Oaxaca, México

From Puebla to Oaxaca it took 5 hours on the bus, an easy ride on the long and windy roads, I didn’t feel carsick AT ALL :-/ After we checked into our hotel; The Oaxaca Real Hotel, we began the day by another orientation walk around the city. Oaxaca I thought was very similar to Puebla, both with brightly coloured streets, beautiful old churches, and the city square surrounded by restaurants. That night we met for some drinks to watch the world cup qualifying football game – México V Costa Rica… it was pretty cool to watch as México won, (apparently if they did win, Burger King would give away cheese burgers to customers with every meal, however we didn’t take advantage of this! Nice promotion Burger King). I wasn’t really watching the game as I was enjoying my frozen margaritas and playing card games with the other non-football fans.

The next day in Oaxaca was very busy! We had 4 activities on the agenda for the whole group. We rented a private bus to take us to another archeological site called Milta site, a natural waterfall called Hierve El Agua, a weavers workshop called Zapotec Weavers, and a tequila and mezcal factory called Mezcal Destilery. We all agreed that this was such a fun day and great experience. It gave the group a good chance to bond and enjoy the local traditions & sites. Our first stop was the archeological site. I’ll be honest, this was my least favorite site on the whole trip, but only because it was so small… I like to hike and climb the sites :o) My favorite part of the day was the waterfalls… BEAUTIFUL, the pictures below aren’t anything compared to the present vision! 

Here was the opportunity to hike the woodland to reach the best views of the falls. Perfect to stretch the legs after all the time seated on the bus... Here at the falls we were also able to bathe in the natural springs. It’s hard to describe the waterfalls, however here’s my attempt! The waterfalls were up in the woodland mountains, over looking miles of other mountains. On the flat surface of this mountain were natural springs. These natural springs were so close to the edge that they formed waterfalls, and are larger and heavier when there had been more rain (stating the obvious). As this water is so high in calcium, over the many hundreds of years it has created natural rock formed looking waterfalls – another mesmerizing addition to the view. After lunch and a swim, we then headed to our next stop to visit the local weavers. Here they taught us the traditional Mayan customs of wool and material production. They also displayed how they would create the colours by using natural products such as minerals, plants, and insects. To make the Red and Pinks of the materials they use insects called Cochineal. The man giving the tour ever so kindly used my hand as a palet to display the mixing of the insects into a red paste… crushing of the dried insects and adding a drop of water made a nice pink paste, oh and it was permanent for approx. 5 days on my hand – good stuff! :o) He also said that most red lipsticks and other daily make up has this as one of the main ingredients, watch out ladies ;o)

Our last stop of the day was to go to a Tequila and Mezcal small factory. Here they showed us the plants and process used to make both Tequila and Mezcal. I was quite impressed by this, especially to find out that they still use the same process and equipment as what they used many years ago. The BEST bit of this was that we got to try their selection of drinks… from blueberry – mango – mint – chocolate flavored tequila, I was tipsy enough to buy a bottle and take with me around México, to this day, it’s still not finished (however we're working on it).

The next day the other guys explored the town of Oaxaca, however as I missed out on the first pyramid ruins in México City, I wanted to go to the Monte Alban archeological site so I joined Eduardo for the journey as he was going also. We spent a few hours climbing the ruins and exploring the grounds. 

I really liked this site, we could climb a few pyramids, which isn’t an often treat with these archeological sites. We also went inside one of the pyramids through a restricted door as no one watching and the padlock was unlocked, very wrong but exciting. ANYWAY…  upon our return, Eduardo and I went for a walk around the town, stopped off for some Mexican cuisine, and went to the Museum of Oaxaca Culture. The museum was pretty interesting – I learnt a lot about traditional Maya ways, the invasion of the Spanish and their Roman Catholic influences, and the more modern day revolutions.

After the long day we simply needed to chill out so we went to find some Shisha before we left for the bus station to start our 12 hour bus journey to San Cristobal de las Casas.