Oaxaca Dorado

For my last day in Mexico - and my birthday - I decided to treat myself and not to return to the Centro Historico. Insteat I went to the more upscale Zona Rosa. A nice place, really, with dozens of good restaurant (and not that expensive), clean pedestrian streets, pink-colored pavement (hence the name) and a friendly, lively ...

... on our outdoor stage at Xochitla. Then we headed to a local high school (Preparatoria #27) to perform our show. We were greeted by the school's marching band! What a welcome!

After getting ready, we went outside to practice for a few minutes before our actual performance.

Our plans changed as we saw that the entire school was already sitting, waiting for the performance to start!

Because we were guests in their school, the students wanted to ...

... had other, yet to be excavated pyramids below them. David and I spent a good three hours amongst the pyramids, climbing them, sitting on them, climbing around them and looking at them. There were heaps of people selling things, the worst things they sold were these horns that when you blew them they made the sound of a jaguar. A cool thing to hear once, and only once, but a few times a minute from every salesman and every kid who bought one drove me nuts ...

... police boarding the bus ever couple of hours to shine a torch in our faces but after 8 hours of over night joy and a shocking Austrian film dubbed in Spanish about two guys held in a torture camp we had finally arrive at our destination of Oaxaca. So after flagging down a cab to take us to one of the hostels pinned on the notice board of Rodolfo, which happened to have possible the lumpiest mattress ever, coupled with a dogs blanket for a pillow, we dumped our by now very heavy ...

... if you didnīt see, she would move closer to you, point again, and ask again if we saw... eventually, we always did). Upon our return to the hotel, we expected a shamefaced (but satisfied) Simon to be hanging around... but no. No Simon. Milton and Daryl (Simonīs Netherlands buddy with an awesome name) started hunting... calling cops and whatnot. We went out and ate pasta al fresco on a second floor balcony. The beer was cool, the breeze ...

... time at, Oaxaca Christian School, for the first time. (p.s. - I have no idea who the people are in the video I just linked to, but I thought it was hilarious.)  My room mate (A.T. - more about this awesome guy later) and I were in charge of substitute teaching gym class for first through sixth grade. The wind was blowing at about 20 mph, so needless to ...

... local churches with the obligatory brass band, fireworks, candlelit procession, but this time following a float with everyone dressed up to represent some religious theme or other associated with the festive season. Also, the number of vendors increased to accommodate day specific items - eggshells filled with confetti (these guys will be eating scrambled eggs every day for the next month!) and/or flour for smashing over peoples heads, giant sparklers and cans of foam/silly ...

Arriving to Mexico city in the early morning we founded hard to imagine it was the third biggest city in the world - it was empty and quiet. A few hours later it revealed itself as it is - crowded, beautiful and verrryyy big! We wondered around the town for a few days, discovering its secrets - from the great Teotihuacan, an ancient city, to all the buildings, bars and of course, restaurants. It was absolutelty amazing!! So many people ...

... we go to Xochimilco and get a huge boat punted just for us 3 down the river. There are hundreds of brightly coloured boats lining the river were we climb over to ours. As we go we see the vendors and bands attaching themselves to the boats playing their tunes, or offering food and clothes and trinkets to buy. There is an installation on the river made of dolls pulled from the water, with missing limbs and not looking good to remember a ...