Paul and Marie

As with every change in location, we take long bus rides. We caught a bus early from Patzcuaro and went to the western bus terminal in D.F. assuming we could catch a bus south for Oaxaca but we had to go to the south terminal and that meant riding the Mexico city metro one more time. This time though, we were with full packs and a wedding gift made of ceramic that we were to delicately handle for the next week while we spent time in Oaxaca before our friends´ wedding that we planned on attending at a five star resort. We made it through the metro with out incident. I must say that the metro in Mexico City is just awesome, for two pesos you can get anywhere in that city.

We arrived in Oaxaca by dark and checked out a few hostels.  We settled into one for the next few days. It had been a long day and we needed some sustenance and we found it in the form of “elotes”, corn on the cob dosed in lime juice followed by a goopy messy layer of mayonaise and chili powder with parmesean cheese. We bought them from a street vendor just near the hostel, what a delicious treat and for eighty cents a sweet bargain. The hostel had a kitchen among other things(!) and we were excited to not have to eat out for a few meals. The next day we marketed for some basic meal goods and explored the Zocalo (central square) and the little shops of this colonial gem. Where Patzcuaro was colonial in 2D, Oaxaca was the real deal in 3D. Oaxacas colonial features went far beyond the main Square and peripheral two blocks.

The hostel as most are, was quite social with people bringing all kinds of things with.  We met James who turned out to be fire performer specializing in fire staff and we got to enjoy his company and skill while the girls all performed with their fire tools. Rhea and a few folks went out and she was able to get an actual gig for a fire show at a tapa bar called the Olive. The performance the following night went extremely well and the performers were paid in a couple drinks a piece plus whatever went into the hat after the show. The girls and James were able to perform a few evenings in the zocolo and put out a hat for pesos.  Not so suprisingly we were more successful with families and kids than with the young clubbers.

The morning after a late night at a cumbia bar that had been recommended to us was blissful, until Marie woke up to find a pair of bed bugs staring her down. The thing with bed bugs is if you get them in your bed or furniture you are essentially supposed to destroy / torch / eliminate / donate to your enemies in the hopes they’ll move away outta frustration/ get as far as possible away from. In Mexico at a hostel the best you can hope for is fumigation and that’s exactly what happened the day before!  As the appearance of said bugs had quite roused Marie from sleep, she was convinced that we should all be up despite it being 7:30 AM and despite only having arrived in our beds three hours before, after our visit to the cumbia bar. Rightly so. The bed bugs had survived the fumigation and were joyfully finding their way into our stuff crawling on the walls in extasy, excited to have survived so we could see them. Within an hour we had fumigated every article of clothing we laid out, got our refund for the coming evening and walked out the door with a slight headache and a none to pleased visage of contempt. We made it to our favorite break fast place and enjoyed a stellar meal and then did some footwork and landed at a brand new hostel that was so clean, SO CLEAN.

The next day we made a tour of the bus station and picked up our tickets for another night bus. We then wandered back towards the zocalo and hopped on a bus headed for the ruins of Monte Alban which are set up on an imposing hill that overlooks Oaxaca city. Rhea, Kira, Marie and I planned a meeting time and all went our own ways wandering the site.  Monte Alban was the Zapotec capital founded around 500 BC and remained the centre of Zapotec culture for nearly one thousand years, collapsing around 600AD.   This site is some 1940 m above sea level which on top of a hill 400m above the valley floor where lies the city of Oaxaca. As a ruling capital there is evidence that suggests that Monte Alban headed a confederacy of  different ethnic groups. Some of the glyphs found at Monte Alban suggest that the apparent defensive city may have been more expansionist in its purposes. The glyphs of the “Danzantes” or dancers depict captives, sexual mutilations with no lack of blood iconography. Most of the images are nude which was seen as shameful and undignified.

The growing city and its expansionist ways would have been noticed by the dominant culture of the time the Teotihuacan who were also expansionist and aware of the rich fertile territory of the Zapotecs. Monte Alban reached its maximimum population around AD 600 reaching between 15,000 and 30,000. Shortly after this time however, the population plummeted rapidly possibly due to commercial interests and even related to the decadence of Teotihuacan. If the threat of Teotihuacan was falling apart, there was no real need to maintain a confederacy to protect the Zapotecs.

We regrouped after wandering the plazas and pyramids frescoes and glyphs for a few hours and remade our way back to Oaxaca.  Our bus did not leave until later in the evening so we checked out the plaza and zocalo one last time had a afinal feed and we picked up our gear at the hostel and went to the station for our night bus.  This was a splitting point for the four of us for a few days. We were all heading to the coast but Marie and I had a few very good friends getting married in a fancy resort on the Pacific coast in the Bahias de Huatulco. The girls headed to Puerto Escondido with severe beach intentions and we were in for a visit a posse of Calgarian like-mindeds.

After a couple of months on the road a fancy five star resort was certainly what the doctor ordered. We arrived in the morning around 8 to maximize our two nights stay, after checking in we headed straight for breakfast buffet. We quickly spotted Jen and Cale our good freinds and quickly tried to catch up before the parade of free drinks hot sun and beach leisure before the ceremony of Tynesha and Drew later that evening. We were able to tag along with the photographers and wedding party to catch up between shots and the many drinks we would consume in the next two days. The ceremony was outdoor and the meal was succulent and delicious.  Marie performed a fire show for the group before desert with a back drop of palm trees and a private beach: epic. After dinner and the party some of the diehards including the bride and groom were up for more. Tynesha and Drew wanted to continue the party in the pool (with their fancy clothes on) and so followed everyone else who was in the vicinity.  Not wanting to soak my clothes i also joined in sans clothes, apprantly i was the trend setter as the entire group moved to the ocean without clothes and proceeded to order drinks from the bar and consume the remaining Mezcal bottle we carried to the resort. Now imagine, uncles and cousins, fathers and sons and the bride and groom all in the buff catching up and discussing the amazing astral view. Anyone who wanted out had to return with a whole round, Pina Coladas and beers were the order of he day. The foolowing day was spent drying wedding dresses and treating hangovers. Finally got myself a Caesar to sit back on the beach and enjoy the luxury of it all. We spent another day hanging out making decisions of bottle and brand instead of buses, routes, hostels, restaurants and city features. It was truly a vacation from our vacation. Marie performed a fire show for the whole resort on a stage, under a spotlight and even with her music playing through a real sound system. She did this with purposes of showing her skill to the enterainment management. In discussion with the entertainment management we were in negotiations to get a weeklong stay at the resort for free for Marie, Kira, Rhea and myself in exchange for fire tool training by the girls and fire safety by me, for the performance staff and a daily evening performance. They were stoked and we were excited too, really who wouldn´t want a weeklong stay at a five star resort for free to do something you love and show others how to love it too?  Everything depended on the head boss saying yea or nay, we were promised contact within 4-5 days. What an opportunity. We left as late as possible on the last day to consume as much free as possible before heading further north on the coast to regroup with Rhea and Kira and tell them about the good opportunity.

We arrived in Zipolite that afternoon and were greeted by Rhea as Kira had gone on a trip a little further up the coast, the vibe was great. Zipolite was a mindshock, this is what Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco must have looked like a million years ago before they were colonized. The beach was great, the water was warm and maybe a bit dangerous at times, but man it was great. Part of the beach was nudist, the cheap hammock hostels lined the small beach, a one strip town, no shoes required, fire performers on the beach the patchouli and smell of marijuana wafting up all over and in my case the big litres of beer for only $1.50. We moved right into a little hut with a fan, our bodies quickly dealing with the heat and humidity of the hot coast, different from the resort because it was no longer air conditioning everywhere you went: just a fan. When Kira came back, the girls practiced their fire skills while waiting on the resort. They met up with a couple of others guys from Mexico and Spain and performed together with a few attempts in front of restaurants that let them pass the hat around for some pesos.

We had a few bonfires and a few bottles of beer to share and began to enjoy the good life at beach central. We  found our breakfasts at places like “Shambhala” and  “A Nice Place On the Beach To Sit And Do Nothing” and often ambled on the street barefoot to checkout little shops and meet other travelleres  and locals and hangout. It was awesome. We spent an afternoon snorkelling and spotting sea turtles for which I had shave the moustache off my beard, I looked either like Abraham Lincoln or like I was about to raise a barn Amish styles. Kira unluckily was walking in the water and managed to piss off a Stingrayand it jabbed her right in the heel. The poison was spreading through her very quickly and we piled into the hostel owner´s car and took a trip to the local health centre: siesta time. Shit, no one was there. We quickly piled in again and found an open pharmacy where a “Doctor” jabbed a syringe into the entrypoint and just pushed the antivenom in tearing the needle around her heel, it was unpleasant. Rhea and Kira caught a ride with the fire dancing guys and took the chance of leaving to San Cristobal de Las Casas ahead of us because the resort had not gotten back to us after the 4-5 promised days. Waiting on other people like resorts has got to be the closest to purgatory when you are having to make decisions.  Marie and I waited a few more days and finally left after noncommital information. We had moved hostels (to a much nicer one with a view!) to celebrate my entrance into the University of Victoria and bided our time to get better info from the resort. After phone calls and emails we were promised an answer before we headed to the bus station, headed either to San Cristobal de las Casa or to the resort: no answer so we left and went to San Cristobal de las Casas still without a much needed response.