Blogs from Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico, North America - page 40

Well, howdy all! Mucho perdons for falling so far behind on sharing our travels...We're currently in Palenque, Chiapas. I will try to quickly outline a bit of where we've been and what we've seen and leave the detailed stories for when we return...in t-minus 9 days! A friend comes for a visit Many of you know Solomon Townsend. Those of you who don't should. We were going to visit Solomon at his land in Costa Rica, but that didn't work out. So he came to visit us! A few email exchanges gave us an idea that he was thinking about it, and then we got a phone call at Tashirat and there was Solomon, already in Tepoztlan! We had a great time hanging out, sharing our little routine with him, and going on a few adventures, ... read more

Hello again everyone! There´s so much to write! Right now, the group is in Oaxaca City, Mexico which is in the southern part of the country and is on the Pacific Ocean. We spent last week in Mexico City, the D.F. (federal district) which is like Mexico´s Washington, DC. It´s one of the world´s largest cities, if not the largest; so, of course, it´s HUGE. We stayed in a hotel in the tourist district near the main plaza The Zócalo. Our guide in Mexico City was GREAT. We toured and went to the top of what used to be the tallest building in Mexico City where we could see all of the city - well, we could see as far as the smog and pollution would let us. The pollution in the city is terrible (the ... read more

The bus ride to Puerto Escondido was a marathon 14 hour overnighter. We were entertained on the way however, with a variety of Spanish films, a 3am breakfast stop and 3 Ricky Martin albums! We'd been looking forward to some time on the coast and we weren't disapointed. There are plenty of seperate beaches here and we managed to visit a different one every day. Zicatela beach is the main surf break and too rough for swimming, but others are calmer and good for snorkelling. The only irritation was being continually hassled by touts to go on a snorkelling trip with sea turtles. Whilst we were initially tempted, the practice of lassooing and riding the turtles to entertain the tourists put us off. We ventured out 50km further west along the coast to the beach town ... read more

Today started off quite stressful, we spent all morning sorting out the next few days of our trip, fortunately we found a very useful tourist office tucked away on a back street. Only in Oaxaca do you find the largest tourist office with the most staff hidden away miles from the main tourist area! In the afternoon we took a bus to the ruins of Monte Alban, an impressive site but not as good as previous ancient ruins we'd seen. Later that evening we found the nicest restaurant with the best food so far and very reasonably priced. I also decided to trap my finger in the hostel security gate just for fun. It bled loads.... read more

The bus journey was the usual boring, sickly experience. The buses are very comfy, modern and air conditioned but this doesn't make up for the long twisty journeys through endless hills and valleys. The only interesting fact was a window on the bus was inexplicably broken during the trip. A freak failure? A stone? Gunfire? Aliens? Who knows. Once again we mistakenly relied on the Rough Rubbish Guide to Mexico, which meant we walked for ages trying to find none existent hostels. Eventually we found a good place near the Zocalo called Hostel Plata Gelatina. After ditching our bags we had a walk around the very attractive centre of the city, the architecture is very much in the Spanish colonial style, similar to Cusco in Peru.... read more