Activity Summary
Friday 21st April - Day 232
Luke feeling unwell
Travel to Oaxaca
Saturday 22nd April - Day 233
Nicola feeling unwell
Day of very little
Lunch at Solén Cafetería
Dinner at Dassani Restaurante (Italian)
Sunday 23rd April - Day 234
Nicola feeling unwell
Oaxaca free walking tour:
Teatro Macedonio Alcalá
Photographic Center Manuel Alvaro Bravo
Parroquia del Carmen Alto
La Cosecha Organic Market
Oaxaca aqueduct / arty street
Mercado Sánchez Pascuas
Lunch at La Cosecha Organic Market
Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán
Dinner at Dururu Korean Restaurant & Bakery (Korean)
Monday 24th April - Day 235
Both of us feeling okish
Monte Alban
Dinner at burger joint Krustaceo Korajudo
Tuesday 25th April - Day 236
Luke feeling unwell
Brunch at La Ttertulia and linger
Laboured walk around town
Cafebre for Luke emergency coffee
Travel to San Cristobal
Summary
Oaxaca (said Wahaca)
Both of us were really not in a good way the entire time we were in Oaxaca and unfortunately this really brought a downer to our days. Although in a really weird way we would take it in turns in being the one worse off. So it is with a completely biassed and skewed experience we were very happy to leave Oaxaca and didn’t manage to see all the sights.
The city was alright, much like Puebla but felt more rustic and less pretty. The city has much of the same experiences inside it that we would expect of a Mexican city so far (Zocalo, churches, museums etc) and the walking tour had a lot to offer here. The UNESCO world heritage status comes with requiring all the buildings to be painted a different colour on each street which was pretty cool and with some of the pedestrianisation it made it easier to get around some parts.
What we really didn’t like was how congested the grid system was and how pollutant the vehicles were. Nicola is a sensitive soul anyway and this hit her harder being ill. We also hated the lack of Uber as we are by no means or claim to be hardcore travellers. Tech just makes life easier.
Happy we came but would have loved to have been fit and healthy.
Transport
Oaxaca
Hostel -> [Uber] -> Bus station (Central De Autobuses CAPU) -> [ADO bus] -> Oaxaca bus station (Central de Autobuses ADO) -> [Walk] -> Hostel
Monte Alban
Apparently there is a bus that takes people to the site for $120 return but we were feeling worse for wear and a 20 minute Uber journey has never cost much. Sadly the lack of Uber here meant that a local cabby would be required which in turn doubled the expected price.
In the end we paid $200 out and $250 return, the latter being almost lucky there was a cab available. Not going to lose much sleep over £10 each for an hour in taxis.
Accommodation
Oaxaca - Hostal Mixteco Naba Nandoo
Number of nights - 4
Price per night per person - £12
We spent a fair amount of time umming and arring over this one as we weren’t sure whether we wanted to go to the social hostel in Oaxaca with some of the people we had met (Casa Angel). In the end we put this idea down when making the decision as healthy children in Puebla because it would be £50 more just to have the social aspect.
We settled on this Hostel as it was probably the cheapest available on booking for a private room that was still central. This would be a great decision in the end as we spent a lot of time in the room feeling sorry for ourselves.
The Hostel really wasn’t great however. Loved the guy who owned it, a really nice dude and the place was comfortable enough. The two single beds were very much required, the aircon worked and would have been comfortable enough if we weren’t there most of the day. The metal bed frames and accompaniments ended up making our necks and backs ache somewhat but we can’t really fault these guys for that - we would just find ourselves on our phones and iPads too much. God we really missed our sofa at this point.
Worst for Nicola was she didn’t manage to have a single hot shower the time we were there. Not so great when she’s a cold individual and has a lot of hair to wash. Luke was a bit more fortunate at a 50% hit rate.
Diary
Nicola woke up feeling slightly more human whereas Luke had completely regressed the other way. So this time it was Nicola’s turn to look after him.
Luke felt well enough to get on the bus (aka didn’t have the shits) but was lacking all energy and had zero desire for food. It was easy enough to get an Uber to the bus station in Puebla and we had an hour or so’s wait for our bus. Luke was essentially plumped on a bench while Nicola got him some food and dealt with things.
Once on the 10.45am bus we plugged in our respective devices and rode out the 5 hour journey. It was a pretty cool route up and through the mountains but it was probably a good idea Luke couldn’t see the windy roads with serious drop offs, he’s not a big fan of this unless he is in control of the vehicle.
It was a pretty long journey but the dry biscuits kept Luke going whole Nicola chowed down on her subway. Turns out the fast food joints in bus stations are pretty consistent in offerings. The only weird thing that happened was a dude spent about 20 minutes in the toilet without so much as a sound - Luke enjoyed the confused look both him and another passenger made at each other when he finally resurfaced.
At the Oaxaca bus station we grabbed our things and when we found that Uber doesn’t work we decided the 15 minute walk would be fine. It turned out to be a fair slog with our limited energy but at least it was free.
We checked into the hostel and our nice private room and pretty much set up shop for the evening. Nicola completely boid off Luke once in the room citing a ‘really critical moment in hedgehog hollow’, a heartwarming book series she has been balls deep into and had smashed through the first 6 books in a few weeks. The only time (so far) she has decided that additional audible credits were a must. Luke was pretty unwell so was perfectly happy with being left to wallow in self pity but it was a pretty funny moment.
After gathering a bit of energy Luke decided that a change in culinary options would be required to help beat the pains of the last few days and any further repercussions going forward - a decision shared by Nicola and we would then spend the rest of our time in Oaxaca avoiding Mexican food. Nicola had her subway and Luke decided on a shameful domino's pizza would be his vice, simply because pizza is great and citing finding a decent Italian place to be too difficult went for a simple safe option. It was a short walk into the city to get the pizza, which looked more like an American diner than a tiny takeaway place we are used to in the UK, and we’re quickly on our way back. Interestingly there were a lot of pizza slice beggars out of the front of Dominoes which neither of us had ever seen before - it kind of made sense and given that the pizza is a lot more expensive than a traditional Mexican meal while being easy enough to share. Luke did however ignore the guy shouting ‘Chico’ at him as he came outside which confirmed his in store suspicions.
Luke ate half the pizza and naturally Nicola helped herself to a couple of slices as well as we veged out in the room without much movement. Luke should have put the pizza in his tupperware as sadly an ant invasion that had infiltrated the insides of his pizza bread made it rather unappealing to eat once realised. This was after taking a massive bite.
Another day, another switch in casualties. This time Nicola’s stomach was at the mercy of the gods while Luke was comparably much better than the day before. This pretty much ended any aspirations of us trying to see the city; Nicola because she was unwilling to venture much further from the bog and Luke because he was shattered from being shattered.
Luke did the customary water bottle and sprite run for Nicola and found a nearby cafe called Solén Cafetería for some lunch that served an appealingly bland omelette option. Nicola near enough fell asleep in the armchair waiting for the food, which while decent took an absolute age to arrive.
We spent some time back at the room before later in the afternoon trying to go for a walk and stretch our withering legs as Nicola appeared to have regained some strength. We made it about 5 minutes down the road before the 30 degree heat crippled her and exhaustion took over so we took a little stressed cookie back to the safety of her bed. It took her a while to recover from that distressing journey.
We decided pasta was a safe dinner option for us both so we found Dassani Restaurante which was a short walk away from the hostel. Nicola’s beef ragu treated her well and Luke’s shrimp pasta was decent enough but far too salty.
We spent the evening watching Clarksons Farm to ease our physical pains and replace them with new ones.
Nicola was still feeling low energy but all credit to her she was up and out of the door to finally see more of Oaxaca other than the hostel and local block.
Luke found a number of walking tour options and then blindly led a poor low energy Nicola around the Zocalo in search of the iconic vibrant colours indicating tourist plebs. We were a little earlier than the 10am meet up time and so when walking past the Teatro Macedonio Alcalá there were no yellow jerseys. We had a quick sit down in the main square for a while before Luke decided to successfully retry.
We joined the group of tourists and were split into two groups, ours following a good tour guide called Raul. Thankfully no one tried to speak to us during the tour (apart from Raul) as we barely had enough energy to make it around the tour for the 2 hours, drained by the heat and also the incredibly slow walking pace. A midway sugar hit from some lemonade kept us in the game.
Raul was an interesting and very knowledgeable guide. At each spot he spoke for a fair amount of time about Oaxaca, its history and a lot about its politics which was of great interest. He spoke at length about Benito Juarez, an Oaxacan Zapotecan lawyer elected president (1858-1872) and to this day remains the only indigenous person to take the role. Politics in Mexico is dominated by the wealthy in Mexico City (no surprise there) and this has driven a great divide through Mexico. Raul timed his stops pretty well, making use of the shade and also offered us plenty of opportunities to have a sit down so we were pretty happy.
Photographic Center Manuel Alvaro Bravo - Raul spoke at length about Manuel Garcia, an artist and activist who was held in high regard in the city. His protest against Mcds getting set up in the city centre by blockading the chain with local food options on the street outside for 3 months was a great story. Otherwise the art centre wasn’t really our thing so not overly entertaining. Did offer a good sit down opportunity however.
Parroquia del Carmen Alto - nice church courtyard for a good sit down.
La Cosecha Organic Market - a nice market that’s open on Sundays and Wednesdays serving plenty of Mexican food and fresh juices. Sadly this wasn’t to our taste given our respective illnesses.
Oaxaca aqueduct / arty street - an old dry city aqueduct ran along the street which was nice to look at, supposedly a good insta spot. We also went over to another church which didn’t stand out much apart from being more or less new because of earthquake damage.
We ended the tour at Mercado Sánchez Pascuas where we were educated in the way of the mango Pina which when crushed between hands and a hole poked in the top acted as a mango drink. We found this technique a little beyond us. Bananas and normal mango suited us just fine.
We probably needed to eat so for ease we went back to La Cosecha Organic Market. The mass of Mexican food was unappealing so we turned to the offer of a falafel salad and pitta. Once served we instantly regretted our decision and concluded there was a reason no one was going there for business. Nicola said absolutely not to it, settling for fresh watermelon juice, but Luke gave it a decent crack.
We were pretty close to the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán so had a quick walk around the building, as we weren’t allowed in due to Sunday ceremonies.
When we found out the nearby Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca (botanical garden) was closed we went back to the hostel.
Nicola found a decent dinner spot nearby called Dururu Korean Restaurant & Bakery, the appeal of a bibimbap with veg potentially bringing some much needed stability. We had to wait 15 minutes for a table in the small restaurant which was absolutely no problem but we got into a confusing situation with the waitress and seemingly required to book on WhatsApp. We got there eventually.
Back at the hostel we turned out tv binge over to the Mandolorian. Fortunately we had a short discussion about what our plans were for the next few days and led to us realising we were supposed to check out the next morning. Fortunately our room was not booked and Luke could resolve pretty easily at 8pm with the owner. We have missed this kind of easy laid back travelling we haven’t had since pre NZ.
Both of us were feeling ok so we planned a big boy trip to a nearby temple site of Monte Alban. It wasn’t too long a journey to get there by cab so Luke had decided this was the preferable option and we could be slower to start the day.
We went back to Solan to get Nicola fed and then had to walk into the Zocalo to find a cab as a result of the lack of Uber service. We really hate finding and speaking to local cab drivers. They constantly overcharge, struggle finding anything other than the main tourist hotspots and often the vehicles suck testes. Uber / any other app based cab service is just so efficient and we would honestly pay more for the ease of it. We struggled to flag one down until we were basically in the centre of town.
The first cab driver quoted $250 which Nicola thought was too much and let him go on his way. When realising we would miss the more arduous bus option we went back to finding a cab and agreed on $200.
With the absence of cab driver rating it seems cabbies become nutters. The cab driver we were not so blessed with was a lunatic; speeding (his speedometer was full on broken at 0mph), aggressively under and overtaking, the car was falling apart and was gassing us out in the back seat from terrible combustion. Nicola hasn’t bust out the pollution protection scarf for a while but it was out in full force here, and even Luke struggled. It was only a 20 minute ride thankfully.
We walked up to the entrance of Monte Alban from the car park where Nicola got the tickets (another standardised $90) and Luke sat and had his doughnut and banana brunch. This attracted a stray dog who was showing some love to Luke. Luke named him Billy big wang as the dog's penis to body ratio was way off and then was kind enough to show us his full pink stiffy.
We spent an hour or two walking around Monte Alban which was quite a pretty derelict temple site. Luke thought it was prettier than Teotihuacán, minus the towering pyramids, whereas Nicola thought it looked more like Mayan sites she had seen before (which were more impressive).
It was an enjoyable walk around but there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting historical plaques that shed any light about the civilisations that were based here. A bit annoying as we felt having a guide would have made the experience a bit drawn out which we weren’t fussed about. We consigned ourselves to a YouTube video to further our knowledge.
We had a short walk around the museum but everything was in Spanish so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time here.
At the car park we managed to find a yellow cab waiting to take passengers back and then got into a rather confusing discussion over cost and where we were going. We were quoted $300 for the ADO terminal (as we wanted to buy bus tickets) so we scrapped that and Nicola stated to the Zocalo and Central. $200 was agreed and off we went.
The guy also drove like a lunatic and had zero seatbelts in the back. As we were pulling into more central Oaxaca we ended up having another confusing discussion when he tried to drop us off in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Turns out we were in ‘Central’ rather than ‘Centro’ so further clarification added another $50 onto the bill.
We eventually made it into the Zocalo and ended up needing a recovery sit down.
We had a short walk around central Oaxaca some more and once finding out the botanical garden is by tour only we just went back to the hostel.
Our sensible non Mexican food dinner option was a burger joint called Krustaceo Korajudo. Not too expensive, not great quality burgers but did the job without making us vom was a win.
It looked like we were potentially on the mend but Luke’s insides decided to regress and said not on this day. He was hit with an uncomfortable morning of toilet use before checking out at 11am but was fortunately not rehit during the rest of the day but lacking a lot of energy.
This ends the talk of our bowel movements for Oaxaca, and hopefully we will be all cleared up for San Cristóbal.
We left our big bags at the hostel & Nicola found us a decent nomadic working cafe that we could hide away in for a long time. We had food and drinks at La Ttertulia and ended up staying for 3 hours. While the WIFI and food was good, it was pretty uncomfortable and expensive for ‘only a ham sandwich’ although Luke was a big fan of the lemon and ginger tea and his vegan bagel. It was also a tiny place so we really couldn’t hide away all that well.
We left the cafe to stretch our legs which turned into a rather laboured walk around town. It was 31 degrees with little airflow, our bags were heavy with electronics and Luke had very low energy. We ended up going to the Parroquia del Carmen Alto church to sit down, the Zocalo to sit down (although there was a performing band for the city anniversary) and finally the Catedral Metropolitana de Oaxaca for a holy sit down.
Luke ended up crying out for a coffee so settled on Cafebre. The coffee was decent and as a bigger cafe we could hide in the corner for a few hours with less stress. It seems all the cafes love a hard wooden bench which is wholly uncomfortable for the both of us, Luke more so with his negative ass, but Nicola managed to find some pain saving cushions. Nicola did end up crying at some wholesome finding Dory scenes in the cafe.
We left the cafe to pick our bags up from the hostel. Nicola was semi dying for a wazz as the cafe refused to give her the toilet key (hypothesised because she didn’t tip for a drink) so when the hostel took an age to open the doors she was less than impressed. It didn’t look like the hostel owner was overly impressed with our ringing 4 times of the bell so we didn’t hang around much.
From there we walked to Santa Hierba Jalatlaco for food and another elongated sit down. The pesto pasta was pretty decent although it wasn’t enough food for Nicola.
We made our way to the bus station, milled around there for a while and jumped on the overnight bus to San Cristobal.
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