After Holbox we made our way to Cancun for a brief overnight stay in the unglamorous downtown area, next to the bus station so we could make our escape the next morning to Cancun airport. From there we were able to fly to the city of Oaxaca (WHA-hackaa) .
Oaxaca city is in the state of Oaxaca and is a 2 hour plane ride west of Cancun. Before leaving for Mexico plenty of friends had told me Oaxaca was their favourite city in Mexico, and it was easy to see why.
The city is surrounded by stunning scenery, with mountains everywhere you look. The buildings in Oaxaca are low, one or two story and colonial in style. There are fabulous churches and cathedral dotted around the city as well and beautiful open parks and leafy trees line the streets. Some streets are cobblestoned, there are no street signs and traffic lights are difficult to spot as they've been thoughtfully assimilated into the streetscape. Given its height it is cooler than the coast. The weather while we were there in mid January was similar to an Irish summer, in the low twenties.
On our first day Jonny was already talking about extending our stay he loved it so much, saying it was the first time he felt he was really in Mexico. The people were far more laid back than the Yucatan, nobody hassles you to buy anything which makes for a fair more enjoyable visit.
Oaxaca city is famous for two things, its food and its street art. Originally artist of the city used it as a form of protest, and still do, but also general social commentary. Unlike other cities, Oaxaceño artists mostly use posters of blown up lino prints to decorate the walls of the city. The city is full of printmaking workshops and galleries where you can view or buy original art.
Oaxacas food also famed to be the best in Mexico, and it certainly was fair superior to the general fair we got in Quintana Roo. There speciality is mole sauce, of which there are seven types. It is a thick brown sauce used as a marinade or a compliment to dishes. They also have a Oaxacan goats cheese, which is rubbery but tasty.
There are many fantastic restaurants to dine in Oaxaca, but almost every evening we frequented them we were practically the only ones there. Oaxaca was quiet, very quiet. It is usually a very popular tourist destination but for some reason has been the quietest destination we've been to in Mexico so far.
Oaxaca was in Orange for Covid restrictions but we were learning Orange means very different things for each city and town. In Oaxaca this meant alcohol only bars had to close at 6pm and all museums and the botanic gardens were closed, which was very disappointing as Oaxaca is famed for its museums and art.
Now that the honeymoon phase of our trip was over, we decided to adopt more of a 'living' in Mexico approach. We rented a gorgeous airbnb in the city which centered around an open courtyard. We would stay for 10 days and settled into a nice routine. Jonny would get up early and work till the afternoon and I would head off to spanish classes at Becari Language school.
I loved my classes and my two teachers gave me a fascinating insight into life in Oaxaca. Eloy thought me for an hour in the morning, he was an energic, slightly camp, outgoing Oaxeño who loved telling me about his dates and love interests in Oaxaca and around the world. But his heart at the time was taken by a mexican man in Mérida who was currently in another relationship. He said he loved our classes because I was so intelligent, so naturally with praise like that we hit it off.
One day in class Eloy got a phone call from one of his cousins looking for money. He told me his cousin had married young and now had two children they couldn't afford. His cousin was 20 and his wife was just 13 when they married. He told me young marriages were a big problem in Oaxaca state, particularly in the Pueblos (villages) around the city. In Mexico 1 in 4 women marry under the age of 16.
At 26 Eloys family couldn't understand why he didn't have a girlfriend. He laughed light heartedly 'they don't know that I'm the one who's a girlfriend!'.
Alix was an adorable young soft spoken man who on his introduction let me know he goes by the pronoun 'he/him' and was keen to not cause offense during our conversation. He was incredibly sweet and surprised me by telling me at the end of our first class it was his first time teaching in the school. He was an incredible teacher who made up games, played his favourite Spanish songs for me and short cartoons and wouldn't entertain any English in our classes. He was incredibly sweet and told me he was closer to his mother than his father, who was a very traditional violent man.
In the afternoons Jonny and I would explore the city. Oaxaca is a beautiful city to simply walk around in, the street art makes it a living gallery. There are plenty of small 'Mescalrias' where you can stop to sip a mescal. There's also a great Mirador up what feels like a million steps which overlooks the whole city and is a beautiful view for sunset.
While up there one evening we got chatting to another group of tourists after Sharif, a lively American offered us a beer. The group included 3 Americans, an English girl, a Welsh girl and a guy from Galway. Philip had only been in Mexico 4 days and already incredibly happy with his decision. He was a smily sweet guy in his early 20's and we compared notes on the horrors of lockdown in Ireland. A photo of him and some friends made front page in his small towns local newspaper when they were celebrating a win for the town in the GAA club finals. The team and some fans, including Philip, had caught covid from the celebrations. His family also ended up catching it but fortunately nobody was particularly sick.
He brought us and the whole group to a famous street food stand which specialised in another Oaxaca delicacy, the Tlayuda. A Tlayuda is a large tortilla wrap filled with meat, cheese, cream, refried beans, avacado and tortilla is folded once and then charcoal grilled on the outside and is absolutely delish.
Another popular tourist activity around Oaxaca city is to hike between the Pueblos. However during our stay this wasn't possible because of covid. Understandably these remote and isolated mountain villages decided welcoming tourists in at this time was a bad idea. Instead we did one day hike with a Belgian man who runs a hiking business in the region and local villager who led the way. The hike itself wasn't very interesting, it began promisingly with beautiful views of the mountains but we went down and up the same route, the highlight being our Mexican guides cows which reside at the bottom of the mountain beside a stream. Stories about previous hiking disasters were however highly entertaining. He'd point out plants to avoid, one which could cause a severe reaction if it brushed against your skin. He gleefully told us of a girl who had a fit during a hike after an encounter. 'What do you do when something like that happens during a hike?!' I asked.
'Yes, it's not good!' is all he responded and then went onto tell us about a couple he had hiked with on a couple of occasions in Mexico. They had returned to find somewhere to settle in Mexico and he had taken them to the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca (where we would continue onto next). The couple fell in love with the area and were having a lovely trip until the mans heart stopped while out for a swim in the ocean. 'But he died with a smile on his face!' our guide told us.
But then the circus that is rural Mexico kicked in. By the time they managed to retrieve the mans body from the ocean it had, in our guides words, 'fermented' because of the heat. They then needed a doctor to call the death and make the relivant paper work. It was a small village with only one doctor and nobody knew were the doctor was. Our guide began asking around and eventually someone brought him to the local nighclub where he found the doctor who was very drunk. After some money was exchanged the doctor reluctantly agreed to call the death and sign the paperwork.
Luckily the deadman had wanted to be cremated, but they would need an undertaker to take care of the body until it could be brought back to Oaxaca City for the cremation. And so a fight broke out between the two Undertakers in the village as to who would get to take the man's body. Of course it being a white dead body they would be able to charge more. The verbal fight quickly turned into a fist fight in the streets!
The winning undertaker assured our guide and the new widow that he had a fridge to store the body in. He would take the body and store it until they could get it to Oaxaca. So he took the body and stored it, but much to the horror of our guide when he brought the new widow to say her final fairwells, the fridge wasn't really a fridge at all. The man's body was put in a lidded box and simple surrounded by a couple of ice cubes. The body had began to decompose and the smell and appearance of the man was quite the horror show. Luckily our Guide discovered this before the wife and stopped her from seeing him one last time.
'Once we got him to Oaxaca it all plain sailing, but I advice you not to die in rural Mexico!' our Guide chuckled to himself.
We also visited the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban. The ruins are completely breath taking and the most impressive ruins yet, set on top of a mountain to the west of Oaxaca City. Monte Albán is one of the oldest civilisations built in the Meso-Americas and was impressively built no where near a water source so its inhabitants relied on a water reservar in built in the cities center. It is thought that it filled by the seasonal rains but at times people climbed down and up the mountain bringing water from the river below.
It connected with other civilizations through paved trading routes such as Teotihuacan close to Mexico City.
Luckily Monte Albán remained undiscovered by the Spanish Conquestadors and so it's remains were well preserved.
After a peaceful few days in the spendid Oaxaca it was time to head for the west coast of Mexico where the country meets the Pacific Ocean.
