Hotel Parador Santo Domingo de Guzman Oaxaca

... flips into the crowd, onto the cement and chairs.  If they came flying at you, you had to get up and run!  And since we were in the front row they came flying at us several times!  It was such a blast… three and a half hours of entertainment for about US$4.  It is a must if you ever get that chance!

Monday morning we got up early, said our good-byes to our gracious host and his dogs, and hit the road.  Time for Wesley to work and get us up that mountain!

... place, there would certainly have been more purchases made). Last stop was an ancient tree which had grown into rude and amusing shapes (well... at least one of the shapes was rude... a bum, in fact :) Tee hee hee). Some formations were quite impessive, really... but most delightful was the little girl who acted as our tour guide for the tree... the only English she knew was the names of the formations and the extremely useful "¿did you ...

... to ask which one I was, (caballero or damas). It reminded me of the time I walked into the Mongals bathroom at Mongolian Barbeque, thinking it was the way Mongols was spelled. (unlike the door in the link, the Easton restaurant doesn't have the convenient blue sign below!) After not spying any urinals, I realized I was in the wrong bathroom. I ...

... to see the displays and the place was rammed, when some bright spark (haha) decided it was time to start the fireworks a half hour ahead of schedule (probably the police wanting to knock off early!). Consequently me and several thousand others were bottlenecked/crushed under the trees of the plaza and missed the fireworks - hope the 3 people that saw them enjoyed them!

Xmas Eve saw the plaza heaving with local families there to watch the candelas, parades from/to the ...

... the center of action. As we were walking around we thought things were rather slow and couldn't understand why noone was outside. Well, we found most people near the zocalo , the main town square. There were young people in the streets dressed up in halloween costumes dancing to the beat of a Mexican band *similar to a marching band! From there we wondered and found the most amazing sand creations on ...

... How wonderful to have a siesta in the afternoon. Neal read, I slept! Then we went out to explore our new neighborhood. The church is about three blocks away, (since I wrote that we have discovered literally ten churches in our neighborhood), small shops and cafeterias abound, and at one corner where we were waiting for the light to change I turned around and saw the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca (ICO) http ...

... in a newly found café with just us, perfect! Then off to the famous ancient ruins - 'Monte Alban' 10km west of the city. This ancient city of ruins dating from 100BC - 600AD! sits on top of a steep hill (or mountain as the Mexicans say). The drive up was pretty cool as we got to see how incredibly steep the local roads/dust tracks were to the numerous houses built into the mountain and the views across the valley went for miles! My stomach didn't fair too well as we got ...

... other girl is from Holland), so they were saying all the stores we didn't have and they don't have wal-mart, old navy, gap, etc. and then they said "eke-uh", I was like no we definitely don't have that at all, then I said pronounce it again and they said "eke-uh" and I was like never heard of it, so then my teacher spelled it on the board, IKEA, I was like oh yes we do have that haha! It was very funny! But its aye-kee-a lol funny. For lunch I had watermelon, soup ...

... the computer last week. It was full and I just don´t want to have to carry it with me on the road. I have found a way to re-organize that whole project for the future, and look forward to updating more frequently. One thing I did discover while entrenched in that process, as well as reviewing this blog to see where I had previously left off, is my command of the English language seems to be suffering worse than ever. Trying ...

Hey!!! Firstly I just want to let you know Ive just spent over an hour uploading my previous photos onto travelpod. Only beacuase I love yas. I left Peurto on an overnighter and have been in Oaxaca for 2 days now. Im staying in a cool hostel with a few other european travellers. Yesterday I walked around the city and took in the sites. It is very beautiful with alot of old Spanish architecture and cathedrals etc. We went to ...