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Published: March 17th 2012
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Bill inside a tomb at Mitla
You had to really bend down to get in and it was very humid and hot.... Thursday
The real danger in Mexico during this trip is...........my teeth!
The abcess seems to be going away, but last night I was eating almonds and half of one of my teeth on the other side broke off! Now I can't really chew well on either side....it might be baby food for awhile...or just Negra Modelo beers....
Yesterday we walked to the zocalo after my Spanish class, and found hordes of protesters there. The march covered three kilometers of roads! I found out that it was another teacher strike, to protest the disappearance of a teacher a few months ago and the new national yearly teacher exams. While people seem to be somewhat sympathetic, they are also exasperated by the time the kids don't have class (3 days this week) and the loss of income when the streets are blocked for hours by protestors.
We took another tour today which included the ruins at Mitla, a visit to the largest tree in the world (circumference), a mezcal factory, a weaving cooperative, mineral pools high in the mountains, and another terrible and expensive buffet lunch.
Mitla is famous for its stone mosaics, unique in the pre-hispanic world.
The tule tree is amazing....an eco-system unto itself and really, really big! The weaving copperative demonstrations were most interesting in the explanation of the natural dyes used to produce dozens of colors. I bought some yarn in green and in black. The mineral pools weren't that exciting, but the drive up was interesting: saw agave being crushed to make mezcal using a stone mill powered by a donkey. The view from the area was amazing. We had seen the pools and view in a film about Tomb 7's discovery at Monte Alban. In a dream-like sequence, a Zapotec god walked through the pool.
The mezcal factory was informative, and tasty. We had several varieties to sample for free.
Friday
Today was my last Spanish class here....I made it to the past imperfect tense! I had to change a passage from present tense to either past or past imperfect...could do most of it with help from my notes.....
Today is "Good Samaritan Day" in Oaxaca, and many shop owners offer juice drinks to everyone passing by. Doorways are decorated with palms, flowers, and purple ribbons. Semana Santa (the Easter Holy Week) is coming in April, and there
will be more and more purple decorating the city each day until then.
Tomorrow morning at 6:15 we take a taxi to the second class bus station and head out to the mountains for our eco tour. We will be met by a local guide (part of the eco-tour initiative to provide income for these isolated villages) at the first village (at 10,600 feet!) and hike for 6 hours (mostly downhill) to the next village where we will stay in a cabin. The cabins were recently built for these eco tours and are really nice. The next day we hike for another 4 hours the another village, where I get a traditional spa treatment, we spend the night in another cabin, and head back to Oaxaca on Monday. Tuesday we take a mini-bus on one of the worst mountain roads ever (or so we have heard)(worst in the way of making one car sick...) to Puerto Escondido on the Pacific Coast. No internet til Monday night!
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Doug
non-member comment
Bill--stay out of the tombs! Lynn--would the tequila be better than beer for your tooth? Experiment and let us know.