On the road again

To say goodbye to Oaxaca, where we had stayed longer than either of us have stayed anywhere at one time in many months, longer than we have been travelling, we trekked up a hill on one of our last days that had some amazing views over the city.

And on our last night, which was a wonderfully Mexican experience, we went out to a restaurant which said Vegetarian on it, foolishly assuming it would be a vegetarian restaurant.  The steaks and 'pork spread' on the menu soon dissuaded us of this.  But we managed to find food everyone could eat and had a lovely evening before some very sad goodbyes the next day.

Y and L heading for adventures in Mexico City, Puebla and beyond, C and J struck south again over the mountains.  On Wednesday, during a couple of days hitching which involved a lot of free rides on public transport from kindly drivers rolling their eyes, we hit the point again where we are further south than we had yet been and nothing but the road was in front of us.  The uplifting feeling this gives carried us all the way over the Guatemalan border (though not officially.  This was due again to confusingly wandering through not really finding customs and will be sorted in a couple of days.  No, we really mean it this time.  No further south until passports are stamped.)

We have now arrived in Quetzaltenango, where we have a lot of exciting plans involving hiking and getting involved in projects.  J has put a spanner in a lot of these ideas by turning over her somewhat infamous ankle.  However our Couchsurf here is very nice and allowing lots of space to recuperate so we should be able to get going soon.

Just a short message to update on the geography really.  We're very sorry to say goodbye to Y and L, and anyone who knows her can imagine J's frustration at being laid up for a couple of days, but really everything shakes down once you're on the move again.  In fact, in what is pretty much our only souvenir purchase so far, J liked a t-shirt in Oaxaca so much she bought it and it says: La vida is como montar en bicicleta; para mantener equilibrio hay que seguir pedaleando.

Life is like riding a bike; to keep balance you must keep pedaling.

Monte Albán and other stories

After blogging last week we caught some short films at the Oaxaca Film Festival.  They were aimed at children but we all had not problem enjoying them quite a lot, especially Flawless Life and No Playground For Little Cowboys.  Some of the others were a bit strange but only added to it being an amusingly surreal evening.

The next day we ventured out all together on a group trip to Monte Albán.  This was the Zapotec's largest city for over 1000 years.  What remains of the temples and buildings are beautiful and interesting, and the walk up there (because we took a 5 peso local bus and a walk rather than a 40 peso tour bus) allowed for some amazing views over the city and valley:

But perhaps most interesting about the place is how they changed the landscape.  They created huge areas flat enough for agriculture in the sides and tops of the mountain.  The main area of the city used to be the peak of a hill but since the Zapotecs remade their immediate world will always look like this:

We spent a whole day there, maintaining a properly respectful attitude apart from one brief game of tackle tag in some ruins but we're sure they wouldn't mind.

The next couple of days consisted of more cantina visits, group meals and the selling of flowers in the square (or giving them away to particularly cute dirty children).  We met a few more travelers who play music and hopefully L and Y can meet up with them more in Chiapas.

J would also like to take this opportunity to recommend The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver to anyone interested.  It's an amazingly lifelike slice of Mexican and American history and an interesting tale.  As part of our more relaxing month we've all been reading a lot and trading books (though C's habit of reading The Economist aloud to anyone who sits still long enough does not always go down well...).

Our Arizona friends left on Saturday, which is very sad not only because we enjoyed their brief stay but because they cook very nice food.  But hopefully we will meet them again on our travels.  The same day C, J and Y hitched up to San Jose del Pacifico, a tiny mountain town famous for clouds and fungi, for a change of scenery and some fresh air and peace.  We arrived there in style:

and the views from our little cabin (incredibly cheap and run by a lovely woman) were literally breath-taking and almost impossible to capture on camera.  Course, J tried:

 

Back in Oaxaca, Y and L report that for Dia de la Revolución yesterday they did indeed see small children running round with mustaches, which seems to be the main attraction of the day.

With various bits of life bureaucracy to complete this week and goodbyes to say, we hope to have enough time to drink a lot more hot chocolate and keep up the economy by buying Oaxaca cheese.  Then we all go our separate ways.

We've been on the road now for almost six months, and have another six to go.  We've traveled three countries so far, including one of the most underpopulated in the world and one of the most naturally diverse (the USA was also present).  We've made about 7500 miles (only roughly, as we've done a lot of wiggling about).  The vast majority of this has been done on the kindness of strangers, little interjections into hundreds of other people's lives.  We have over 6,000 miles still to go though doubtless we will manage to make it longer.  Google maps 'cannot calculate' where we're going as it does not all involve roads.  But difficult (though not impossible) though it is to thumb a lift on a boat, we'll figure it out.

See you in Guatemala!

Beaches and birthdays

We split up a little over the last week, J and L setting off on a hitch-hiking adventure down to the coast.  It turned into more of an adventure, and a more amusing experience, than we'd expected.  A couple of lifts in, in a beautiful small town high in the mountains, we met in with two women from Basque country, a Portuguese guy and a guy from Guadalajara, all traveling together.  Mexican hitch-hiking being the wonderful experience that it is, we all got picked up by the same pick up and for the next several hours bounced down the mountains together, conversing in rudimentary forms of each others languages and getting soaked by the mysterious fog that coats everything at that altitude.

By the time we reached the bottom of the mountains we were still quite far from the town we'd planned to camp in, and it was beginning to get dark.  With our gang still six strong, L and J were unsure of our chances of getting another lift, but one of our Basque friends was far less daunted.  As a lorry full of 'colchones' drove past she bounded after the cab and persuaded them that if one of us sat in the front the rest of us could ride in the back of the lorry.  On top of the colchones.  Which, as anyone with google translate may have found out, means mattresses.  It was one of the most surreal but also comfortable rides any of us had ever had.

Aftera picnic together and a night on the beach in Puerto Escondido, we parted ways with our companions and hitched out to Mazunte, a very small and quiet beach town famous for turtles.  We only saw dead ones, which was quite sad, and makes you wish they spent a bit more tourist money on conservation.  But the town was beautiful.  We paid a restaurant to put up our tent on on their roof terrace, with a gorgeous view of the ocean.

We spent much of the next two days getting pounded by waves and leaping about like ungainly seals in the bay.  J's 24th birthday (the actual one) passed under a clear starry sky with a trusty mp3 player and not even much in the way of hangovers.

On Friday we began our hitch back to Oaxaca, intending to take a couple of days to do so.  Our second ride immediately declared that he owned a hotel and we should come there and eat and drink whatever we wanted.  Although we were a little hesitant and careful, he turned out to just be the friendly kind of mad, buying us huge amounts of quesadillas and beans for lunch and then leaving us by the pool (which was full of screaming teenagers, only adding to how odd this afternoon was getting), his barmen with instructions to give us as whatever we wanted.  He did tell us he only inherited the hotel two months ago and we are not at all sure how long he's going to stay in business.

As it was still early in the day we continued (perhaps a fraction unsteadily), and it turned out to be a day for free things as we were later presented with a coconut all of our own.  We carried on into the mountains on winding roads in the backs of more pick ups, the sun going down over beautiful views.

After a night in the very pretty and friendly Santa Catarina we arrived back in our Oaxaca abode.  Meanwhile Y and C had been exploring a lot of churches and watching movies at the film festival, and also picking up more smelly travelers from the streets.  These ones turned out of course to be friends we made in Arizona.  It's great to see them again and even though the flat is now a bit of a squash we're having a lot of fun together, including impromptu dance workshops that are probably best not delved into.

We'd saved official celebrations of J's birthday for when everyone arrived, obviously as you do in these situations yesterday Y spent much of the day building this:

which is a rabbit made of mashed potato with convincing spaghetti innards.  There is a reason for this, involving vegans eating tofu shaped like animals and J recently raising the point that this is a bit weird when you think about it.  Despite the rabbit being an attempt to undercut this point, one vegetarian present did get genuinely upset which seems only to confirm it ;).

Whilst this creation and C's contribution of an enormous pie cunningly fashioned into the shape of an enormous pie were being made, J and the Arizona folk retreated to a cantina, an experience which really deserves comment.  The drinks are not exceptionally cheap but the idea is you get food with them, and in Mexico they really go all out.  We ordered three bottles of beer and got this:

Better than dubious peanuts eh?

So with much food, beer, merriment and dancing J is now 24 twice and feeling pretty sure of it.

Oaxaca (the beginning)

Our flat has continued to be full of things like showers and opportunities to actually cook our own food which is something we really miss when on the road.  So that's good.  In the time we have not been in it, in J's case getting wildly excited whilst reading The Hunger Games (which everyone should be doing), we've been exploring Oaxaca and selling more flowers made of cans.

Thursday and Friday were the Days of the Dead.  We didn't have the best knowledge or timing with finding the bigger parades and things, and also some very smelly hitch-hikers showed up on the first night and demanded feeding and inordinate amounts of coffee.  But we explored the fair, oogled costumes and walked round the graveyard, an incredible, sprawling place again strangely (for us) imbued with life.

The hitch-hikers (our very lovely UK friends Y and L) are of course still around, though very confused about how and why they got here, and are often startled to find themselves in Mexico.  Last time J persuaded Y to go somewhere for no apparent reason it was only Ghent, which is not nearly as impressive.  As we are all good friends we have of course been having many serious discussions on philosophy, ecumenical matters, and classical literature.

The classical literature part is true if you count The Hunger Games.

In other news, Oaxaca is the home of chocolate.  And by chocolate we do not mean the mix of sugar and milk we were presented with as children.  We're talking CHOCOLATE.  Chocolate shops that make an entire street smell of the rich, bitter, spiced stuff.  Huge swirly willy wonka machines with mole pouring out of them.  Mole is the local delicacy, a savoury chocolate and chilli sauce.  Our neighbour brought us some homemade on Dia de los Muertos and it was incredible.  And hot chocolate that looks like this:

You find flakes of pure cacao in the dregs.  It's an understatement to say its like a meal.  It's more like a religious experience.

Oaxaca is also home of the world's fattest (not tallest, just biggest around) tree.  We were too tight-fisted to pay the ten pesos to get into its enclosure but the thing about big trees is, you can see them from quite far away.

Father (both of you), stop fantasising about chainsaws