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Published: August 4th 2002
Monte Alban are a set of pre-hispanic ruins a few miles from Oaxaca. Gary, Tim, Reena and I had decided to head out to them in the morning. Home of the Zapotecs, Monte Alban had grown into a thriving town of 10,000 people. The even had an observatory and squash court. I'm not sure how many of the ruins I saw dated from then, I guess most of them - they looked pretty old. The museum had only Spanish descriptions, none of us spoke much Spanish or had a dictionary with us... it was a shame as lots of it was lost on us. We managed to understand the of carvings of genital mutilation with out the spanish descriptions though, a nasty punishment.
Back in Oaxaca we went to the market. The food looked great, huge plates of meat turned up with roasted vegetables and salad, no insects other than the bluebottles in sight. Searched Oaxaca for a compact flash card reader - a futile task. Moved my pack from Don Diego to Laz Lapa de Luna. Not as nice as Don Diego but there was more going on and closer to the town.
In the evening we had
decided to visit one of the many Mexican bars with the swinging door like those straight out of a western. The places are meant to be very intimidating and solely for heavy drinking Mexican men. Sod that - four English speaking blokes and two girls headed bravely for the new frontier. I walked to the bar and said Tequila. Worked like a charm - 6 large glasses of Tequila were poured and drank at the bar, the guys running the bar were great, really friendly, bought out free tacos and were extremely pleased that our party included "no gringo". Reena, who has Indian parents confused them a lot - Mexican? Two of our party left leaving Reena the only woman in the bar, the barmen were obviously trying to tell us that she was brave, saying that she had a lot of guts. They pissed themselves when I offered "cojones grande" as an explanation.
I had taken my first malaria tablet earlier, and felt extremely spaced out... the description didn't mention any reactions to alcohol. I'll have to keep my eye on that.
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