Wow Oaxaca (said wa-ha-caa) what a cool city, totally fell in love, the food, arts, culture and history made this one of our favourite places in Mexico. It started with a bit of an Airbnb disaster, very small, very old 2 bed unit, but it was in a great location, parking for the car, and lovely caretaker and was only a place to sleep. We headed out to the Centro straight to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and to find somewhere for dinner where we had our first taste of mole. We would learn more about the hundreds of different types of moles over the coming days as Oaxaca is famous for this. On the walk back the heavens opened, on we walked through the hail and rain, not long before we were completely soaked and walking through the river running down the street. Back at the Airbnb and soon realised we weren’t going to be able to sleep there as water was pouring through the roof onto the kids beds!! The owner was great and also had another apartment in the same complex that we were able to move too, which was loads bigger so all worked out well.
Over the next few days we walked through the city visiting the cultural museum, Zócalo, many different markets. We had been told this was the place to buy Mexican souvenirs and they weren’t wrong. Tablecloths, painted wooden animals, t-shirts, paintings, Mezcal, Oaxaca coffee, Oaxaca chocolate, cheese, so much I needed to buy another bag to carry it all in much to Tim’s joy. School work has been more about understanding where we are and the history of the paces or people, before we left I had great visions of the projects we would do together and what we would create, reality is snatches of research combined with drawings - often completely irrelevant to what we are researching (we have a lot of Pokémon and Godzilla drawings....) we are focusing on reading and still trying to get Dexter through his times tables - not going to lie, it's really hard especially as we are moving around so much.
Tim went on a cooking course (his blog on this is coming soon). At the cultural museum we learnt a lot about Monte Albán, the Mayan ruins close to the city, where loads of precious gems and jewels had been found in the tombs and so went to visit. Very different to Teotihuacan, impressive as always. Great to walk around and imagine the Mayan city that once was, perfectly constructed and so much that we still don’t know. We bought the kids some Mexican hats after much haggling which were so needed in the next few weeks as it was getting hotter and hotter.
San Jose Del Pacífico - The drive from Oaxaca city to Puerto Escondido on the coast is 257kms which if there was a straight highway would take 2-3 hours but the only route through is up and over the mountains - literally up and up to over 2500m above sea level and instead takes 7+hrs. All on winding roads with crazy Mexican drivers still over taking on blind corners... We are now very used to ‘tope’s’ or speed bumps which are on every road and especially in every village. Tope over-takes are something to be appreciated... After 3.5 hours we reached our overnight stop in the cloud gardens, San Jose Del Pacífico is a tiny village on a hillside. We stayed in a lovely cabin with an amazing view if we weren’t in the clouds!! It had an open fire in the room (it was 11 degrees outside, so lovely to have a jumper on!) which Tim and the boys worked hard to get going. With some red wine and the cards we could have almost been back in Canada for the night. We had an early breakfast surrounded by amazing hummingbirds, so tiny, so graceful, so speedy! It’s was another 3.5 hours driving down and we watched the temperature creep up. We stopped in mazunte for lunch and it had reached 36 degrees.
It was only another hour, on a straight highway to get to our final destination where we would spend the next 11 days - Brisas de Zicatela, just above the hippy surf town of La Punta. This Airbnb was dramatically different to Oaxaca, we had a view of the ocean from up on the hill, huge clean pool, tennis court and amazing apartment with everything we needed. One of the owners lives on site - Randy aka Rambo and his two dogs Lucy and Ricky. He was building a huge fish pond and this would become a source of fascination for the kids. The weather was hot, we had arrive on the cusp of the rainy season and you could feel it in the air. Having a car was great as it meant we could visit all of the surrounding beaches. Puerto Escondido is a famous Mexican surging beach - famous for big waves and we were heading into big wave season. Great for watching surfers but challenging to find a safe beach to swim. Even the usually calm beach of Carrizalillo had huge dumping waves - fun and filled all our swimsuits with sand.
And then came the rain.... the biggest amount of rainfall in 24 hours in the last 10 years! Crazy amount of rain washing roads, animals, bushes away. The frogs were very happy, Randy’s pond was ruined with all the dirt running into it, the pool overflowed and had dirt from the flowerbeds and palapa. Also meant that a lot of the beaches were not good for swimming as the rain had washed all the ‘crap’ down from the mountains behind us and pollution levels would be high. Didn’t stop us exploring, playing tennis, me sneaking in a yoga class and doing swimming lessons with the boys. We went back to Mazunte to the turtle sanctuary and check out the beach - waves too big for swimming but we had a lovely lunch and bought more coffee.
Danielle arrive from Monterrey in the north of Mexico, she was our first au pair when the boys were 2 and 4, she lived with us for 8 months studying English and we had kept in touch over the years. It was so lovely to see her, the boys were very excited and loved hanging out with her. Together we all released baby turtles to the ocean, tiny turtles that were born that day we carried them in a coconut shell to the edge of the ocean, this small task increases their chances of survival from 1% to 20%. I think we all got slightly attached to our turtles and was a bit sad as we wished them good luck as they went into the ocean. Then came the fish fishing trip, Dexter had been on about fishing since Christmas... something he had asked to do in every location and we had promise we would try and do it in Puerto. We got up at dawn and headed to the fishing port, Dexter had hardly slept as he was so excited! It was a bit overcast but no rain as we got in the little boat. Juan and Israel were our crew for the day. We headed out across the green water. There are two big rivers that enter the ocean near Puerto and with all the recent rain meant the green coastal water was full of things washed from the mountains; trees, coconuts and debris. Israel said the rain has been known to wash goats, cows and horses into the ocean too! As you get a few kms out you can see the change from green to deep blue, it really is in a line with the current and quite amazing to see. Once in the blue the lures were on and we started trawling. We were deep sea fishing! Lots of excitement, we had to change directions a few times to avoid the rain and also chased after birds circling in case there were fish there. Alas after 4 hours out on the ocean we didn’t manage to get a bite from a fish. We did see loss of dolphins, they were jumping, diving, doing somersaults - amazing to see. Also loads of sea turtles as they popped up for breath and dived back down. Dexter also spotted a large plastic bottle in the water which we went to pick up and when we did we saw a turtle was stuck inside and managed to set him free - all very happy about that! But we returned home with a very upset Dexter due to no fish, but very important lesson in the world of fishing - sometimes you catch a fish and sometimes you don’t.... the crew felt really sad for Dex too and so offered to take us out another day and this time we just cover the cost of the petrol.
With Danielle we visited more beaches, built spiral sandcastles and managed to watch the champions league final down at a beach bar. We were very sad to see Danielle go.
In the last few days we set out for fishing trip number 2, it was a beautiful morning, we saw spinning dolphins this time - a pod of more than 50 of them! And we almost caught a marlin.... almost, we saw it from the back of the boat as it was almost on a line, but alas it got away. Caused huge excitement for everyone!! We ended the boat by the boys jumping in the water and swimming with a turtle that Juan had spotted and held before he dived. Amazing creatures. So sadly no fish but loads of sea life and great being on the water.
We drove the same way back to Oaxaca and stayed in San Jose Del pacifico, tried to stream the England match in nations league semi finals - didn’t really work but given the result that was probably for the best.
We had one more day on Oaxaca and stayed in the Centro, we went to the Jardin Etnobotanico - amazing, so many cacti. I am aged to sneak in a bit more shopping and also get a look inside the cathedral, old on the outside, gold adorned on the inside, breathtaking.
CDMX - Then we were back in Mexico City, this time only 2 days. We had a lovely Sunday hanging out with Kerri, Alex, Maia, Lana and Loua, breakfast, parks and a lovely lunch cooked by Tim trying out his new recipes from the cooking course - avocado soup, ceviche, chicken with mole - yum! Ending the day with a trip to the movies to see Aladdin! Then repack and off to Yucatán and Quintana Roo which is where we are at the moment. More on that next week.
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