Oaxaca City

I spent the weekend traveling in and around the city of Oaxaca, a ten hour bus ride west of Tuxtla in southern Mexico.

I ran into Kris, the second grade teacher from Sacramento, at the bus station so we spent the rest of the weekend traveling together, along with Lalo, a friend from Mexico City, and Todd, a friend from Australia whom I met while traveling through the Yucatan after Christmas. It was a very fun crew and we had a lot of laughs - everything from Lalo's music CD labeled "Michel Janson" to a video of goat balls!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7-fohcmXq8

We spent day one checking out the city of Oaxaca - eating, drinking and being merry. We shopped in the market, marveled at the colonial buildings with their bright colors and laughed at the brutalness of a movie we went to at the historical center. There were only about 10 of us in the theater and after an hour and a half when we finally walked out, there were five people remaining.

The movie was introduced as a documentary by an American that was shot in a span of 15 years - 15 years too long! Apparently, this guy thought his cinematography was so spectacular that he should cut out nothing, giving us a final product with Part 1 lasting 6.5 hours, a one hour intermission and Part 2 of who-knows-how-long because who in their right mind would make it that far?!?!

I can't believe we sat there for 1.5 hours watching it because it was absolutely horrid. It was in black and white and the parts we did see involved a woman in the middle of Africa moving out of her hut with the help of a local tribe and a monkey experiment at the University of Wisconsin - Madison to see if the monkey would prefer a wire milking mom or a milking mom wearing a towel. Whatever.

We walked out, laughed our way back to the car and went to dinner before returning to Magic Hostel.

Day two was long, but fun. We went to the Zapotec ruins at Monte Alban. These ruins differ a bit from the Mayan ruins in Chiapas and offered a spectacular view. Lalo said in Mexico City for $300 US I can buy board certification for just about any career in Mexico - if you want to be a doctor, buy the degree (this actually explains a lot)! I'm thinking about becoming an anthropologist next weekend after all of my experience visiting the ruins in Mexico; maybe there'll be a 2 x 1 special??

We drove from the ruins to El Tule, the world's largest biomass. This tree's trunk is absolutely enormous and dwarfs the cute, colonial church it stands next to. From there, we saw some smaller ruins at Mitla and enjoyed the grand finale at the hot springs of Hierve el Agua. Absolutely stunning.

It was a great weekend and I enjoyed the company of Kris, Lalo and Todd. Lalo has moved back to Mexico City, so it was a treat to see him again, and Todd is off to Thailand to live in Koh Tao as a dive instructor. Kris and I are working on surviving the last semester at school and the heat of Tuxtla's spring and summer :)