We're about to leave beautiful Oaxaca for San Christobel de las Casas (where all of the revolutionary Zapatistas hide out), it's been an amazing week full of culinary adventures, cramming Spanish, and journeying to strange geological sites!
In an attempt to escape the smog and pollution on our final day in Mexico City we headed to the Modern Art Museum in a huuuge park outside the centre. They had an amazing collection incuding Frieda Kahlo, Remidios Varo and Diego Rivera and we spent many a contented pretentious hour musing around the building pontificating on the value of modern art (we're literature students, give us a break!)
The 6 hour bus journey from Mexico City sped by as we watched awful American films dubbed with even worse Spanish. I hid behind my eye mask as Claire got progressively petrified by a Mexican horror film called "The Orphan", and arriving in a new place at 10pm in the dark without a map did nothing to help her qualms! We got lost for an hour. No one in oaxaca can read a map. We later found out that our hostel is literally around the corner -- I don't use the word literally lightly.
Oaxaca is much more chilled than Mexico City; it's less polluted and much friendlier. It doesn't have the exciting pace that the capital does, but is full of artisan markets, cool bars and green parks. We took a week-long Spanish course of 4.5 hours a day -- seriously, my brain has never attempted to squeeze in so much information -- and had the afternoons free to explore the city. There's always dancing in the Zocalo, it's a constant party here!
We learnt more in 5 days than we could've in weeks struggling alone, and although we still can't hold a conversation we CAN listen, nod, and interject the occasional sage 'si', 'no' or 'quiza'. We found some fun people in our hostel who had met some American ex-pats via couchsurfing, and had a few amazing nights out fuelled by mezcal (traditional Oaxacan liquor from the same agave plant as tequila) and beer with lots of lime.
School finished for us yesterday, so armed with our cardboard 'diploma' (very cute) we braved the huge market that most gringos fear to set foot in, and discovered why. It was AMAZING but totally overwhelming; miles and miles of tarpaulin strung up over scaffolding and covering stalls of fruit, vegetables, animals (puppies and bunnies included, Claire had a most uncharacteristic cuteness breakdown), restaurants, clothes, cowboy hats, pirate dvd's and everything inbetween that you can possibly imagine. We had a fantastic meal in one of the restaurants (more a clay hut with a plastic bench outside), and have still survived so far with no upset stomachs! I trust a kitchen that I can see into far more than a fancy restaurant with the kitchen hidden away. We spent the evening with our flung-together group of Americans, Belgians and Italians in one of their apartments.. Claire and I bought dessert. You'd expect it to be cheap, no? Ten pounds and eight fancy cakes later, and we're hoping we can find their bloody house and tell them just how much we spent! We didn't of course, we're far too polite.
Today we explored Hierve el Agua (wikipedia it), which was INCREDIBLE. We swam in thermal pools, gaped at the crazy rock formations, and hitched a ride home with French, Mexican and Japanese guys, stopping to see the biggest tree in North America (in the Guiness book of records, no less) and eat a fantastic meal consisting of 5 different kinds of fried meat. We may have also gone via a mezcal factory. Soo, shotting the entire way home, we rolled into our hostel, washed the day's dirt and woodsmoke away, and sat down to update y'all on our travels.
Off on an 11 hour bus ride now, fun. xx
