We are in Oaxaca, Oaxaca (like New York, NY) and it is a fantastic town. We came yesterday by an 11 hour bus ride from Puerto Angel. The ride was supposed to be 7 hours, but we got on the wrong bus and took the LONG way to Oaxaca. We justified it to ourselves by thinking it wouldn't be so curvy. We were wrong. It was curvy. Curvier than any road I've ever been on. We were in the back of the bus, Sierra's favorite place to go. Bad idea. The back gets whipped around those hairpin turns a lot worse than the front. Unfortunately there were no seats available up further. Sierra threw up all over her seat and the floor and there was no TP in the bathroom to clean it up with so I took the little headrest sanitary things and cleaned it up. About that time she thought she might get sick again, so I opened the bathroom door for her. Then she said, "no, I'm fine" so I closed it and she promptly threw up again. Unfortunately, I had used up just about all of the little headrest thingies. I ended up walking up and down the aisle and snagging them off of occupied chairs if the person was sleeping!! She felt much better after that.
We had a great week in Puerto Angel. We ended up busting our budget a bit. That is one thing I have found...things are just not as cheap as I thought they would be, so we have not done very well on keeping to $40 per day. I've decided to increase our budget to $60 a day, which is more akin to what we're spending.
In PA we stayed at Cordelia's on the beach. It was $30 per night and was right
on the beach and they have a bunch of parrots and toucans there that were cool. Our room had a balcony overlooking the beach. On our second day there we met another family with a little girl and ended up hanging out with them quite a bit. We all went snorkeling one day...the tour was 100 pesos per person for 4 hours, which I thought was a good price. We got to go to 3 little beaches and snorkel and jump off rocks and we got to swim with a sea turtle! It was amazing. They said the turtle was about 50 years old.
We also saw some sea turtles mating and I was amazed to find out that they mate for 15 days and have to stay on the surface that whole time!
We were a little bit bummed because we didn't see any dolphins, but it was a great time anyway. It was raining and there were a lot of big storms during the week which were really cool.
Mostly we just relaxed and visited with people and that was just what we
needed. On Fridays there is a big dance in the next town of Zipolite and everyone goes there. I told our new friends Seth and Isadora that they could leave their little girl Cariña with me for the night so they could go to the dance. Their girls had a fun night having a sleepover and giggling all night like little girls do.We're still in search of monkeys...we think that after Oaxaca we'll go to Chiapas and rent a place for a month or so and explore the rainforest and find ourselves a monkey!
Oaxaca is great and it's really festive right now. They are having the Guelaguetza festival, which is in honor of all the indigenous peoples. They come from all over the region for dance, music and singing. The last two Monday's of July there are giant parties all over town, the biggest of which is the dances at the Guelaguetza stadium. It costs 400 pesos (about $40 dollars) each to get a front seat, but the back seats are free. We will have to get up there around 7 am to get a seat for the dances starting at 10 am. Then, at 7 pm tomorrow night there will be a big parade.
Last night we walked all around the downtown and the Zocalo and there were thousands of people and singing and dancing and clowns and people selling everything! We had dinner with some people from our youth hostel, Teresia and Peter, who are from Sweden. Today we are walking around and exploring the markets. The artisans are amazing.
We met one woman who weaves rugs and they are so beautiful. She makes them out of natural dyes and she showed us how she makes the colors. There is a bug that they capture and when it dies and gets all dried out they squish it and it crumbles into a powder that they mix with water to make red. They add some lemon juice to make orange and some bicarbonate to make purple! She let me do it on my hand and my hand and fingers are all dyed purple right now. It's cool! I want to learn how to do it! I think I'd like to live in an indigenous village and learn some of these things!
While we are here, we are going to go see the ancient ruins of Monte Albán. This city was built in 500 bc and at its height there were over 40,000 inhabitants. The people were called Zapotecs. They have a ball court where they would have these games with other groups...the game was sort of like basketball in that they threw a ball through a hoop...only it wasn't a ball! It was someone's head!!!
After we go to Guelaguetza, I'll post again about it. Have a good one!
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