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/

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.

We´re on the road!

Well, it´s been a crazy last 72 hours or so.  We had to leave the United States with heavy hearts.  I´d like to give some super love to the best dog of all time --- Sancho, you were a badass and we´ll miss you.  RIP.

Sancho dog --- we´ll miss you, bro!

We packed up just about our entire house and put the contents into a POD --- Portable Overdose or something like that.  Extreme amounts of love and thanks to both our moms, Leann´s sister, and our friends who helped us empty our lives into an 8x8x16 box and leave our house presentable for the folks who are going to rent it while we´re gone.  We went through the stuff we wanted to bring with us and then jammed it all inside two backpacks.  That´s right.  You, apparently, can travel for six months out of a backpack....or so we hope.

Wondering what it takes to pack for six months and still fit inside a couple backpacks?  Well here´s more or less what we took:

• 3 pairs of shorts each
• swim trunks / gear
• 6 t-shirts
• 2 long sleeve shirts
• 2 pairs pants (I brought the kind that zip off and make shorts)
• 1 hat
• sunglasses
• 6 pairs of socks
• 10 pairs of underwear
• 1 hoodie
• 1 rain jacket
• flip flops
• tennis shoes
• water sandals
• mosquito repellant
• travel-size shampoo
• travel-size soap
• various medicines, including aspirin type stuff and Cipro (in case of Montezuma´s Revenge)
• one makeshift clothes line
• one sink stopper (so we can do laundry in the sink if there are no facilities=)
• toilet paper
• first aid kits
• camera
• I-pod
• Kindles (can´t really pack books, too heavy)
• sewing kit
• duct tape
• one watch
• eyeshades and earplugs
• travel towels (thanks Annette!)
• toothbrush and toothpaste and floss
• brush / comb
• leatherman
• fork / spoon combo
• deoderant
• moist towelettes
• various cosmetics (lotion and makeup and the like)
• other stuff that I can¨t remember

Yes, it is a metric shit ton of stuff.  Yes, it all fit in our backpacks.  Mine weighs about 41 lbs. and Leann¨s weighs about 22.  Hopefully our packs will hold up for the whole trip.  Looking good so far.

Anyhoo, we arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico late last night at around 9:30.  We hopped a taxi into downtown where we had a room booked at a hostel called Casa del Sol.  It´s a very nice one right next to the Zocolo (kind of a downtown plaza) and the proprietor, Guillermo, is exceptionally welcoming.  Since we were starving we went on a quick food hunt.  The first hopping joint we noticed just happened to be the bar that´s run by my old buddies, Nicole (from Wisconsin) and Rodrigo (from Monterrey, Mexico).  I had a couple cold beers, including a microbrewed brown ale from Ensenada, and Leann had some water to go along with the best damn tapas on the face of the planet.  Kind of a crustini platter with various meats and cheeses and the like.  We were exhausted from all the preparation and the flight and hit the sack at just around midnight.  Today´s a new day and we´ve done a little exploring, a little eating (chilequiles are damn fine and the mole in Oaxaca is world renowned), and just basically been tourists.

 My homies Rodrigo and David, back in 2010 when I first visited Oaxaca

I am easily the tallest person in the whole city of Oaxaca.  I stick out like a sore honky thumb.  The fact that I wore a Los Angeles Dodgers shirt probably didn´t help that fact.

Well, it´s just about siesta time for us.  We´ll check back in soon enough, hopefully with some riotous adventures under our belt.  I´d just like to add that the people in Mexico are so kind and awesome that it really puts the negative American view of the country to absolute shame.  Don´t believe what you read, people!!!!

Where the hell are we going?

Six months is a LOOOOOONG time, but not if you plan on visiting eleven million countries.  Here is where we are going (if there isn't a connecting flight between two places it means that we're traveling overland --- train, automobile, hitchhike, teleportation):

Albuquerque, USA to Oaxaca, Mexico - June 15th

Cancun, Mexico to San Jose, Costa Rica - July 11th

San Jose, Costa Rica to Bogota, Columbia - July 20th

Bogota, Columbia to Lima, Peru - August 2nd

Cuzco, Peru to Madrid, Spain - August 18th

Athens, Greece to Cairo, Egypt - September 23rd

Cairo, Egypt to Mumbai, India - September 27th

Goa, India to Bangkok, Thailand - October 3rd

Bangkok, Thailand to Denpasar Bali, Indonesia - October 17th

Denpasar Bali, Indonesia to Cairns, Australia - October 25th

Sydney, Australia to Christchurch, New Zealand - November 15th

Auckland, New Zealand to Nadi, Fiji - December 1st

Nadi, Fiji to Los Angeles, USA - December 14th

....and that's pretty much all she wrote.