Vamos a Oaxaca, Mexico!

My Tlayuda, sort of half eaten.

The pila at the fancy hotel. Now it is just a fountain, but it was functional for washing laundry during its other uses.

The inside of the fancy hotel that I think was first a prison, then a monastery, then a theater and now is a hotel. This corner shows the many layers of paint, which the hotel strives to preserve.

Chapulines (Grasshoppers)!

The AMAZING trail mix lady. She had every kind of nuts and dried fruits and grain and chocolate covered items. She was also really nice to me, and talkative, but that might have something to do with the fact that I bought stuff from her every day...

The map of the inside of the big market. I think I went there everyday, I was so obsessed with it!

The inside of the church we visited in the morning. The church is the fanciest in the area, but not the oldest.

Our street. Streets in Oaxaca are so much cleaner, wider and well lit than in Xela. I'm jealous!

Our bathroom. Sharing 3 showers, 3 sinks and 2 toilets with 12 girls was pretty difficult! Also, Oaxaca doesn't seem to believe in toilet seats... they weren't in restaurants or in our hostel or even in a store that specialized in selling toilets! Talk about building in a thigh workout into your everyday schedule!

This is the inside of our "dorm." There were 12 beds, 4 sets of 3 bunks in each corner, and a table in the middle. The guys had their own room off to the side, and Kate got her own special suite (with her own bathroom!).

Inside the hostel. If you follow the hallway back, you go into the room where we slept. Behind me is the bathroom.

Our Hostel

Our trip to Mexico was great… full of new adventures and interesting information, good food and fun company. If I try to write one post for the entire week, it would last forever. So, I’m going to go day by day. Here, I’ll talk about our trip there and our first day. I’ve got lots of other work to take care of too, so it might take a while, but I hope to get all the details here before next weekend’s adventure with the parents!

We left for Oaxaca Saturday, August 27th at 10am. Kate met us at the school and Oscar drove us to the border. As we were leaving Xela, Kate asked us all to make sure we had our passports (as if turning around was an option), but that she wasn’t going to take them until we got to the border. I admired the trust that she had in all of us! Luckily, everyone was adequately prepared.

The first part of the trip required what we thought was a 5 hour bus ride with Oscar, but only ended up being around 3.5 hours. The ride was uneventful, which is always a good thing. Once we got to the border, we were told we would need 2 hours to cross because all of our bags would be thoroughly checked. We were also told that all fruit would be confiscated. We had bought fruit for snacks on the bus, and we figured we would eat it all during the 5 hours ride. Since the bus ride was actually 2 hours shorter than we thought, we were given a 10 minute warning to eat all our fruit. It was humorous watching everyone stuff their faces with the fruit they had bought, not wanting it to go to waste.

Fortunately, crossing the border was really simple and only took about an hour. Not one bag was checked (which means we could have saved all our fruit!). Kate took care of all the passport details, so that made life much easier as well. I guess the process is really hit and miss, and sometimes it can be really complicated to cross the border. I wish I would have taken more pictures at the border… but I was more paranoid about keeping my eye on all of my personal belongings and avoid getting items stolen. As we drove up to the border, there was a huge mob of men surrounding the bus, wanting to exchange money with us (from Quetzals to Pesos). We were advised to wait and get Pesos later for an accurate exchange rate, so we had to swim through the mob of men with all of our luggage. Then, there was a big chubby dude standing RIGHT on the border line, totally obstructing the perfect picture I could have gotten. Oh well… I bet you can imagine a bridge, and in the inside middle of the bridge (going over a dirty rushing river), a painted mural/sign… one half blue with Guatemala written on it, the other half white with Mexico written. Since we were in the bus at that time, we didn’t even get to play the “I’m in two places at once” game.

After the border, Oscar was able to drive us to the bus station in Panajachel, about a 20 minute ride. The time in Mexico was an hour later than in Guatemala. At the bus station, we had about 1:30 to hang out. We walked around the city, which apparently looks a lot like downtown LA (I’ve never been there so I wouldn’t know, but everyone kept saying that). We had our first Mexican dinner at a place called “Disfruta” which means enjoy in Spanish. There was a mission statement and a vision and everything on the wall, but in reality the food and service was pretty lame. Luckily the food in Mexico improved exponentially.

Our bus left at 7pm to head for Oaxaca. It was so luxury! The workers were wearing suits, there were tags for our luggage (which went under the bus), there was the perfect amount of leg room, AC, bathrooms, TVs that played the movies “Away We Go” and “Bride Wars.” The movies were in Spanish, but since I’ve seen both, it was good practice (although it was also a little difficult to hear).

The bus ride was a good 12+ hours overnight. I surprisingly slept well. At the beginning, every hour or so, we were stopped and an official walked through the bus checking our passports and bus tickets. That was extremely annoying. But after some time, the ride was smooth. I woke up early and watched the sun rise as we wandered through the Mexican desert towards Oaxaca.

We got to the bus station around 8:30am, grabbed our luggage, and met our coordinator for the week. Apparently, the coordinator had spoken with the drivers beforehand because groups of 4 were told to just get into taxis. It was a little creepy because we were just thrown in the taxi with no idea of where we were going and without any money. It ended up okay.

We got to the hostel and after settling in, were served a breakfast of eggs, beans and bread. The beans were a little different… very liquidy and had a licorice taste to them. I wasn’t a huge fan, but was starving and ate them anyway. The rest of the day was free for us to do what we wanted. We were all pretty exhausted from all the traveling, and most of us were still wearing the same clothing from the day before (aka going on 36 hours of the same clothing), but we were excited to explore so we decided to continue looking like ragged travelers and head out.

We first visited an extremely beautiful church, Santo Domingo, the interior made with 100,000 blocks of real gold. In total, there are 29 churches in Oaxaca that were originally built in the 15, 16 and 17 centuries, and this is one of them. Although originally a church, before the new gold construction, the building was a horse stall. There was also a museum attached to it with all the extra treasures found in the city, but we had to pay to enter and we were more interested in walking around. I think other people explored it later in the week.

We then walked to the big market, Benito Juarez, which was awesome! It was huge and so clean compared to any Guatemalan market I have been to so far. We were all really excited to walk around and try all the Oaxacan foods. It reminded me a lot of the market I visited in Barcelona a couple of years ago. It is impossible to describe the sounds and smells that make the experience what it is. The first time we entered, it was unfortunately in the meat and seafood section. As I walked in, I looked to my left and saw on the counter around 25 whole fish, heads facing out to the walkway, 50 eyes seemingly following me as I walked. A little creeped out, I looked to my right, just to find millions of whole dead chickens, feet sticking out into the aisle! A little farther down, whole beef carcasses hung from the ceiling. The smell of all that is what really gets you!

We started out with a place in the market that sold Mezcal, the liquor unique to Oaxaca. They sell it straight up, or in combinations with flavored creams. The cream ones were good, but the straight alcohol was a little too harsh for me. The guys were all about it though. We then headed to a dairy counter where we tried Quesillo, a special kind of cheese only produced in Oaxaca. It was a little like mozzarella, but more stringy and salty. They sell it in big balls, with the strings of cheese wrapped around, sort of like a rubberband ball. Interesting at first, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Next, we went to this amazing trail mix place that had anything and everything I could ever want. I visited it so many times during the week. The first day, I saw fried garlic which looked really interesting, and was so good! The garlic was whole, roasted and dried cloves. The flavor was really strong but balanced out well with the peanuts that I mixed into the bag. I’m sure I reeked of garlic, but that’s nothing new (although Guatemalan food seriously lacks garlic flavor)!

Another food specialty is Chapulines, or dried Grasshoppers. I’m not exactly sure if they can be considered vegetarian, but when in Oaxaca… certain experiences must be had! We bought a lemon pepper variety, wrapped them into a fresh hand made flour tortilla, and shared the makeshift burrito. They had a weird crunchy, chewy texture and were extremely salty. I’m glad I did it, but I don’t need to do it again!

The last food item we tried in the market was mole. Although it is pretty picante, I found I really liked the flavor of both the black (slightly more sweet) and the red (a little more spicy). After all that eating, we headed to lunch at 2 at a restaurant near the central park. We ended up eating at this restaurant every day because it had a partnership with the organization we were working with. The food was good, with a preset menu each day, and they had vegetarian options that always seemed better to me ☺

That afternoon we had a walking tour of the city where we learned a little about the history. Our guide talked a lot about architecture. He explained that in the 1500s, the Spanish took over the area, so a lot of the construction looks like a colonial European city (which is very true!). All of the buildings in the city are very short, for two specific reasons. One is that there is a large risk of earthquakes, so it is safer to have lower buildings. The other is that the people who built the city wanted to be able to pick between sunlight or shade, so at almost any time in the day, one side of the street will be sunny and the other side will have shade. The tour took us to an extremely fancy hotel that cost the equivalent of $400.00 a night, but did have some cool history. The places were beautiful though, and we used the nicest bathroom ever!

That evening, we headed back to the market to have dinner. I had a Tlayuda, another traditional Oaxacan food. It is basically a huge tortilla that is a little toasted with beans, lettuce, onions, tomatoes and quesillo spread over it. They are huge, but really good!

That night we went to bed early, since we were all exhausted from the trip. It was definitely a great start to our Mexican adventure!