En route to Oaxaca (pronounced wa-ha-ka) we stopped for a group photo by a huge cactus. The bottom of cacti was originally painted white to deter termites but is now done for aesthetic reasons.
We spent the afternoon wandering around Oaxaca and in particular it's amazing market with everything from chilies to beautiful wall hangings (sadly too expensive/big for us to buy). We also saw a street parade to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a local hospital - it was very colourful with lots of people in costumes and on stilts. They were also throwing sweets out into the crowd quite forcefully and so it hurt when one hit my head!!
The next day we went to Monte Alban, the ruins of a Zapotec city. Once again the city was built around good acoustics with 2 main plaza - one for the nobles and the other for the commoners. There was a network of underground tunnels so the ruler could 'magically' appear in between the 2 plazas. The most impressive thing was a shaft which lights up twice a year when the sun is directly over Monte Alban.
Later we visited the Cultural museum which was very maze like and I got rather lost trying to find the others. There were some good artefacts taken from Monte Alban but I had to guess at what they actually were as my limited Spanish wasn't up to translating! We also went next door to a church that was covered in gold. That evening we went to the bra bar for some cocktails and our tour leader donated one of her bras to the impressive collection over the bar!!
