Oaxaca

So after our trip through the mountains we found ourselves in Oaxaca at night fall without accommodation, again. The honeymoon planning had been C's job, unfortunately planning isn't really C's strong point, I thought this would be fine allow for a bit more flexibility in where we went and when. Unfortunately arriving in a foreign city where you speak only the most minimal of the language and understand even less without having accommodation prebooked was something that C found fairly stressful too. He felt a bit of a duty to look after us over there and worry about these things I guess, leading to stress when we didn't have accommodation sorted out. So after a frantic search, with C making a number of phone calls and trying to get by with his very limited Spanish, we found a small (English speaking!) BnB within walking distant of everything, and we could get down to the business of exploring.

Personally Oaxaca was a big highlight, we saw heaps, got out of the city and explored further afield, took in breathtaking ruins, and its a great center for art and culture. So we managed to pick up some really nice pieces.

We didn't have enough time in Oaxaca we could easily have spent a week or 2 exploring, so we each picked 2 things we each wanted to do and got straight into it. We started with a trip to Monte Alban, amazing ruins atop a mountain with 360 degree view of the surrounding country. It was breathtaking. We'd arrived at opening time so we had the place mostly to ourselves, it gave the place an unearthly feel. It was a much smaller site than Teotihuacan and hadn't been as restored as other sites but the location and layout was great for imagining it in its hey day. We covered the site pretty easily in 3 hours than headed back to the city to check the place out. It didn't take me long to realise I didn't have enough room in my bag. Oaxaca and the surrounding areas have some amazing hand crafts including, the most amazing black pottery I've ever seen, hand dyed and woven rugs - everyone of which I wanted, cheap leather, cool silver (everywhere in Mexico had cool silver), Mezcal by the barrel, and contemporary art.

I think I'll wrap up this post here still heaps more to tell about Oaxaca but that will have to wait for another day.

oh and photos, check back for them I'll add them in