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Luz de la Luna
The ground floor common space of our hostel in Oaxaca City. This last month has been pretty busy, taking buses all over the southern part of this huge country. From Morelia we left at four in the morning to take a bus to Mexico City, and from there about eight hours to Oaxaca city. The first classes buses here are more like airplanes, airconditioned and comfortable, with bathrooms and movies and everything. In Oaxaca City we stayed in an awesome hostel owned by two rock climbing brothers, and we met all sorts of people, which was a fun introduction into the traveling world. We visited some ruins, went salsa dancing (only to get swarmed by the local teenagers), and just relaxed, as I was feeling pretty sick with a nasty cough and the beginning of sinusitis. We cooked a lot and walked around the city, visiting perhaps the most beautiful church I´ve seen yet. The city itself wasn´t too impressive for me, because the locals there gave me the feeling that I wasn´t too welcome, which could have come from the fact that there were tons of tourists swarming the streets. It was the most English I had heard spoken in months. But the hostel was a cozy retreat, and I
Luz de la Luna
The sign in the bathroom at the hostel in Oaxaca. We thought it was pretty funny, grammatically speaking. spent a lot of time sleeping, cooking, and eating. We met a friendly Chilean guy named Jose who happened to have about the same amount of time traveling as Terra, and so decided to follow along on our trip.
From Oaxaca city, we headed to the coast. To save three hours in a bus, we spent about three dollars more and crammed into a fourteen person van for the trip over the Sierra del Sur to the coast. While the trip for some was a little sickening, for me it was exhilerating, as we went from city to suburbs, to farmland, to curving mountain roads with canyons and steep cliffs, to lush mountain jungles, and eventually, coastal jungle, with sandy grounds and salty air. I was wide eyed and alert the whole time, listening to music and watching for the first stand of bamboo. I felt as if I was finally seeing the type of environment I had been excited for since coming to Mexico.
After some advice from one of the workers in the Oaxaca hostel, we decided on a small beach town called Mazunte, a couple hours south of Puerto Escondido. Our bus dropped us in
Monte Alban
The ruins a little ways outside of Oaxaca City. Pochutle, and from there we knew of collectivos that run to Mazunte, although a persistent taxi driver tried to convince us there was no such thing. When we asked a local walking by from where the collectivos left and he told us, the taxi driver made some angry comments and walked away. The collectivo cost about a dollar, and consisted of a tented in pickup truck. We rode with tranquil, smiling local and some obvious foreigners, which was refreshing after the bad attitude in Oaxaca. The hostel we chose was named Carlos Einstein after the crazy white hair and antics of the owner. It turned out to be a cheap way to go, about eight dollars apiece per night for a cabaña with two beds, fan, and mosquito nets. We also had full use of the "kitchen" which was a camp stove set up outside in a dirty wooden enclosure. We had to go to the main kitchen to get pots and pans however. The rest of the hostel was pretty strange, from the disgruntled employees, to the restaurant/bar that never cooked nor prepared drinks, to the crazy antics of the owner (free massages for gringas), and his mentally disabled
Mazunte.
Our cabaña in Mazunte. (and very sweet) son Edgar, the nonflushing toilets (pour water in them), and the dungeon-like dormitories where only one bed had a mosquito net. Towards the end of the stay, the whole situation felt a little weird, but the town itself was amazing, and we´d return again only to stay somewhere else. There wasn´t a single hotel within the next few stretches of beach, and Mazunte was the most mellow, with a short hike to the point to watch the sunset and the afternoon fishers. The pueblo contains a turtle reserve and we took a tour out on a motor boat to see some of the hundreds of turtles and dolphins around there. Our guide jumped in the water to grab one of them (and I followed to pee in the ocean), and we swam around for a while until the jellyfish got the best of us. Located on the Pacific, the ocean was pretty strong there, but still swimable especially if you like dodging and getting pummeled by waves. I was still struggling with my sinusitis, which actually felt worse there because of the heat and humidity, and compiled with Carlos Einstein´s attempts to convince of his shamanic abilities
Mazunte.
Miles away from the ordinary. (therefore pushing at me all the remedies he could come up with), I was relieved to leave.
From Mazunte we took the collectivo back to Pochutle to catch the bus to San Cristobal de las Casas in the state of Chiapas. We left at nine at night and drove through the night until ten the next morning. I was probably awake a total of four hours so the trip passed rapidly. At one stop we had to get into our bags below for warm clothes, since the first class buses are kept so cold no one is ever comfortable. When I woke up in the morning, we were climbing through some of the most beautiful scenery I had seen in Mexico, rocky landscape with clouds settling in valleys below, and the depressurization was causing my sinuses to go crazy. As soon as I stepped off the bus, I inhaled the chill, light air of the mountain town and knew I was going to get better soon. We stayed at a groovy hostel called Ek Balam, with its stoned employees, clean bathrooms, riquety bunk beds, incense burning, flute music playing, rooms painted different emotion themes (we stayed in Amor), huge
Arbol de Tule
A big tree a little outside of town, pretty impressive, and almost worth the trip, full of birds and crazily shaped knots and branches. The redwoods are still cooler. fridge, and complete kitchen (even if before cooking we had to wash all the dishes from the last nights´munchie fest). It was a nice place to rest, really close to the center, and all the groovy things happening in that town. Maybe because of tourist influence (there are tons of tourist, although more of the hippie cultured type than the upset-to-be-in-a-new-city type) there were also tons of natural food stores, vegetarian restaurants, Zapatista cafes complete with stores from women´s cooperatives, and cinemas showing cultural movies. At the end of every cobblestoned street there was a view of the green mountains beyond, and the locals smiled at you when you said hola. I felt really attracted to San Cristobal, maybe because the high mountain air, or the comfort of tourist commodities, or the fact that Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico, but the indigenous community (making up about 50% of the population) wasn´t doing any whining.
The cultural element in Chiapas was so rich that it affected me profoundly. To see the women wearing all traditional clothing, selling their embroidery with a baby tied in a rebozo (shawl), on their back, speaking in their native Mayan language (which sounded
Ek Balam
Terra playing with Sol, the little boy living with his mom and dad at the hostel. more like Native American languages than spanish). I don´t think I´ve ever seen a culture so old, and for some reason it´s something you can feel when you´re around it, and it´s pretty remarkable, overshadowing the fact that it should be sad because of the poverty. We visited the Museum of Mayan Medicine and learned about their herbs and methods of treatment, as well as their birth procedures (which was the most interesting). José and Terra talked me into getting some cough syrup and nasal ointment at the natural farmacy, even though I was already feeling a little better.
We also visited a Zapatista settlement on the outskirts of town, taking the 45 minute taxi ride with our Italian friend Giovanni from the hostel. Despite all the expectations my mind built up, it was a humble little settlement, not many people, a small school, and very mellow. They let us in no problem after checking only Giovanni´s passport, and we waited about four hours in the cloudy silence to talk with some officials. There were about five men and one woman sitting in the front of a small room in ski masks (as is the customary disguise of the
El Canyon de Sumidero
About an hour below San Cristobal. most recent upsurgence of Zapatistas), and they answered most of our non-political questions to the best of their abilities (with Spanish as their second language and after a long day of answering questions.) The biggest impact the visit had on me was the earnesty of their cause, to preserve their indigenous way of life and culture and land, and the fact that although many people think they are a lost, forgotten cause, they reassured us that they were still there. As they would say, "Aquí estamos!" We hitched a ride home in a pickup truck with a man who (after more than 15 years working with indigenous groups to help improve their language skills) was able to answer many of the questions we still had about the situation.
We also did some of the touristy things. Visited a beautiful river canyon that was made navigable with the construction of several damns (it had once been a small creek no more than a meter deep), and took a tour that sped us through the mile-high walls in a lancha (motorboat). Monkeys, crocodiles, the works. We also went out dancing, which was huge because I was finally feeling good enough to
Mazunte.
Crazy Carlos teaching Terra the Mexican toast. Arriba, abajo, al centro, al dentro. stay up past ten. At one point we had wondered if I had allergies since I had been sick so long, so I took a friends Benadryll and spent the rest of my night drugged up and sleeping hard. I woke up feeling a little better, but was relieved to find out I was still sick the next day (allergies would have been worse). After about four days in the relaxing, rejuvenating town of San Cristobal, we embarked on the six hour busride to Palenque.
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