So I guess I will finally get to the second and third days on the beach. I don’t have photos right now, because I don’t have a USB port on the computer I am using. So after a night with far too much sleep we work up on our second day in Zipolite and decided it was time to go check out the little cafe on the far side of the beach attached to the yoga retreat. Good solid stick to your ribs breakfast there and for one of the first times on the trip great an fun service. Then it was off on a walk about 2.5 miles in the oposite direction to head to a beach attached with the next town over.  Great walk along the small beach roads heading to that beach. Talk about beautiful though, a small yellow/white sand cove lined with restraunts and boat launches.

A ambitious server from one of the restraunts wandered over and caught out attention before we even got the whole way down the hill. What can i say americans are suckers for good service. Then started a wonderful couple hours of relaxing, getting a litte sunburned ( really only a little), I even conquered my fear of the ocean enough to jump in and snorkel for a little while, though other than  few really bright blue fish there wasn’t that much to keep my attention there. We also had a plate of AMAZING fish hard tacos. I think we saw the fish that was being eaten taken intot he restraunt just a couple minutes before that too! So that was pretty much the day after that, well actually we wandered back to Zipolite and sat on that beach and talked with some of the other guests at the hotel had another beer or two and headed to dinner at the upstairs restraunt of the hotel where we had eaten breakdast. Though it couldn’t have been anymore diffrent than night or day. The service was weak even by mexican standards and the food. Well mine was edible, but Scott who wanted soemthing clean and simple ordered the vegetarian curry and it was basically brown rice cooked to the almost porridge stage and then some veges boiled to barely the point of recognition, then a sauce that ALMOST reminds you of curry poured over it but really just tasted like salt.  Then it was time tog et some sleep and well that worked till about 1 am when some neighbors  decided to get a little loud… Oh well it’s still fun!

More later today.

Okay so I{m going to skip forward a couple of days to get some of the more stressful and frustrating of the days or our trip out of the way. The days when we really didn’t get much accomplished because of challenges in travel. . We did get to see the bus station and umm a hotel room in a couple extra places! woooo!!!!!!!!

So we got up in San Augstino on the morning we were gonna leave… Ill get to how we got there later so just relax. Well I should say Scott got up.. The first time he has ever ever beaten me out of bed in the morning. I couldn’t move. I hadnt been comfortable all night, I had eaten to much at dinner and my stomach hurt and was sore from the combo of trying to boogie board and swallowing lots and lots of water. Suffice to say I got about 4 hours of sleep.. Awesome right.

So I wake up sicker than a dog and really I just want to no move for a week, but its travel time. We gather everything up and get a taxi back into dirty pochutla and to the bus station thats supposed to have 8 trips a day to Acapulco where we are planning to go that next day..

To their credit they really did have 4-5 a day, but only one in the early morning when we had though they had 3-4.. The scedule didn’t match the postd on the wall either. I was sick and waiting 5 hours in a dirty bus station. (I’m not being mean this bus station was really pretty pedestrian) wasn’t realy a good idea for me. We wandered down and found a bus at a diffrent office leaving in 10 minutes for Puerto Escondido, a hour farter along atleast and a nicer town to have to hang out in.  SO that bus ride was painless and we found a cute hotel close ish to the beach to hang out in. It was a wonderful 6-7 room guest house. Bright airy and not that expensive. Really I would have loved to feel well enough to enjoy it.  So I slept….. all day and oh I frgot to mention.. The only good bus we found t get us to acapulco was a bus at 11:30 that night… So we were just using the room for the day. Comfy room and soon to be a very uncomfortalbe bus ride!

The start of the fall…

So just as we were getting showered and ready to head to the bus station the storm hit in earnest and the power went out! Fantastic, it was raining buckets, the hotel was on a cute pedestrain only street, the power was out, and we didn’t even get to shower..

Well it ended up being not a very big deal,  we got dressed by flashlight, we found a cab 1/2 a block away, and the power was only out in the couple parts of he town right next to the beach. Got to the station a little earlier than we wanted, but it beat a dark hotel room. Met some nice danes and got to talk about travel and politics a little.

The bus left on time, and was only half full. Though the people from the previous connections had colonized the seats assigned to Scott and I. No big deal really, we just picked another seat each. Mine seemed fine at first, until I noticed the drip drip drip drip of the emergency exit hatch on my head… I switch sides to avoid it only to be woken up later when the weather sealing on the window wasn’t quite up to par and another steady stream of drips was waking me up! Wonderful so I had to relegate myself to the only set of free dry seats left in the VERY VERY back next to the bathrooms. They worked atleast and I actually got a decent amount of sleep.

That got us to Acapulco and a quick taxi over to another bus station and a hour or so layover. I bought a shot glass, just to prove I was there. The rest of the trip was incidental to Taxco, easy quick shot into town and we found an amazing old converted Monastery to stay in. Thats for the next post… The rest is the stories of the frustration of travel.

After a day in Taxco it was time to catch the bus for Cuernavaca. One and a half hour of travel and no problems at all. Hung out there all day and jumped on the bus for Morelia…. 6 hours they said witha  quick stop in Mexico city.. So we would get in at 9 pm and find a hotel have time to get some dinner. Sounded like agood plan to us.. Well because of Mexico Cities rush hour traffic and a closed of tunnel. 8 hours later we arived , got dropped off in the wrong spot by a terrible taxi driver and we got into a decent little hotel right in our pricerange! Travel over for a couple days and all hard travel for the trip done!

Cheers

I’ll be catching up a lot over the next couple days and posting plent of photos so be prepared.

I like hammocks!

So I´m gonna get this one started, but becuase we really just relaxed on the beach as much as possible and because I had on the shorts and sandels and not my camera for most of the time there really isn´t much to blog about.

We got to the bus monday morning at 4 am.. It was a brutal 5. 5 hour drive through incredible and amazingly curvy roads to the little market town of Pochutla… Then got out of there ASAP it wasn´t a place you would really want to hang out. Headed of too Zipolite a 1.5 mile long beach with a town of sorts spread out along it on the southern coast of Oxa. We found an incredible room over looking the water with a hammock on the balacony and really that was about it for the day. We wandered around the beach and ate some snacks and umm well yeah. I had a coconut!

For dinner we smartly strayed away from the beach and found our was to a place recommended in the guide books normally a kiss of death, but the hostess had a great smile and the place looked decent. Well what a treat. Huge fish plates overflowing with food for about 5 dollars. Beer for a buck.. Really we almost felt bad getting out of there for under twenty dollars and bellies stuffed with well prepared and presented fish. Scott for a breaded and fried fillete and I got a fillete wrapped in foil with tropical fruits and steamed in the juices in the oven. Amazingly tender.

The cool little sitting area outside the room.

Thats day one.. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the hammocks and reading. Slept about 11 hours that night too!

So this is a view from the balcony of the room, pretty nice?

Moss Hanging off the Trees. It´s only for very specific parts of the trail so its considered quite special by the locals.

in a full week later and I´m finally going to tell the adventure of the final day of treking.. It was… um exciting. Well the trek itself was fantastic. Woke up after an amazing night of sleep in the little Cabanas in Latuvi and ate some of the snacks we bought the night before for breakfast. Was a perfect light snack to get started. Then it was down to the guide office to get going. The office guy greated us and then started the news… Well he said it was going to be troublesome for us because the little collective taxis that run between the villages.. Well they don´t actually run on sundays and since it was sunday well they really weren´t sure how we were going to get back. I asked a few questions and stayed as calm as possible and we figured otu that a bus left the town we would be hiking to at about 4 pm.. Not quite the 1pm we had hoped to get headed back to Oacaxa, but being in the middle of the mountains we didn´t really have much in the way of choices so we got started on the hike.  The hike was right away better for Scott and I because the woman who had been hiking with us the day before was headed in a diffrent dirrection so now it was time to turn on the gas and push ourselves a little. I think we also did because we held out a little hope the if we hussled we could make it to the village and that minibus would have really been canceled.

It started off with a nice 2 km drop down into a beautiful river canyon, lush and green and just starting to grown with the rainy season. In some areas what looked like spanish moss, but was a slightly diffrent central american version hung down 4 to 5 feet off of the trees. This was for about 8 km and you will see the interesting excerpts of it in my photos. The weathers in the canyon was amazing too, a perfect day for hiking. I think the guide was having fun too because we talked abotu native agriculture and substinence economics and we didn´t take breaks.

Nice View right?

The last part was what was sold to us has a hard 4 km climb. It was really about 2 km of challenging climb up small trails and then 2 km of gravel or even paved roads into town. Amatlan and it´s sister town were night and day to Latuvi the nigth before. Where Latuvi was a spread out very very poor substinence farming community. Amatlan was still quite poor but because of being inhabited by the spanish in the distance past it was graced with slightly more prosperity, a new government building, and a cute rural church.

The guide dropped us off and helped us confirm that the ONLY bus really wasn´t until about 4 that afternoon.  So we found the little comedor and had the plate of the day ssome egg and vege mix and to the greatest suprise also found out that the little cafe doubled as a internet cafe… in the middle of a mountain village ok well whatever works. The other big suprise was that the carne asada was served with the best salsa of the trip. I complimented the chef and got the recipe. Dried Chile de Arbol, Garlic, and rosted tomatillos or green tomatos…. I´m not really sure. So afterthat well we waited…. and waited.. and napped on a bench.. and waited a little more..

Crazy bug outside of the Comedor where we ate.

FOOD

The bus finally got moving and it was going to become quite a cattle car as it was the weekly municipal bus that takes the kids back to school for the week in the city. It was a long, slowly, badly driven, windy, 3 hour ride… fantastic.. In which we were dropped off somewhere sorta near the central station more or less. We then found our way to buy 4 am tickets to the coast and found some food in the Market… I had meat and veges and Scott got a terrible rendidtion of enfrioladas… kindle like enchiladas but these werent. The real treat was a cup of hot chocolate local style mixed with corn masa to make a almost pudding like consistency of goodness. Then it was back to the hostel and SLEEP… One more day down.

So half a county and two days later I might finally have time to catch my breath. I will catch up soon

Walked along this stream for part of the way

So it was up early to head to the Sierra Norte the mountains to the north east of Oaxaca to go on our two day semi organized hike. We had to walk to the disgusting second class bus station on the far side of town to find the bus we needed. The bathrooms were incredible on how terrible there were, though I used them anyways so go figure. Better than suffering on teh bus… Speaking of the bus… standing room only on this trip and Scott and I were shoved to the far far back of the bus so it was a painful and bumpy 2 hour + ride to the small town of Cualjimoyas. We found our guide and ended up sharing the guide with a girl for Belguim. It cut the cost it half so why not, even if she wasn´t in as good of shape we are it would be nice to have someone to talk to in english while we walked.

The walk was amazing, though really reminded me a lot of our biospheres here in CA too. That huge diffrence was the Bromeliads and Orchids… We don´t have those. Well we don´t have cloud forests either. Sinec this was through much of the native areas the paths were dotted with farms, fish hatcheries, donkeys, cows and the like.

We then reached a Overlook of the valleys and changed guides to a small girl who looked like she might be no more than 16.. I´m sure she could ahve outwalked me though, no problem.

The final part of the hike was a brutal down hill and then a stop at a fishfarm for a quesadilla. Then on to the village of Latuvi where we would be staying the night in the little tourist Cabanas built for this project. The town was tiny with maybe 650 people most of which were subsitnance farmers.  The Cabanas were AMAZING the best rooms we have stayed in sinec we haev arrived. The Picture I have doesn´t do justice to it because it doesn´´t  show the other beds in the room or the huge bathroom with a fantastic shower. We grabed a quick dinner and some beers at the store and just hung out with teh Belgian until it was time to go to sleep. Long day and little did we know that the next day was going to get even longer…..

Just the start of the Amazing Flowers on the walk

Donkey!

They apparently like to farm trout up here. The rivers were full of them too. It was great to see.

More trout farming!

I am too cool for for words aren´t I?

A diffrent one flowering... Sorry didn´t turn it.

The overlook halfway through the hike!

 get

Cactus Growing out of Rocks covered with fungus... Not the dessert!

One of the first orchids we saw.

Another pull away shot

Shiney bugs

Huge Room, can´t even see the other two beds.

The Ruins of a housing complex in the ruins.

So just to admit it up from I forgot to charge my camera and had to take almost every single picture on this day with Scotts camera. That wouldn´t be a big deal, but we are yet to find a location with the equipment to get his pictures on to a computer and the owners of the internet cafes around here are painfully weak in thier computer skills. They might be able to buy them, but honestly they can barely run them or maintain them. Just another thing on the post I ca´n´t wait to type about all the little weird parts of the Mexican Experiance.

So the second morning in Oxa started with a bang.. Getting up and run walking the 20 minutes to the tour plae that provides rides to Monte Alban the Mayan ruin that is pretty much right outside of Oxa. 1.75 for the round trip, I´m okay with that! WE went with the Japanese kid we had met the night before and a spanish guy our age that was also staying at the hostel. It was a lot of fun. The ruins were amazing and a big change from the earlier ruins as the Mayans seemed more concerned with the exacting details of the construction that just shear size. They weren´t quite as decorative inside it seems. That took the first couple hours of the day and I will have more pictures than the few below when I can finally get his camera connected to a computer!

Walkway up to the main site... One of the few pictures before the camera died.

One of the many tombs attached to the housing areas.

So after that the super excitment of heading back for food began. This time the four of us headed to the food market just south of the main market. The place is totally not what you would expect. Each littler eatery has it´s own little white tile tables and well design kitchen. We all got a assorment of Moles. Scott tried the Mole Colaradito and I had the Mole Amarillo. Both were good, but not quite the same as the amazing black mole from the night before.

Then it was off to wander around some more and book tickets for the trip the next day to hike in the Sierra Norte and visit some of the native villages.

Then we took a GLORIOUS siesta and then couldn´t quite shake it so I walked across the street to the grocery store and bought chips and salsa.  Wonderful snack that go us going to all wander down towards somewhere again… Ended up finally at the Zocalo (Square) and I wish I had my camera. It was a huge graduation party for the local engineering school. They had a model cow things that was strapped with all kinds of fireworks that students were passing around to the music of the live band and dancing with the cow held above thier heads while the fireworks exploded all around them. I bet it got hot!

Then we had to wander around alittle more and got some tacos that were really tasty but fatty and then a cold chocolate milk. Wow the chocolate milk here is amazing!

Then a quick sandwich to finish off the night and we hit the sack… Big day of traveling out to the middle of no where in the villages.

Mole for Lunch... Looks better than it was.. Too much chocolate not enough chiles.

Okay so Scott and I have arrived in Zipolite a tiny little beach town in the southern part of Oaxaca, Mexico. Amazing doesn´t even start to describe this place. It´s slow and quiet, there are no museums, and there are no monuments. It´s finally a place that go go go people like me can relax and catch up on thier personal time!

So Oaxaca  itself was fun too. We got into to town in the early afternoon and found this funky funky little place called the Magic Hostel… Not much of a place, but for 18$ a night for a private room who is gonna complain too much. After that it was off to FOOD, cause I am always cranky and hungry after 6 hour bus rides.. So we found a little comedor and I of course went for the Chicken Mole. It was pretty basic and really chocolatly I was not quite that impressed. Then we just wandered around town a little. One thing we noticed quickly was that every little corner had a empanaditas stand. Little sweet filled turnovers. Of course I bought one!

You can see like 4 stands selling them. It´s worse than Starbucks, but tastier.

Here they are in all thier fried puff pastry filled with stuff glory.

Some colorful stuff in the Market.

Then we pretty much just bummed around the market and the surrounding food markets. After we finished with that we headed to check out some of the local cooperative shops that are setup by the surrounding villages. In the one that showcases work  by the local female artisans I skipped my usual shot glass and bought a whole small tequila set. Then we headed back out and lo and behold it was time to go Mezcal (Local name for Tequilla more or less) tasting. I just had to buy some to go with my set and I actually like the smokey character quite a bit. That in hand and a couple beers to settle lunch I we head to check out one last place. A weaving store that is reported to be one of the best in Mexico. We ended up not seeing much of the weaving because as soon as we got to the back room with the designs and the loom we started to talk to the guy at the loom (ended up being the owners brother) about politics and other world issues and ended up listening to a Cd of his sons band and having a drink of Mezcal with him and all of the other random friends that happened to drop by. It was great fun! Never got a chance to see the weavings though.

Next it was back to the hostel for a little siesta before dinner. A great habit that I wish I could get into here. Probably not going to happen though. Ended up meeting a nice kid from Hawaii that is going to school in LA and he joined us for dinner. This time I got what was called a Talyuda which is rather like a tortilla pizza. Scott got the Black Mole this time and I tasted a little. It was PERFECT exactly like I expected! Spicy, rich and complex. Wash that down with a couple beers and then it was time to head back to the hostel, have a good night drink of Mezcal and off to dream land.

I have to get back to beach relaxing, but hopefully I´ll be back after diner or something to post day two. I need to bring scotts memory card for the photos.

View from the room. Including my Hammock

So I didn´t remember to put my card in my Camera so I have to work a little harder to get access to the first day of Oaxaca pictures. So I will wait until I have a little more time to blog about that.  Then I ran out of battery so the rest of them are on Scott´s camera… So I will get back to you of it.

The Disc that was found originally that started the whole excavation of the site.

The second day in Mexico city wasn´t quite as action packed as the first afternoon. We got a later start and then headed down to the Historic Center and saw the Catherdral and the theTemplo Major, which is the remains of the temple that was present whent he spanish invaders took over the city. Here are some photos to enjoy.

A Church that we couldn´t go into on the way to the center.

The GIGANTIC Organ in the Catherdral. There are two.

Snake Statue in the Templo Mayor