Back again! And with plenty of stories to tell. This past weekend, some friends and I traveled to Oaxaca, another state in Mexico. This journey was quite large, as our group of 9 departed from the ADO station out of Puebla, embarking on a 4 hour bus ride to the center of Oaxaca. At the beginning, the Zocalo(Center) of Oaxaca didn't seem anything drastically different than the Zocalo of Puebla. We exited the station and walked for about 20 minutes to the hostel we had picked out to stay in. "La Casa de San Pedro" housed a few rooms with multiple bunk beds for $140 pesos a night, which comes out to about $11. Not bad!
Spending the night in Oaxaca was interesting, and much like spending a night in the center of Puebla. Many bars and markets, restaurants and vendors to see. The city was beautifully lit up but also was also a bit dirty. We went into town where we found a nice restaurant to eat at. Everything was smooth until the girls realized that part of the sampler plate they had ordered was crickets. That was entertaining for the other customers. We toasted, and they set out on the town. We settled at a modern bar and ordered a case of coronas. (24 bottles for about $32). After the bar half of us decided to get back to go to sleep at around 12pm so that we could get up early and explore the surrounding areas.
Saturday morning we woke up and decided to take a tour (costing $200 pesos ~ $16) which lasted all day. We started out at 10am and first stopped at Monte Alban. Famous for the ruins and pyramids it holds, its one of the meccas of Oaxaca. In the hot sun Bram, James and I raced up stairs which were about 1/3 my size each to the top of a pyramid to see the view of the world. Vendors push handmade crafts on you which rarely vary from vendor to vendor, trying to sell handmade jewelry, masks, marble carvings of Aztec gods.
Next we ventured to a wood-crafts market, where small and large statues of everything, mostly animals were carved and then hand painted with expertise. These have been the most expensive crafts I've seen in mexico yet. From small carvings at about $3 to $80 for medium, all the way up to $2,400 for the largest. Most of the carvings were extremely impressive.
After the woodshop we went to a church which dated back hundreds of years. Architecturally breathtaking and simply aesthetically pleasing no matter who you are. After touring the church we stopped for a lunch buffet and then moved to the next place. Drained of energy we all were nearly falling asleep after 6 hours of the tour, but we at last arrived at a well known Oaxaca pottery house. A simple modest house which held a family that excelled in pottery making. The oldest of the house had been doing it for about 60 years.
After the tour we arrived back at the Zocalo from which half of us went to buy tickets to a different part of Oaxaca. Some of us decided we wanted to venture into the forest to experience nature, whereas the other half wanted to stay in the city and experience more of the restaurants and bars, and citylife-scene that Oaxaca had to offer. So Bram, Gregor, Mish, James and I boarded a bus at 9 to head to Ixtlan, a city 2 hours from the Zocalo of Oaxaca, deep in the forest. The 2 hour bus ride was nice, and we all passed out from the 8 hour tour we had had before. The bus stopped in Ixtlan where we, only the 5 of us out of the entire bus, were ushered off by the driver. We exited the bus groggy and disheveled to a small center statue next to a gas station. The city seemed as though it was abandoned, and we looked around at the darkness that surrounded us as the bus skidded away.
Gregorio called the owner of the hostel/cabana place that we had made reservations to stay at.. the only place to stay at in town. This is where things began to really spin into a world of the unknown traveler. 10 minutes later, An old pick-up truck arrived at the statue where we waited. Gregor asked if he was from the Cabana place and he nodded and signaled for us to jump in back. The man was older and was driving with his wife riding shotgun and kids in the back. the five of us tossed our packs into the back of the truck and climbed up. We rode in the darkness deeper and deeper into the forest in the back of this man's pick-up as we looked around us into the forest. We made jokes about how we were riding in the pickup and being taken to be held for ransom. We laughed for a while until the road got darker and the jokes seemed more real. Eventually our worries were aleviated when we reached the log cabin in the middle of nowhere, Ixtlan. We were introduced to our new home. 5 beds, a fireplace and a nice bathroom.
As we settled into our new place, we all chose our beds and started to unpack a bit. The fire was roaring and things were getting a bit warmer. It was cold at night. Mish decided to go to bed and the remaining four decided to play poker by candle light for the last remaining corona. The game went on for about 2.5 hours, I was so close to winning! Bram came back from no where in the face off to take me out and win the beer. We climbed into bed and fell fast asleep...
While I was asleep I dreamt that I was snowboarding with the guys I was with, in Mexico. Obviously some dreams just dont use common sense. I deduced the reason my subconscious went to that scenario from 2 things: I love snowboarding and often dream of it, and 2) I woke up to an arctic fresh room where my first words from under the covers were not those welcoming the cold. We awoke early and set out to get some breakfast and find out what we could do in the limited amount of time we had. After breakfast we ziplined a bit, a short bit, and then rented mountain bikes for a couple of hours. The mountain bike ascent was painful but excellent at the same time, and you could only imagine how the descent went.. well if you can't imagine.. I'll tell you!
We kept ascending until we decided that we were short on time, and if the mountain we were on was as big as the ones we were looking at, we were much further from the peak than we thought. So we descended rapidly down the dirt and rock path skidding around the corners like a peloton of 5 racing to the bottom. I rode behind Gregorio as I saw him struggle to maintain control of the bike, he veered towards the edge and threw himself to the center of the trail as he was lifted off the bike and collided with the stones we were riding under. If I had been any closer to him I would have eaten it over his bike and been propelled ten feet off my bike. I skidded around him yelling "esperan" to the others, and stopped to see if he was ok. long story short, he's fine, but I think his battle wounds will be there for at least a few weeks.
We descended to the others and returned to the trail. Bram and James attached their cameras to their chest strap to videotape the decent. It was lucky that they did this or else we wouldn't have cinematically captured Mish flipping over his handlebars or me skid into the trees on an abrupt turn. We finally reached the bottom where we cleaned our wounds and grabbed another pick-up truck ride to a close by village-city known for it's shaman cleansings. The town was reminiscent of a small Italian city with cobblestone roads and very hilly. The views were the most astonishing yet, especially on the ride over. We met some Mexicans who worked security for the small city. They showed us to a nice place to eat and we ate, (or engorged ourselves) as the host, much like a mother, kept putting food on the table, half of which was typical Ixtlan and of which we didn't even order. We left full and satisfied on $4 a piece.
Shortly after, we met up with the pick-up truck to take us back to Ixtlan where we were staying. This was most definitely one of the most memorable parts of the trip as we took the ride back we looked out into the expansive scenery which seemed to never end. We were riding on the carved out roads on the side of a mountain thousands of meters in the air. The lack of guard rails was disconcerting as many times the wheels came close to the edge, but it wasn't enough to take our eyes off of the entrancing view. We arrived back at camp where we packed up and took a taxi back to Oaxaca to take a bus back to Puebla where our journey would end... for now.
