Advertisement
Published: September 22nd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Another eleven hours, this time on a luxury bus, and I arrived in Oaxaca. I booked myself into a nice wee hostal and went about finding Steph and her mates. Again I could see straight away that Oaxaca was a beautiful colonial city, with landmarks, parks, and churches everywhere. My first day was spent walking around the town taking in the sites and we ended up in some little bar called
La Costumbre drinking
cuba libres the rest of the night.
Next day was Tuesday the 16th of September, Independence day. Everything was covered in green, white and red lights, giving everything a bit of a party feel. The streets and the squares were already filling up with people and there were even some bands there to entertain the early-comers. They had people out scrubbing the buildings with toothbrushes, gangs of them! I thought that was quite meticulous of them but was later told that they were washing off all the socialist slogans and grafitti. They started rolling out rows of portaloos and by about 3 or 4pm they were all set up. We all bought our Mexican merchandise and face paint, tacos for dinner and bottles of
rum for dessert, and were ready ourselves by about 9pm.
By this stage the streets and main square were jam packed with people, with a few different bands playing out on a big stage. The governor came out and made a bit of a speech with all of the national police lined up on each side of their stage. They then ceremoniously took down the massive Mexican flag and carried it through the town to store it away somewhere as is the tradition. We proceeded to get fairly drunk on the Rum and Mezcal and managed to avoid most of the foam spray cans that were covering people head to toe in thick white foam. The governor then appeared on the central bandstand in the main square and began
El Grito (The Cry), the speach that originally started the uprising and rebellion against the Spanish, who they eventually won their independence from. I can't remember exactly how it goes but the governor basically shouts loads of stuff like
Viva Mexico, Viva la independencia, Viva la republica, to which the crowd in turn shouts
Viva! Viva!for each cry from the governor. This happens around 11 or 12pm and is
Another Church
Complete with merchandise stand the highlight of the festivities, it was followed straight away by a massive fireworks display and the bands played on until around 2 or 3am when most people headed on to some of the bars and clubs.
As I said we managed to avoid the foam most of the night, but after
El Grito things got even madder. Everyone seemed to have cans of foam and it almost looked like it was snowing. I was taken by suprise by two mexican lads, one came up each side of me and completely covered me with foam. So I declared war. I went and bought about 5 cans of foam and everyone I walked past got covered. It sounds messy as hell but I loved it, by the end of the night, thanks to the foam I had made friends with about 5 groups of mexicans and as we were walking around looking for somewhere to drink I was repeatedly shouted at (by name) by tonnes of Mexicans that I couldn't even remember spraying. Only bad thing that happened all night was that some dirty pick-pocket robbed Steph's purse, which put a bit of a dampner on the night and we
Inside the Cathedral
Possibly the first one I entered in 8 months ended up heading home around 4am.
This was my last night in Mexico, I couldn't have asked for a better leaving party. At 6.30am I was on my bus to Mexico City for my flight home. I turned up at the airport later that day only to realise that I was a day early for my flight (don't ask me how), so I spent one last night in Mexico city in a hotel near the airport, on a kingsize bed watching tv for almost the first time in 8 months. Tacos for breakfast as I was running pretty low on money and got to the airport only to find out they wanted $27 dollars off me or I wasn't getting on the plane. All because I re-entered Mexico by bus for some reason!? So I had to run around the airport looking for someone to change a £20 Ulsterbank note for me, which of course was impossible. In the end one of the guys from the emmigration office changed it through one of his friends and they eventually let me on the plane. Of course it was delayed and I missed my connection in London and had to pay
another £120 for the next flight to Belfast.
Now I'm back home and after a weekend spent catching up with family and some close friends, eating as much as I could and sleeping for about a day, I'm finally ready to face the real world again. My new Belfast number is 07594029011, so anyone I haven't spoke to yet gimme a ring, I haven't got your numbers anymore. And anyone up for taking me out for a drink or a meal will be more than welcome as I'm absolutly skint for the moment.
I have to say it's sad to be back home after 8 months in paradise, especially since I'm starting back to uni next week, still with some last bits of work to do, but home is home, and as they say, home is where the craic is, or maybe it's just me that says that. Anyway, thanks to everyone who has been following the blog, I hope I've kept you entertained, or at least killed a few hours for you in work. I'll say again one last time, if you liked the blog hit recommend in the top left corner so that more people can
get to see it. Thanks again for all the comments and messages and I hope to speak to you all very soon.
Adios amigos y gracias.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0525s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb