Monte Alban, Hiervas el Agua, and Mazunte

Well, hot damn it´s been quite a while, hasn´t it now?  Sorry to leave you all hanging (with baited breath, I'm sure) but we've had a pretty seriously wild ride here for the last bit.


So here's the skinny on what we've been doing since the last blog update ---

• Ate and drank all over Oaxaca
• Drank some more
• Spent a day at the ruins at Monte Alban outside of Oaxaca
• Rented a car and then spent a day exploring the petrified waterfalls (yes, seriously) on the other side of Oaxaca.
• Spent an hour or two in the town of Tule, where resides the world's oldest and possibly largest tree.
• Rented a different car and headed out for the coast on the Pacific side about 7 hours south of Oaxaca.
• Annihilated said car's undercarriage, causing massive leakage of transmission oil.
• Spent a night and a day in the small coastal town of Mazunte, home to enormous sea turtles that we haven't seen yet.

So, yeah, that brings us to today where I'm sitting in an Internet Cafe in the tiny town of Mazunte, our broken car a few blocks away chilling in a field and enjoying the view of the ocean.  Word is (and remember that this word, or rather series of words, was presented to us in Spanish, so uh.....cross your fingers that I have any f'n clue about what was said) that the rental car company will be bringing us a new car tomorrow at 10 am.  We're currently taking bets as to whether that will really happen.


OK.  Monte Alban.  Monte Alban is an enormous set of ruins up on a mountain near the Mexican town of Oaxaca.  Near its peak, around 500-900 AD, it housed over 25,000 people.  The ruins are absolutely, breathtakingly amazing.  Enormous temples, burial sites, ball courts, and stellae (kind of like carved stone obelisks) abound.  The site was occupied, on and off, since 500 BC.  We walked the ruins, climbed up some of them, took a bunch of pictures, got stuck in a massive rainstorm, then hopped the collectivo (sort of a public van) back to town.  Incredible.


Hiervas el Agua.  Hiervas el Agua is actually a mineral water flow down the side of a mountain, resulting in amazing mineral deposits that flow over cliffs and leave colorful patterns in their wake.  This all has happened for millenia upon millenia and the water pools up underneath some of the flows and you can swim in it.  The name Hiervas el Agua actually means boiling water, which comes from the fact that some of the mineral water flows bubble up to the surface, creating small dome-like structures encasing bubbling water.  The pool we swam in was the world's coolest infinity pool, where you can't really see the edge.  The water was a little chilly but felt awesome in the blazing heat.


Tule.  Tule is a cool little town that's most famous for their big ass tree.  When I say big ass tree, I mean enormous.  Even enormous probably doesn't do the thing justice.  The tree is probably like 60 feet across.  We all remarked that it would make for a pretty sweet treehouse.  That or an Ewok village.


Mazunte.  We got here late last night, well after dark.  The town is home to only 900 or so people and is right, right, right on the beach.  We stumbled into a little Posada (hotel) that overlooks the ocean.  It's only 350 pesos per night, but you pretty much get what you pay for.  No air conditioning (of course), a raggedy mosquito net, and a shower in the bathroom with no door and no hot water.  The lack of hot water is actually kind of nice since it's been screaming hot and humid here.  We hopped another collectivo here, this one a pickup truck with a tent-like structure on the back, and headed down to San Augostino for the day, where we hung out on the beach, swam, and ate some tortas (sandwiches) with our cold cervezas and sodas.


So we're stuck here for now, I guess, until the car situation gets resolved.  Hopefully that occurs at 10 tomorrow morning, but we'll see.  However, as far as places on earth to get stuck in, one could really do a LOT worse than Mazunte.  This whole area is like a tropical paradise.  Hell, we even saw a pelican eating a fresh fish right on the beach next to us today (yeah, I took a picture).


Well, I've now been sitting here for 1.5 hours waiting for the pictures to upload but gawddamn if this computer isn't the slowest in the world.  Time to go eat, but here's a small sample of Oaxaca.  I'll try and get the pictures of Monte Alban and Hiervas el Agua up soon, as they're pretty damn impressive if I do say so myself.


Hope all is well with everyone and hope to update you all again soon!


Link to the pictures I've updated so far --- http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisandleann/