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| Oaxaca City |
The bus out of Mexico City is comfortable and very modern, equipped with TVs and air conditioning and a working toilet.
Through the windows we see a different story.
There are so many houses scraped along the hillsides that the very hills themselves seem to be made purely from these uneven boxes. Most are grey, interspersed with the odd blue or yellow, poured down the mountainside like rivers of concrete. These are the favelas. Clamped together as almost one entity, there are no spaces between these residences, and they never seem to end. Even more depressing are the heaped, stinking piles of garbage along the highways: black bags gleaming amongst barbed wire, broken cement, and greasy fast food containers.
The trip to Oaxaca (pronounced wa-harka) is about 6 hours, and the bus takes us south-east to a much warmer part of the country. Most of the countryside en route is arid desert. Chalky white dirt and a few hay or goat fields, and lots of mountains covered in cacti as numerous as the spines of a hedgehog. There are all kinds of cacti here. Tall, skinny solitary ones. Short, little squat ones. Bushy ones. Ones that spring upwards in great number from a single stalk forming a crude imitation of a tree.
When we arrive at our destination it's a breath of fresh air; literally. After the stink and grime of busy, overcrowded Mexico City it's refreshing to step into a quieter city of bright sunshine and calmer demeanour. We walk from our hotel to the city's zocalo and find ourselves immersed in a whole other world - a colonial city of markets and tourists, far more forgiving to visitors and much safer-feeling than Mexico City. The Duck perks up, considerably, finally allowing herself to enjoy Mexico properly for the first time. Millimetre by millimetre the place is soaking into her skin.
We go camera crazy at all the old buildings - big churches and high stones walls, hip graffiti and 17th century administrative offices-turned-restaurants. All kinds of craftware are sold from the cobbled streets, and we navigate our way through the warm, busy evening to the local markets on the other side of the main stretch. This large, squared market place is thick with stalls, and we try fried grasshoppers and horchata. The horchata is delicious, the grasshoppers less comforting. The bugs are cooked in lime and chilli and are very crunchy, but as you pull their legs out of your teeth it's hard to get past the queasy feeling in your gut.
On our way back to the hotel we stop for dinner somewhere and get a platter that represents Oaxaca's unique culture. Great... more grasshoppers. Large bangs can be heard outside, like fireworks, and we go back outside to explore further. There is a big crowd in the zocalo now that it's nighttime - kids run around swearing with balloons while a clown talks through a microphone. After the fireworks go off a second time, two policeman appear with explosive-detecting dogs. The Duck and I discretely shadow them to see if we can spy some action, but the dogs are more interested in 1) another dog's butt, and 2) an old indigenous lady selling trinkets (in that order).
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| Oaxacan Cuisine - the cheese was chewy and soft. More grasshoppers pictured in the middle. |
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| Horchata |
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| For sale in the markets |
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| The restaurant we ate at |
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