On Saturday, we took the bus to Mitla to see the ruins in the town. It’s not large or even coming close to the size of Monte Alban, but nonetheless, it was worth the visit. As it is always when we get off a bus, we felt like we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. This time though, there was a dirty sign about 50 meters from the bus stop that pointed the direction to the ruins. 2 kilometers it says. Taxi? nah… I think we can handle the midday oaxaqueno sol bearing down on us as we hike uphill. Mitla was a neat little town with a town market, and of course, a church. The streets were empty away from the market except a few bicyclists and people just sitting around wondering why in the world anyone would want to walk 2 kilometers under the scorching sun. We passed a few liquor stores all advertising the best mexcal, restaurants touting their tortas and tlayudas, a tied up horse, a cactus wall, and some yapping dogs. You can check the photos here. After the ruins, we took the bus to Teotitlan to see their world famous hand woven rungs. Man, the stuff were nice… wish we had the cash to bring one home though. Small rugs were running at about 4000pesos each. A shopkeeper and weaver even took the time out to demonstrate the process from dye to patterns to weaving. Muy interesante.

Sunday, aka vomit day, brought us to for the virgin springs.

The popular Hierve de Agua for whatever reason was closed so we opted for this alternative which, in our grand travel tradition, was in the middle of nowhere. Unlike Mitla, there was no sign, the bus driver had no clue, no taxi drivers, and when Keywan asked these dudes which way to walk, we got back a “who sent you?” Whoa godfather of san jose. We just wanna take swim in the spring of Salina Blanco. Is that so hard? The group of guys all agreed that it was a 3kilometer walk. One offered a taxi but we’re too cheap to pay for a 3km ride and opted to walk. They all laughed and thought we’re completely insane. Then one guy offered to take us to the entrance and we can walk the rest of the way. Sure why not. All the while an irish expat comes cycling down with here baby in the bike caboose and stops across the way. Somehow I knew she spoke english and spanish and would be helpful. What tipped me off was that she was wearing a helmet and cycling! Turns out this guy in a dirty ripped white shirt we’re negotiating with is the right man for the job. We ate some tortas, hopped on the back of a pickup truck and dropped off in front of a wired fence. No sign, no arrows, no barking dogs to indicate that this is the entrance to the springs. We hiked about 30minutes down the mountain to the river. Took some photo ops, learned some spanish curses, tasted the natural salt on the mountains before taking a plunge in the water. All the hassle was worth the refreshing swim… even karen’s vomit episode. So why were we asked who sent us? Turns out that no one really shows up to the spring. One reason is that it’s in the middle of nowhere. Secondly. it’s usually a group outing from a hostel or university to this place.

We had to spread out our arhaelogical sites apart so on Monday, we headed off the the grandaddy of them all, Monte Alban. The place was enormous, but we conquered all the scalable structures in about 3 hours. I’m a bit disappointed to say that there weren’t any outrageous instances whilst getting up to Monte Alban. A tourist bus got us there, so other than the flamboyant gay spanish couple, nothing noticeable.

ah yes, the true latin american experience. The bus ride. Buses are fairly efficient, cheap, gets you where you need to go, and the run frequent enough so you don’t need to rush. Sometimes they are cramped, sometimes you have to hang off the open door, sometimes you are on top of someone, sometimes it stinks, and then there are times when you just have to puke from the fast turns on the windy mountain roads. And THAT is what happened to dear karen on the ride from the springs back to oaxaca tonight. blecccchhhh…

It’s not totally her fault, you see. It was standing room only and the driver was just going mad on those turns. Kaywan and I were also feeling woozy, but karen took the hit. What’s funny isn’t that Karen’s belly could not handle the ride. It was the when the lady who got hit with the chunks just glanced at the vomit on her jacket, and went back to closing her eyes continuing her nap. Tipico mexico si? eh… just vomit… what else is new?

Poor Jonathan had the unfortunate experience of trying to save his blog, only to loose everything he painstakingly wrote. I guess it is kind of tricky since we are using the Spanish version of Blogger and we aren´t sure where the save button is.

We arrived on the red eye to Oaxaca yesterday morning and are currently in Oaxaca city, which is lovely, sleepy ciudad. We met a friendly young German named Keywan, who is a landscape design student, whilst drinking some curious Mexican beverage at the mercardo. Turns out we were staying at the same hostel and had the same exact itinerary for Oaxaca, so we decided to conquer the next thing on our list: the search for food.

We haven´t been here long enough to be so daring as to eat the Oaxcan favorite of Chapulinos…fried grasshoppers! But our first meal consisted of another Oxacan favorite: mole! Everything here is about that sweet & spicy chocolate sauce…that and salsa…which we have discovered that the Mexicans like to put in EVERYTHING. Case in point: I had an icie yesterday covered in salsa! Keywan had a cerveza with salsa! and today I had a mango sorbet with…guess what? salsa! Obviously they believe that everything is definitely better with salsa. It is the remedy to all problemos.

Today we went to visit the archaelogical site in Mitla. It was full of Zapotec & Mixtec designs and was quite impressive. They had several tombs that required you to climb down narrows stairs into a dank hole with ceilings about three feet high. And when you walked in there, it was so dark that you couldn’t see a thing! There were loads of tourists all over the ruins. There was one German group lead by a guide who was wearing a black wool sweater in like 90 degree weather! What does he wear when it is cold? a thong?

After our visit, we went to eat the best Mexican food I have ever had. At Doña Chicas I had something called Tylada de la casa or something like that. It was essentially a Mexican Pizza with loads of mozzarella-like cheddar cheese and avocados. It was muy rico and we all had a lot of fun talking to our waiter, Javimiguel.

All filled up with some more queso, frijoles and mole, we went to textile country in Teotitlan. We learned how the Oaxacans make their awesome rugs from Jose, who is a 5th generation weaver. They dye all their wools with smooshed cochinillas…little bugs that feed off cactus. yum.

ok, the boys are hungry…so we are all going to eat now. !adios!

well not really the road. Once again, we’ll embark on an aerial assault on the skies above the US, burst away from the borders and touchdown in another country. This time we’re headed south of the border to Oaxaca.

It wasn’t one of the places listed in the previous post, but y’know you gotta bend the rules a bit and just gotta go with the gut feeling. Heck, in fact, we didn’t even know where we were going until like 5 days ago. It wasn’t until I was “borrowing” books from the local Barnes & Noble that I came across Oaxaca on the shelf. No need to really relive the moment that I decided to head to the most Mexican city in Mexico. The important thing is, we’re headed to Oaxaca tonight on 2:05am red eye via Mexico City.