Oaxaca

With Tropical Storm Frank threatening the Oaxacan coast, I decided to head inland to Oaxaca the city for a few days and come back after the rain. The road from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca is one of the windiest I’ve ever been on. Almost eight hours on the road and I don’t think we travelled a straight stretch for more than half a kilometre at any one time. Oaxaca is a beautiful town which reminds me a lot of Antigua in Guatemala, although there's not as many tourists here.

I was incredibly weary when I arrived and spent the first couple of days resting, doing laundry and all that stuff. My first couple of nights were very quiet but then by night three I ventured up to the roof terrace to chat to some of the other travellers – a pretty good group here.

On Thursday I took some local buses to a couple of the local villages, Teotitlan and Mitla. Teotitlan specialises in the beautiful hand woven rugs which are exported all over the world. You can just go into people's houses and watch them work on their huge looms. David who worked at the public amenities, handing out toilet paper for 2 pesos, gave me his dad's address and said I should pop in there, which I did. Dad was a cute old man who looked about 85 years old. Unfortunately I didn't have a need for a rug as much as their work was beautiful. The town of Mitla had more embroidered clothes and other bits and pieces. Both towns were pretty quiet with just the locals going about their business.

Nick turned up on Friday morning and I’d bought tickets to a Bossa Nova concert at the theatre that night. We managed to get him a ticket even though the event was sold out. It was great, a beautiful theatre, a chilled out event with some great music. On the way there we got caught up in a street parade with huge papier mache dolls with people inside them, a marching band, dancing, fireworks and a large eyeball with something about glaucoma written on it. Interesting way to raise awareness for a medical concern…

Saturday morning Sophie, Chalise, Sam and I hit the big market for a hot chocolate and tried our hardest to find the artisans who only come in on a Saturday – that was to no avail so we had a beer instead. We had some evening drinks on the rooftop terrace before venturing out to a few bars later on.