Oaxaca

I touched on our mode of transport to Oaxaca in the previous blog but it's deserving of a more detailed description as it turned out to be one of our most memorable journies thus far. I must admit to having been quite excited at the prospect: alright, 8 hours in a minibus doesn't sound that enamouring but crossing a mountain range and climbing 5000 ft along terrifically twisting roads in air-conditioned bliss sounded like a hoot. The first sign that this may not be a pleasant joyride came when our driver insisted we could take no luggage into the seating area whatsoever, it was too small. As we took our seats we understood because even the diminutive Kerry took on the appearance of being crow-barred into position; I had no option but to splay my legs down the aisle otherwise, with knees wedged into the back of the seat in front, my backside was an inch off the cushion. Despite this there were quite a few empty seats so I thought there'd be an opportunity to move about a little bit in order to find a degree of comfort. Less than a mile down the road though we slowed to a crawl and, looking to the left, I saw a family with 2 young children waving and hurrying in our direction. This elicited one of the biggest groans of recent times from me. I could cope with the journey with a bit of space around and most importantly some peace and quiet. Anyone who travels by public transport will know that your journey can be made hell by those around you and it's almost a given that other people's children will aggravate you to the point of insanity. I buried myself into the last blog and tried to block them out. So off we set proper and once out of Puerto Escondido town we began to climb and the road began to twist. For the first 5 minutes it was quite amusing to negotiate hairpin after hairpin, to drive over bone-jarring potholes and to look out of the windows at the landslides that this road is obviously susceptible to but after an hour or more we were exhausted and nauseous. After 3 and a half hours of this I was close to meltdown. Kerry timed a section and we never went more than 5 seconds between violent lurches one way or the other. As I said, we were nauseous but the 2 year old girl in the seats behind took it to the next level and periodically vomited, first over her mothers clothes and then into a bag. There is little more vomit inducing than the sound and smell of someone being sick 2 feet away from you in a combined space whilst on the equivalent of a 3.5 hour long version of the Pepsi Max Big One. How neither of us flung our guts up I'll never know. At the half way point we stopped for lunch in a cafe in a dusty and down-at-heel nothing town. Our fellow travellers all tucked into hearty fayre but we felt much too fragile to eat anything more than a little cereal bar. Besides, the fact that flies outnumbered the clientele by about 5:1 helped suppress whatever appetite the morning's horrors may have left unscathed. I positively dreaded the "time to go" call from the driver but as it turned out we had done with all the twisting and turning and the second half was a much more pleasant experience. Even the smell of vomit had dissipated from the van. To give credit to the aforementioned dreaded whipper snappers we barely heard a peep out of them for the entire journey. Travel sickness aside they either slept or just sat quietly looking out of the window. It's definitely been a theme here, the children are very well behaved compared to a lot of those in the UK. I dread to think what an 8 hour journey in a minibus would be like with the average British 6 year old boy. And so to Oaxaca, capital of the state of the same name and, in pre-Hispanic times, heartland of the Zapotecs, a tribe with a similar clout to the Mayans and Aztecs in a slightly less ostentatious way. Their capital was Monte Alban, a hillside city just 6km from Oaxaca and the main reason we were here. Our first job was to find our hotel, booked because of its pool. After 2 days in Sweaty-Bettyville there was no way I could consider a pool-less or air-con free zone so we hailed a cab and told him where we were headed. Cabs out here are so cheap. I rail against taxis back home but with the average fare here being about £1.50 it's not worth the hassle of looking for alternatives. Our taxi driver had never heard of our hotel and stopped to ask for directions twice before I got out to show him on my map and ended up directing him! He was also seemingly unaware that the shock absorbers had gone on his taxi, or that he needed his exhaust replacing. The hotel was a little way out of the centre of town and didn't look much from outside but was an absolutely lovely place, probably the nicest we've stayed in. Beautiful wood everywhere, terracotta tiling, leafy courtyard and lovely garden area with pool. Our room (inexplicably called "Aisoles" - we were next door to "Jazmines") had queen sized bed, double shower and balcony overlooking the garden. Kerry was very happy and it was just as well considering how much time she would be spending here. Starving, we headed straight out for food and made the calamitous mistake of electing to eat at the very first place we came to without considering what may come of it. It didn't look too bad from 30 paces and that's when we made our minds up to eat there. I suggested we leave when we saw the rudimentary cooking area and again when on asking for the menu we were handed a handwritten scrap of paper. Both times Kerry said "nay, let's just eat, I'm Hank Marvin", words she rues still 5 days later. We both had 'menu of the day' though I was fortunate enough to choose 'beef' to Kerry's chicken. 3 courses for £2 was probably asking for trouble in hindsight but when you're hungry, you're hungry. After a short walk into town we went back to the hotel and went to bed pretty early. I'm not very good at responding to much that might be going on in the wee small hours. When my girls were tiny dots I would never hear their pained wails in the night, thunderclaps and lightning have occurred unbeknownst to me whilst I slumber and all manner of step-daughter based shenanigans have taken place a few feet from me whilst I remained undisturbed. Short of a plane landing on the house, or needing a pee since I hit 40, little is going to raise me. However, this night I did hear poor old Kerry, dealing with the liquid aftermath of our £2 dinner and moaning accordingly. (not the usual sort of moaning: you don't pay me enough attention, you're not going out again are you? When are you going to clean that toilet?) Next morning I left her in bed and went out for a little wander but it felt peculiar without the old girl by my side. We have been inseparable for 3 whole months now and have hardly gone anywhere without the other. As I walked around and saw things I wanted to say "look at that" but there was no one there to say it to. Something was missing, like I'd gone out with only one sock on or something. By lunchtime she'd regained a bit of strength so we had a short walk across town and caught a local bus out to the Zona Archaeologica of Monte Alban. This is the very well preserved capital of the Zapotecs, though that's not surprising as it sits another 1200 ft up on the top of a great big hill overlooking Oaxaca. We met 2 Israeli guys on the bus who had just started a 2 month tour of Mexico and Guatemala. It was nice to speak English to someone and I was especially delighted when they asked me if I liked football. They were avid premiership watchers, supporting Arsenal because of Yossi Benayoun and they'd even heard of Leicester City! Things were going swimmingly until we began a conversation about our respective travels and I said that they would probably meet with more friendliness than we had as they looked Mexican. The smiles immediately drained from their faces and one said "ah, now you have insulted me". Had I? Bloody hell! I wouldn't get the hump if they'd told me I was a grey-haired, jowly, nocturnally incontinent responsibility avoider. Some people are so touchy. To be fair to them though if they'd said I looked French I may have taken umbrage. Monte Alban was fantastic. There's something so fascinating about the fact that all the while our ancestors were grovelling about in swill doing nothing of much note for centuries, "heathen savages" a world away were building empires and great cities, all without inventing the wheel. I climbed the temples and pyramids alone whilst Kerry rested between short walks at the bottom of each. She was exhausted and was about to lay down on the grass at one point before noticing ants the size of your thumb nail crawling about. With this ticked off the list we needed to think about moving on. What should we do though? Hole up here and wait for the trots to pass? Fly and minimise the travel time? Source as late a departure as possible to give Kerry the best chance of recovery? It was a tricky one but ultimately our mind was made up by the fact that there really was only one way out of here in the direction we wanted to go, by overnight bus at 1700 the next day. Oh joy of joys! Kerry remained pretty unwell throughout the next night and all of the day we had to kill before catching that bus but the hotel were great and let us sit by their pool rather than turf us out at the allotted hour. In an effort to break the monotony we wrote some postcards to our non-electronic-savvy family members and walked downtown to the post office to post them. There was a long and slow-moving queue and everybody else seemed to be brandishing slips of paper but, after about 20 minutes, it was finally my turn. "6 stamps to send these to England please" I asked in my best prepared Espanol. "You need the post office next door, this is the office where you pay your phone bill you silly gringo tit" came the reply from the laughing wench behind the counter. So what did we make of Oaxaca overall? Well, it was obviously tainted somewhat by Kerry having the squits but that aside and despite there being a healthy smattering of gringos around it wasn't really my cup of tea. You've seen one inland colonial city with a regimented grid street layout and a few impressive churches dotted about and you've seen them all. Perhaps that's too simplistic but it didn't grab either of us and we've worked out that a place has got to have water, preferably a fantastic beach, to really float our boat. Another thing that may be influencing us at the moment is that we're both a bit homesick. 5 weeks struggling with the language and perceived indifference of the locals to us have taken their toll, plus of course we're starting to miss people back home. We had a chat about it to acknowledge it and both gave the 5 things we are missing most. In no particular order Kerry's were: family and friends, vegetating on the sofa watching tv, a cup of tea, her clothes and stuff being available and out around her where she knows where they are, Connor and Jordan. Mine are: my bike, male company, watching football down the pub, being able to go and see my mum, speaking in English to officials/waiters/shopkeepers etc Having said that we also know that the minute we get home we'll probably be planning our next holiday! (Jasmine and India would be top of this list had they not been taken away already) We feel like we're really cracking on now. On leaving Oaxaca we're done with both northern and now central Mexico. We're very much in the south now, heading towards Mayan territory and the jungle.