Oaxaca: ruins, bikes and mole!

I actually can´t even remember how long my dad has been talking about going to Oaxaca. We were put off for years because it´s somewhat difficult to get to and they have had some violent teachers protests recently. Somehow he heard it was worth exploring this state in southern Mexico, and he suggested it for so many vacations that it became a running joke. But in the end of April, we finally made it there! I arrived by bus from Puebla and he took the full-day plane journey to meet me in Oaxaca City. We spent the following five days day-tripping to sites in the surrounding valleys. The town itself was so nice to just wander around and I had been looking forward to checking out the zocalo, markets and colonial buildings for my entire trip. 

The six moles of Oaxaca!

For our first day trip outside of the city, we went up to the hilltop Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban. Why not check out the big sight right off the bat? This a photo of me dancing with the danzantes, which are Zapotec carved dancers that were discovered at the site. Below is a full view of the expansive sight of Monte Alban.

As with a typical Sholund vacation, we were not there to dilly dally, sleep in or relax at our hotel, so the next day we signed up for a tour of five sights in the valley to the east of town. While I was very skeptical that we might start feeling like herded goats, this was the easiest way to see this area without renting a car. 

Stop #1: The El Tule tree in the town of Santa Maria El Tule. This is apparently the largest tree by volume in the world. It is a type of cypress tree and perhaps the most amazing thing is that they are not growing many more of these trees in the area because they clearly thrive!

Stop #2: Next we made it to a weaving workshop in Teotitlan del Valle, where artisans demonstrated traditional methods of spinning and dying yarn, and weaving on giant looms. Unfortunately my backpack is not big enough for one of their beautiful wall hangings, but seeing the process was very interesting.

Stop #3: The Hierve el Agua calcium carbonate "waterfall". This is such an amazing and rare rock formation and we got to bathe in the mineral rich pool above the falls.

Stop #4: Mitla ruins and the nearby church that was built on top of other ruins. This site is known for it´s intricate stone work. And stop #5 was a mezcal factory with plenty of samples. Mezcal is a regional specialty similar to tequila. 

The following day we went on an amazing mountain bike ride with a former Mexican biking champion. It was so exciting that it merits a post of is own! Our final day in Oaxaca City was May 1st, which is labor day in Mexico, and fortunately that was also our day to explore town, hang out on the zocalo watching labor unions march and make speeches. We also toured the museum inside the Santo Domingo church, which had a giant collection of artifacts from Monte Alban and other nearby sights. After out busy days in and around Oaxaca City, we were ready to move on to see the coast and Chiapas, but I could definitely see myself returning to Oaxaca someday and I highly recommend it to other travelers! Here are some other photos of nice Oaxaca memories:

Mayordomo chocolate maker

View out of Santo Domingo church

Group bike rides at night around the city! We did it on Sunday with about 10 people, and then again on Wednesday with about 60 people! It was so much fun and I want to start something similar in Seattle!!

Xalapa and Puebla

From San Miguel de Allende, I was about four hours by bus north of Mexico City. That is, four hours north of one of the many bus stations in the city and four hours to just the edge of the cultural giant in the core of the country. To take on Mexico City alone would have required much more energy and research, and most of all, lots more time than I had. So I made the easy choice to spend a total of about 30 minutes on the ground in the bus station, and then get on another bus to Xalapa. 

Xalapa was not even on my radar when I was planning my trip to Mexico, as I didn´t think I´d have time to make it as far east as Veracruz state. But when I read about the town in a novel in March, I realized that the cool and cloudy weather would be a nice break after over a week in the inland desert. And this is how I came to arrive in the humid cloud forest town, known for it´s large university, coffee farms and nearby volcano. I easily found my couchsurfing host Eren´s apartment and she got home from work five minutes later. I don´t think I have ever met as energetic and forthcoming of a host who had only three hours between a nine hour work day and her English night classes, but insisted on showing me around town in that time. She helped me plan my self-tour of the city the next day, which included morning yoga class, an awesome anthropology museum, a botanical garden in the cloud forest, a swim in the university´s pool and lots of tasty snacks and interesting bus rides along the way. Then, I made it back to her apartment and met up with Eren after her English class. After another long day, she asked if I wanted to got out to a local cafe or bar, and see live music or get a drink! I was way too tried and we both had to get up early the next day to catch buses, but I was so impressed by her hospitality, map-drawing ability, local CS event organizing, and general cheeriness and positive attitude. I wish that I was able to spend more time in Xalapa´s nice cafes and cloud forest, and I was so glad that I went out of a limb a bit and rode a bus to a place that I had only heard of a month beforehand. By meeting Eren, it had really paid off!  

 

Olmec heads at the Anthropology museum

Carnivorous plants at the botanical reserve

Hiking through the cloud forest on a sunny afternoon! 

From Xalapa, I bused four hours further south to Puebla, where I stayed in a hostel in the old town for a night before moving onto Oaxaca to meet my dad on Saturday April 27th. Puebla was fun to walk around for a day, but I can´t say that I fell in love with the place. The old town was magnificent and I got to see a Cuban band play lots of Buena Vista Social Club hits on the main square in front of a huge crowd at night. Puebla was really just a stop over on my way to Oaxaca City, and I think the excitement of heading further south and traveling with my dad overshadowed my trip through town.

 A few shots of Puebla--a University building downtown and the cathedral

San Miguel de Allende

There must be a reason why so many people move here and many people up north and elsewhere talk about San Miguel de Allende. Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to see what all the hubbub was about, and now I completely understand! My couchsurfing host Carol was delightful, and even convinced me to stay an extra day in town. She and her boyfriend took me out to eat the first night and showed me lots of art around town, as they are both artists. I celebrated Earth Day in San Miguel at the botanical garden and the next day I took the bus to soak in natural hot springs and got a ride back into town with an expat who used to live in Seattle. It was strange seeing a lot of expats and speak more English than Spanish, but I can see why everyone enjoys San Miguel´s mellow atmosphere and variety of cultural events. 

This is part of the interior of the "casita" that I stayed in, next door to Carol´s main house. It was definitely the nicest place I´ve ever couchsurfed and is also up on vacation rental sites! 

Looking down on the garden at Carol's house

The cathedral at night looks somewhat Disney-like

Earth day celebration at the Botanical Garden...Son Jarocho music and dancing plus cactus fruit gelato!

Hot springs near San Miguel

Sunset out of the bathroom window at Carol´s place

 

Carol showed me the hidden parts of San Miguel, like the huge Tuesday market/swap meet, which also happens to have the best pork tacos in town (you just have to add your own avocado)!

SORRY FOR THE DELAY!

I´ve been so busy having fun and traveling that I haven´t had any time to work on my blog. I´m sure that the few people who were reading about my travels back in April have now given up, but today I will finally get around to posting a few things and maybe more tomorrow too! Being sick on the shore of beautiful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala has given me a chance to sit in front of a computer. That and sleeping are about all I can manage today. Hopefully I´ll be well enough by Sunday to move onto Antigua, then the waterfalls of Semuc Champey, and the ruins of Tikal before meeting my mom in Belize one week from today! Thanks for reading and please leave comments or email me if you´d like!

I promise I am still alive!!

Wanna Guanajuato?

Confusing, hilly, astounding and old...Guanajuato (pronounced wah-nuh-wah-toe) surprised me with so many interesting sights. Just walking down the streets and narrow alleys was an adventure because it was so easy to get lost or end up in the wrong tunnel! The city is somewhat squished between hills and there aren´t enough roads for all the cars that want to pass through downtown. Thus cars driving in one direction (I think it´s east to west) use a series of deep tunnels called the "subterraneo", while cars driving in the other direction use the cobblestone streets and some shorter tunnels. On top of all of this confusion lies a really neat city, with plazas, musseums, old buildings and a big university, which my couchsurfing host attends. This was my first chance to couchsurf in Mexico, and it went super well! Fernanda studies tourism and gave me a walking tour of town with her dog Maya on the first night. On my second day I explored the old town and the nearby hills on my own, and on the third day I went with her tourism class on a field trip to some nearby mining towns and a few obscure local museums. Her classmates were such a hoot! On my last morning before hopping back on the bus, I went to the Mummy Museum, which Guanajuato is famous for. They had an impressive collection of partially decomposed cadavers from the city's crypts, but I don't recommend it for squeamish folks!  

 

Part of the subterranean tunnel system

 

Now a nice museum, this building is known as Alhondinga de Granaditas (a public granary), where one of the first fights for Mexican Independence took place. 

Murals inside of Alhondiga de Granaditas

 

Another quiet Guanjuato street

The perfect sized market--very easy to manage and not too overwhelming.

"Callejon del Beso" or Kissing Alley, where the balconies are approximately 80 cm apart

 

Teatro Juarez inside and out

 

 

I climbed to the top of the hill to the Pipilan monument, which had great views of the city.

Universidad de Guanajuato, where my CS hosts studies tourism

 

On the field trip with Fernanda and her tourism class

 

Valenciana Cathedral outside and in

The mummy museum!!

 

Fernanda's apartment complex, which was laid out in an even more confusing way than the city streets!

Goodbye Coast...now to Guadalajara!

The Cathedral in old town Guadalajara

After nearly a month and a half of looking out onto the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Cortez everyday, I finally decided that it was time to head inland and explore some of Central Mexico! A few friends and fellow travelers told me that Guadalajara was worth visiting, so I decided to make it my first stop after leaving the coast. Additionally, one of the PA students from the Iowa group grew up in Guadalajara and her parents (Lynn and Barb) still live just outside of town in Zapopan. I met them during the first week of medical clinics when they drove west to visit their daughter and help interpret for patients. And Barb and Lynn turned out to be such incredibly welcoming hosts! They picked me up from the bus station, showed me how to get around the city and took me to their local fruit market in Zapopan. Guadalajara felt very overwhelming and crowded at times, as it is the second largest city in Mexico after the capitol. But with such a rich history and fantatic art to see, it was worth taking hot and crowded buses to get to downtown two days in a row, where there were plenty of pedestrian-only streets. The murals by Jose Clemente Orozco that decorate the inside of many government buildings were amazing, and no one minded if you walked inside to see them!   

Murals inside of the University of Guadalajara library

Orozco mural inside a government building

My other favorite sight in the city was Instituto Cultural Las Cabanas, which was formerly an orphanage and then military barracks, and is now a culural center and museum. I spent a long time staring up at the historic murals on the ceiling of the main passageway, which you had to lie down on the benches or floor to see. There was also a documentary film festival going on while I was in Guadalajara, and I saw a movie called "El Alcalde (The Mayor)" with some local university students. It follows the interesting and very messed up story of a mayor from a town in Northeast Mexico where drug violence is very prevalent. Even though my travels do not take me to this area of the country, this is a common concern and subject of discussion all around the country.

Instituto Cabanas courtyard

Murals inside of Cabanas

Just around the corner from Cabanas was the Central Market of Guadalajara, with many levels of just about everything you could think of buying! I ate lunch at one of the counters there on my first day, and had possible the best corn tortillas of the trip so far. After the fact, I was of course told by multiple people that the market is for looking and not eating, but luckily it didn´t make me sick!

A whole stack of chile rellenos!