Sarah: Oaxaca, Mexico - Frozen Waterfalls ...

  Oaxaca, Mexico
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Hey my peeps!
 
Been a while since the last blog and we´ve been to a lot of places. From Mexcico City we went coastal to Acapulco - well, we had to, what can I say. I can say it was bloody hot, yes got a bit sunburnt. We didn´t see a lot of it but went to the main touristy beach, with the cruise ships and the high rise hotels .... and so many brown white people - man I´ve never seen white people so brown before (even Larry ) - ugh, like body builders without the muscles, and they think they´re attractive!

Then to Puerto Escondido, which is like the new Acapulco (well, the cool version of Aco for all the tourists who don´t like to think of themselves as tourists). We only spent a night there becasue we´d planned to do the trip to Oaxaca in one hit but it wasn´t possible. Actually, we really liked it - it was much more picturesque than Aco, and the water much more inviting (so much so that I did actually jump in with all me clothes on, just couldn´t resist any longer). No margaret and clive, ray didn´t join me, still workin on that.
 
Took this hellish ride for 6 hours through the mountains to Oaxaca, where Mexico´s most fanmous son, Benito Juarez is from. I know, you´re thinking - psshh, 6 hours, I do 6 hours with my breakfast! - well, we turned up at the bus station at 2:00 pm hoping to just get on the next bus as we usually do, only to be told that the next bus wasn´t until 10:30 that night! mmm. So sat down for our 8 hour wait in the terminal. I decided to make some joking comment to the ticket guy when he came out a bit later, and THEN, he just decided to tell us that oh, by the way, we could get a shuttle from this hotel if we could get there in 20 mins ... thanks and BYE!  All I can say about that friggin shuttle ride is that if anyone knows Takaka Hill (Sandra, Michelle....) it was like doing that for 5 hours! Thats 10 times back and forth over that vomit-inducing mnountain, in a row! Needless to say, ray got sick, WAS sick, and hasn´t been right since. Could also have had something to do with the 2L of pineapple water he drank in Puerto that may not have been purified.

So got to Oaxaca. Actually, I can´t really say there was much there to write home about, although it´s got a good rep with tourists. It´s on THE trail. Well, we did go to the Hierve el Agua, the petrified or frozen waterfalls, one of only two such phenomenon in the world. The other is in Turkey. Oh, you know how I mentioned the police last time? Well, a rather incongruous sight in Oaxaca was police with bulletproof vests...on bicycles! Weird. Maybe they can´t pedal very fast.

Onwards and upwards!