Que viva Oaxaca!!!

Oaxaca, Oaxaca --- the land of molé (multiple different kinds, ranging from green to red and for all different types of occasions), cerveza y mezcal delicioso, and the best damn food I¨ve ever had.  I´m tempted to just ramble on about all the different food and drink we´ve had but I figure I´ll do a quick catching up job on what we´ve done since my last post.

We stayed initially in a kind of youth hostel called Casa del Sol.  The proprietor, Guillermo, is a really fantastic guy and I can´t recommend this place enough.  It was 350 pesos per night - around $30, as the exchange rate is around 11 pesos per dollar right now - and had a queen sized bed and our own private bathroom.  The hostel also had a very cool courtyard.  I´ve just realized that I forgot to drag my camera´s USB cord with me so I can´t load up the pictures I´ve taken of the place, but will do so soon.  Suffice to say that this place looked like a tiny snapshot of a beautiful Mexican jungle.  We ate breakfast on a couple mornings out in the courtyard underneath palm trees, getting ready for exploration.

Oh, and the exploring we´ve done.

Leann and I took a walking tour of the downtown (Zocolo) area with some in-depth information regarding the local churches, the uprising against the government back in ´06 and ´07, the history of the Catholic Church´s interaction with the local Zapotecs, and some cool insider stuff.  There is, for example, an annual radish carving contest.  Of course, these are big ass radishes but the artwork is plain incredible.

We were met yesterday (Sunday the 18th) by a bunch of our USA friends, including my buddy Kate Ater who lived in Oaxaca for three years a few years back.  She´s essentially our guide around here and also the one I came with back in February last year.  Also joining us on our first leg of the round-the-world are Nikolai and Adrian Furmansky and Kate´s husband, Mateo ¨el Lambe¨ Vasquez.  Nik, Adrian, Leann, and I walked all over the place yesterday in a steady rain.  The rain wasn´t really even a problem as it was still fairly warm...probably about 72-75 F.  We visited a large indoor market, offering everything from fresh butchered meat to grasshoppers fried in chile to shirts and even watches.  I´ll have to post some pictures of that place as well but believe me when I say that it´s a really intense place and absolutely not one to go to if you´re at all claustrophobic.  We´ve checked out ice cream joints, taco stands, a bunch of bars, and just about every random hole in the wall in the Zocolo area.  Feels good to spend my days wandering around and checking everything out without any real agenda.

Well, I´m running a little short on time as we´re heading out soon to meet some friends for comida (which, besides just meaning food also means something like an all-inclusive food and drink extravaganza....it´s about $9 USD for the whole thing per person).  We intend on heading out to the ruins at Monte Alban tomorrow and maybe even taking in the cloud forest and world´s largest tree.  We´ll see, for now I´m pretty stoked on just winging it and feeling things out rather than making a ton of plans.

I´ll try to check back in tonight or tomorrow to post some pictures for you all.  It´s hard to remember all I´ve done without the visual reminders.  Seen some Zapotec dancing, got approached and interviewed by little kids doing a homework assignment for their English class (yes, it´s extremely obvious that I´m a gringo around these parts), checked out the bars that both of my amigo brothers own (El Olivo, which I already wrote about a little bit and El Moonster Saloon which is owned by older brother Patricio), and had the most amazing dinner experience of my life.

Well, hell, I better throw in a few sentences about that dinner experience.  So there´s a dish around here called a tlayuda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlayuda that we really wanted to check out.  We got some circuitous directions from a fellow at our new hotel (the much fancier Holliday Inn Express ---- hey, it has a pool!) and entered the building of the restaurant named something like Martha´s Tlayudas Libres.  So in we go, four of us Americanos, and sit down at one of the tables.  Slowly we begin to realize that no one is eating or drinking inside the building.  There is, however, the Spanish-speaking version of The Simpsons playing on the TV.  Since it´s raining we begin to wonder if this is just temporary refuge from the rain for folks passing by.  Remember now, this is already close to 9:00 pm.  So we ask a lady with a ¨Martha´s¨shirt if they´re open for business.  ¨Si, si¨, she assures us.  Ok......well, we just sit a while longer slowly starving to death.  After a few more minutes we see various meats and tortillas heading outside to the open coal fire on the street.  Just after we´re approached by a young fellow who´d just shown up on his BMX bike minutes earlier, who takes our order.  Making menu selections is considerably more difficult when there´s no menu.  We pretty much get one of each type of tlayuda and a Coke and prepare ourselves.  The tlayudas, each of which are cooked pretty much in entirety on the open fire, come and they´re enormous.  I´m talking like 16 inches wide enormous.  They´re like a quesadilla for four people essentially.  And now we have four for four people.  To top it off, there is no silverware in sight.  So we plod through the monstrosities with our hands, dripping salsa verde and rojo all over the place, and trying to navigate the different kinds of meat (chorizo, flank steak, and some sort of marinated steak) all with our hands.

About 150 napkins each and four extremely full stomachs later we´re all done.  The price?  About $20 USD total for all four of us, drinks included.

Way to be, Mexico.  Way to be.

Talk to all soon again, pictures included!  Orale.