunate associations with the authentic and putrid sights and smells of the Yorvic Viking Centre in York.

Then that was that our Oaxaca four night stop was over and we were one our final bus bound for Mexico City taking our Mexico bus hours tally to a hefty 37.

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