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Published: July 16th 2006
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I can´t feel my feet!
A close-up of our ugly mugs swimming in the waterfalls pool in Santiago de Apaula After leaving Mexico City we made our way south with a brief stop in a town called Puebla to break up the trip. Puebla is known for its pottery and has a very pretty colonial centre with lots of tiled buildings and bright colours!
We were particularly impressed with the ceramic wine vats complete with stands and taps - perfect for your house in France dad but I´m afraid they were too big to carry! Didn´t do much whilst we were there, although looking back on it we seemed to have spent most of our time eating: Puebla is also known for its food, in particular a chilli/chocolate sauce for meat dishes and a stuffed chilli dish that is all the colours of the Mexican flag!
After our food-fest we made our way down to Oaxaca City, the state capital, which had attractions that were slightly more active than eating!
We enjoyed a luxury first class bus trip complete with it´s compulsory violent movie on the way to Oaxaca, then being the avid budget travellers we are we caught a little "colectivo" bus to our chosen hostel instead of a taxi, only to find the hostel was nolonger there! Luckily Kev takes the lead
This was a rarity, as he was normally lagging behind taking photos or checking out lizards! a kind soul directed us to the new location of the Banana Magic Hostel which was to be our home for the next few days.
The hostel was very social which was nice because it meant we had a chance to get to meet some other travellers from all over the place. There was a big central open covered courtyard where we all sat with our beers. I like the beer deal here - if you take your bottle back to the shop you get a new beer cheaper than if you just went and bought a new one, brilliant concept!
Enough about the hostel.... Oaxaca is another beautiful old colonial town although it has recently been through a lot of upheaval. About two weeks before we arrived the teachers had been protesting about pay and the local governor went a bit over the top with his orders to the police to control the situation leading to mass rioting and tear gas bombing from helicopters! Due to this unnecessary action the whole town got involved. When we were there everything had calmed down but there were political posters and cartoons everywhere and teachers were all still camped out
Into the unknown
This is the exit of the huge cannyon we walked through to the village. on the pavement. Don´t think they are moving until the governor is thrown out! Or their pay is increased?
For our second day in Oaxaca we booked a cycling excursion into the Sierra Norte area, north of the city. They advised us when we booked it that we would need to be a "bit fit", and they weren´t kidding! It took us about an hour to drive out to our start point - which always makes you tired due to the bumpy roads and general heat. The cycling portion of the day was about 25Km, which isn´t that much, unless of course the majority of the first 10Km is all uphill!! Our guide eventually informed us that we had risen to approximately 2600m above sea level, and that there were a couple of smaller hills before it got easier. The scenery whilst we were cycling was pretty impressive, although we do not have any pictures from our highest point as by this time we had actually rode up into the clouds and so the view was quite reduced!
After some very nice long downhill stretches, and a few more tough bits of uphill / riding in sand
we completed our 25Km and ditched the bikes. The second half of our day (and by far the more relaxing half) was a 1 1/2 hour hike down through a gorge to a small village and a waterfall. The views through the gorge were pretty spectacular, especially where it narrowed towards the end. After a very welcome lunch there was just a short walk down to the local waterfalls, which again were very impressive, coming down in two stages with a small pool at the base just right for a cooling swim...... a very cooling swim!! The water was freezing as the falls were all in the shade but being English we enjoyed it!! We were out for the day with a lovely Dutch couple, who without the British beach training we had had didn´t handle the cold water so well and only paddled briefly!!
Hello to you guys if you are reading this!
It was an exhausting, but very rewarding day, which will hopefully help us shed those extra pounds! All that was left was the journey back to town, which turned out to be rather amusing. Our final destination was in the middle of nowhere and The view from the bottom
I did wonder whether we could have done a cycling / hiking / rock climbing excursion the next day!! it was just basic single dust roads out of there with the odd tiny village popping up every now and again. We soon noticed our guide kept stopping at nearly every house with a tank outside to ask if they had gasoline, obviously we were running out! This was a little disconcerting as there was nowhere much to stay other than the jeep and we could certainly not push the jeep all the way back to the nearest town. But luckily the jeep had obviously had some training from Kev´s old car and knew how to run on air for a couple of hours therefore we just about made it to the edge of the town. The jeep then gave up in the middle of a crossroads, so out we all got to push. The sight of four gringos pushing a jeep through town appeared to be the highlight of many locals´day. Our efforts were rewarded with icecreams when we got to the petrol station - easily pleased!
10th July - Today we thought we would do some shopping as Oaxaca is well known for being an arts centre. Many local villages have specific areas of expertise which are
demonstrated in the wares for sale in the shops in the city and markets. However, Kev and I wanted to make sure our money was going to the actual artesians and not paying a middle man. We only visited two of the 8 arts villages (each has its own specialism), Shopping is quite a logical, if tiring experience because of this! Every shop is selling essentially the same thing, the first town specialised in a black smoke fired pottery that was then polished with quartz to give a dark silver finish. We must have looked in at least 20 different stalls / shops all in all, and found a particularly nice black pot that also doubles as a candle cover in the very last one!!
Hannah I hope you are impressed that we are supporting your fellow potters! The second village we visited was a weaving village, making a variety of basic textiles - mainly tableware and bags.
This was because they were woven using simple backstrap looms. It was nice becuase all the sellers were also sat there weaving new items Tash wasn´t allowed to buy a bag!!
(Got too many already!) So we bought a table runner instead!! After a similarly drawn out choice, under slightly more pressure this time as all the stuff was almost identical and being the only tourists there we were the centre of attention! We were very pleased with both our purchases and will soon be posting them home for someone to look after.
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Ros
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Hola!
Hablas mucho espanoles? Espero estais bien. That's the end of my Spanish practice - hope yours is going better than this! Your blogg sounds great - can't believe all the things you've done already. The surf looks brilliant. Ros