Mexico Journal - Oaxaca
It is hard to describe the beauty of this friendly and welcoming town. I thought the architecture of places like Villa de Leyva in Colombia was unrivaled, but the most beautiful colonial places I have visited are no match for this amazing town of roughly 300.000 people.
The Zocalo (the central plaza) is circled by four water fountains, one on each corner, with gorgeous gardens all around. Small cafes and shops cater tourists and locals alike, and live music can be heard in almost every street. We found a hostel that had opened a couple of weeks earlier, and were delighted to find out that our rate per night was much cheaper than what we had originally budgeted for. It was still a family house with no sign on the door or anyhting, and we got there after knocking on another of the out-of-business hostals from my outdated guide. The owner suggested we tried his neighbor's house.
An older man opened the door and said he had a room available. When we went in, we found two Russian girls and a Czech guy who looked very surprised that we knew about the place. They had knocked on the door thinking it was the hostel we were also looking for, and did not understand what was going on, but were happy to have found a cheap place to stay. They offered us potatoes from the meal they had just cooked and we agreed that the next day we would visit together the archaeological site of Monte Alban, a not so well-known (at least by me) ancient city second in size only to Chichen-Itza and Tehotihuacan. It looked like we would get our share of ancient pyramids after all.
Once there, we ran into some friends we made in the bus to Oaxaca, a Canadian girl who has travelled the world dressed in black and without a guidebook, who also refuses to use email or the internet, and two Norwegian girls who had just come back from volunteering for a semester in Ecuador. They were leaving to the beach the next day, so we met that night at a local bar for drinks and decided to go with them in a tortuous 10 hour bus drive across the mountains and into the Pacific, to a beautiful beach called Puerto Escondido.
The Zocalo (the central plaza) is circled by four water fountains, one on each corner, with gorgeous gardens all around. Small cafes and shops cater tourists and locals alike, and live music can be heard in almost every street. We found a hostel that had opened a couple of weeks earlier, and were delighted to find out that our rate per night was much cheaper than what we had originally budgeted for. It was still a family house with no sign on the door or anyhting, and we got there after knocking on another of the out-of-business hostals from my outdated guide. The owner suggested we tried his neighbor's house.
An older man opened the door and said he had a room available. When we went in, we found two Russian girls and a Czech guy who looked very surprised that we knew about the place. They had knocked on the door thinking it was the hostel we were also looking for, and did not understand what was going on, but were happy to have found a cheap place to stay. They offered us potatoes from the meal they had just cooked and we agreed that the next day we would visit together the archaeological site of Monte Alban, a not so well-known (at least by me) ancient city second in size only to Chichen-Itza and Tehotihuacan. It looked like we would get our share of ancient pyramids after all.
Once there, we ran into some friends we made in the bus to Oaxaca, a Canadian girl who has travelled the world dressed in black and without a guidebook, who also refuses to use email or the internet, and two Norwegian girls who had just come back from volunteering for a semester in Ecuador. They were leaving to the beach the next day, so we met that night at a local bar for drinks and decided to go with them in a tortuous 10 hour bus drive across the mountains and into the Pacific, to a beautiful beach called Puerto Escondido.
posted by Juan Pablo at 11:57 AM
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