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