I've known that Oaxaca City would be the beginning of another phase of my journey.  Zero backpackers had mentioned Oaxaca City on their itinerary.  Yes, the beaches of Oaxaca, specifically Puerto Escondido and Mazunte, would be on the list but no one seemed to have Oaxaca City on their list.  Because my next step after would be Zipolite, also not on the radar, I started to accept that maybe I was no longer part of the backpacker circuit and I would start making friends in different ways (not just in the hostel). 

When I found the New York Times 36 Hours In Oaxaca article, I knew that I was going in the right direction. The New York Times can be all sorts of fucked up and biased but when it comes to culture... ooh it just makes me quiver with fanciful thoughts.  I like fancy things, ok?  I'm at peace with that and you should be too :-)

After feeling very crowded in San Cristobal and a little down about how unfriendly the folks were in my hostel, I set the bar really low for Oaxaca.  I envisioned a city of gringos with everyone trying to go to the same restaurants and speaking American English with British flair saying things like, "Oh that restaurant is simply delightful, have you been?"  Gladly, I was mistaken.  I was in Oaxaca for Christmas Day and the day proceeding it.    There was still a joyousness in the air.  The Christmas holiday crowds had barely dissipated, but this city can handle the crowds.  The pedestrian boulevards are wide.  There were smiling children and parents everywhere.  Families from Mexico filled the streets.  This was the opposite of the gringo-wonderland that I feared.

In addition, to my surprise, I lucked out with the hostel situation.  Even though the place was at the edge of town, it was still only a 12 minute walk to the main plaza.  Beyond an amazing restaurant scene, colonial architecture, stunning archaeological ruins and mountainsmountainsmountains, I met some incredibly intelligent and interesting people in Oaxaca.  I guess this reminds me of the nerds of Valladolid.  If you are going to come to this mountain town, you will have to go a bit out of your way.  Yes, there is an airport in Oaxaca, but to get out of the region, you have to go through some incredible mountain ranges.

The people at the hostel in Oaxaca were open and inviting and they spoke English and they were the complete opposite of the people in the hostel from San Cristobal.  I met a couple from Canada, a guy from China and a girl from Poland (who I wrote about in the San Cristobal post, who judged me but it’s ok).  People were talking about the crazy trek to Mitla, to get to Hierve El Agua.  There was this one guy from Australia who kept saying, “Don’t just see the falls, do the hike, do the hike”.  He also looked like he was blasted out of his mind on Oaxacan mushrooms, the kind that people kept telling me about in Merida.  

In any case, the first day in Oaxaca, I just walked around the city.  It’s just so beautiful.  It’s a grid system and there is a large plaza.  There are restaurants everywhere.  The streets and boulevards are wide.  The pedestrian zones are not overcrowded.  Oaxaca is fabled for its restaurant scene and it totally lived up to its expectations.  I had some delicious meals.  I had some local Oaxacan dishes, specifically the mole and the tlayudas.  The traditional Oaxacan hot chocolate did not disappoint.  I did not try the chapulines, the deep-friend grasshoppers.  Sitting here in on my last day in Mexico City, I am thinking about how I would have like to have just tried one, but I don’t think you can just buy one.  You have to buy a tortilla covered in salsa and grasshoppers.  Maybe it’s ok that I didn’t try it.

The main cathedral of Oaxaca really stands out.  I was very moved by its architecture.  I then Googled “impressive day trips from Oaxaca” and Monte Alban came up.  I didn’t really know what that was, I figured it was a mountain and it had good views of the city.  Because Oaxaca is in the middle of the mountains, I wanted to be in a place where I could see an amazing view point.  It’s apparently very easy to get there.  Many tour services take you up the mountain and take you back.  I found one that was nearby my location at the time and I just signed right on up and went on that damn bus.  

This would be the first time in a while where I was not the only English-speaker on the bus.  There were these older hippy ladies from Oregon talking about their housing collective and how the appropriately and distribution percentages have changed since Bob and Margaret moved out and all of this stupid bullshit no one cares about.  The bus is going up Monte Alban and I’m getting excited because the view of the city is coming into the picture.  I’m thinking, “Yes, this is the view I wanted to see!  I love views!”  Then I see the signs for the archaeological site and I feel like a dumb ass.  Monte Alban is a Zapotec City that has been preserved.  Yes, it is a mountain, but it is primarily an archaeological site.  So we get off the bus and I go further up the hill to the entrance.  There is a fabulous museum that explains how the archaeologists uncovered the site in the 1970s.  This is the first Mexican archaeological museum that I’ve seen outside of the Templo Mayor museum in Mexico City that explains how the pyramid was uncovered and partially restored, who the archaeologist sere and some of the challenges that their team had.  

The Monte Alban site is another one of these massive sites that just totally blows your mind.  You are put in the middle of this abandoned city.  There are some architectural details that are different about Monte Alban.  The top of the mountain contains two large raised platforms that have pyramids on top of them.  There is a central boulevard that connects giant pyramids at either end.  The larger platform has a unique feature.  At the top of the platform there is a sunken plaza.  They believe this site was probably used for rituals and sacrifice.

The site has remnants of domiciles and a display of rocks that have inscriptions on them.  In the museum they explain that Monte Alban, as a Zapotec site, has elements of Mayan and Teotihucan artifacts.  Some Teotihucan pottery was found on the site.  After my museum visit, I returned to Oaxaca.  

The next day in Oaxaca, I decided this would be my Hierve El Agua day.  The tours to Hierve El Agua required an 8am pickup and a 7pm return.  Hierve El Agua is a petrified waterfall that that contains manmade pools at the top that have watered supplied from natural springs.  The tour also makes stops at a tequila tasting place and you have to watch old ladies make textiles and then they persuade you to buy some and I didn’t want to do any of that.  I just wanted to see the petrified waterfall and go on the hike.  I researched how to get there through the Australian and the hostel and they all kept saying, “Oh it’s so easy, it’s so easy… just go to Mitla.”  I didn’t know that Mitla was an hour away.  They said, “Oh you know to get to Mitla just go to the edge of Oaxaca and there’s like a giant supermarket, where the collectivos are and then you can get on a collectivo to Mitla.”  So I go to the supermarket, and I am waiting for the collectivo and a few come by but none of them are going to Mitla.  And I wait, wait, wait.  I go to the taxi stand and I ask the lady driver how much to Mitla, and she says 400 pesos and I say sure. I mean, I have no idea where this place is.  It is an hour away.  It is a solid hour drive.  I’m sitting in the taxi speaking Spanish for an hour to the taxi driver and I have no idea where we are going.  Eventually she drops me off at Mitla.  I see a small pickup truck that has seats built-in to the back in a U-shape configuration with some sort of handlebar you can hang on to and a tent-like structure to protect the sun from blasting in your face.  There are already 7 people in and I’m not seeing an empty space for myself.  The driver makes them squish in and I become the 8th person for maybe 50 pesos or so.  I didn’t really know what this truck-thing was.

This truck is going on a very bumpy road up an entire mountain to take you to Hierve El Agua to take you to these pools.  We are at the edge of this mountain going around it.  If we weren’t holding on for dear life I imagine we would have flown right out… but I guess if that was happening all the time, they wouldn’t have these trucks.  So that was another hour going down the highway and then up the mountain.  We get to Hierve El Agua with the people in the truck who I am now friends with.  We were Speaking Spanish to each other the whole time up.  There was some Europeans and a girl from India originally.  The guy from Spain and I became friends.

The Belgian girl was very complementary of my fro-hawk and beard and recommended I grow a neckbeard to complete the hipster look. Eventually we broke down into English.  I think we were all just emotionally exhausted from the anxiety of going up this mountain and wondering if we’d ever get there alive. 

The pools are very cold.  There are cliffs less than a 10 minute hike away.  You can see the petrified falls from a distance.  You can sit at the edge of the cliff… but it is a cliff.  Like if someone pushes you or accidentally trips, you are done.  So I refused to sit at the edge, but everyone else did.  So I got some nice pictures of them and I think it looks really artistic, but I refused to sit with them.  Then we went swimming in the very cold pools because the sun was strong and blasting in our faces.  We wanted some beers.  God knows how they get all of that food to the top of the mountain to feed us.  SO we had some beers, fresh fruit and vegetables and tlayudas and talked about life.  I learned some amazing things about these people and what they are trying to do with their lives.  The girl from India is biking the entire continent.  She’s already biked through the US!  Now she’s biking through Mexico and she’s gonna make her way to the tip of Panama.  The Belgian girl was so appreciate of my story, and I was very surprised by that.  The guy from Barcelona was a network security engineer and we talked about computer stuff.  We were all staying in different hostels and we all agreed that we were surrounded by good people and have a good experience in the hostels.  That helps solidified that similar to Valladolid, Oaxaca is filled with intelligent people who are looking to discover culture and not just to party and climb things and I really, really appreciated that.