Mexico - Mexico city, Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido

Hola de Mexico! Land of tacos and sombreros.

We landed in Mexico late on Monday evening and immediately went about finding some tacos for supper. We found a small taceria (place that makes tacos, they're everywhere here) and had a cheap but cheerful Mexican dinner for about £2 each. We'd heard dozens of scare stories about Mexico city but we actually found it to be quite a great place: good cheap food, busy, lively – the people here know how to have fun.

...'Scuse me while i just take another sip of my Margarita... Al and I are actually on the beach in Puerto Escondido... but we'll get to that in a bit.


We spent one very full day in Mexico city, seeing museums, being cerenaded to by marriachis and doing the touristy thing in the main square (equiv of houses of parliament and westminster cathderal).
One thing we noticed immediately was the altitude which, as Mexico city is around 1,600 metres high, it can be quite difficult walking around. Since walking didn't suit us we decided to master the metro system... with 20 million people living in Mexico city we drew the conclusion that half of them spent their days on the metro – 'how can it get more crowded than London in rush-hour?' you might think... try getting onto the most crowded London train, multiply it by two and add in a couple of guys' crotches pressed against you... nice! Mexicans are very small compared to me and Al and we have a certain advantage of being the tallest people in the Metro carriage. However when they want to get out of a carriage you'd better move or else you'll be rugby tackled by a torrent of small people and literally swept out of the carriage – as happened to me. Gringo error number 1.

...Scuse me while I tuck into my fresh fish platter with Al...

As much as we liked Mexico city we decided that there was another world out there that needed to be explored. So we jumped onto the coach to Oaxaca. 6 hours south of Mexico city it is an old colonial town with a huge cathedral
bright coloured houses and really friendly, indigenous people (from the Zapotec and Aztec tribes). We spent a couple of days here, visiting Monte Alban:


2000 year old ruins of pyramids built by the Zapotecs which was amazing – apart from being accosted by local sales people selling 'hand made' Zapotec crafts.

Oaxaca is also famous for Mezcal – a local type of tequilla, of which Al and I have enjoyed quite a few times now.

Also local chocolate is amazing. On our first night we decided to 'go cheap' with the accommodation and ended up staying in a bit of hovel with stains on the wall, we were too disgusted to go bare feet on the floor so had to wear flipflops and at night we slept in our respective sleeping bag liners, too scared to move in case we touched the wall. We've since decided that three years of slave-working in London for this trip should entitle us to slightly cleaner accommodation and so have upgraded since then.

We happened across a local fiesta in Oaxaca which was awesome – a marching band, people dressed in local costumes, two giant dancing dolls, handheld fireworks and locals coming up to us feeding us homemade Mezcal. We need more of those in the UK.
We took an overnight bus to Puerto Escondido – Mexico's top surfing state. This place is awesome, the people are so friendly, the seafood is amazing and the beaches stretch for miles. The waves are HUGE – swimming in the sea is a little scary as you just see these massive breakers bearing down on you. But it's fun. We arrived at 7am yesterday and found a hotel, we then went looking for breakfast but instead accepted a tour off a fisherman to some of the nearby beaches – we hadn't eaten since lunch the day before but we thought 'why not?' So in we got. Our guide took us out to sea to view the local turtles which are abundant. The first two we saw were mating... I felt a little rude for interrupting, but they didn't seem to mind us taking photos of them. We sped off to find our next turtle... suddenly the guy driving our boat just jumped into the sea!! We were obviously a little alarmed by this, until we realised that he had a string attached to him. He swam back to the boat and reeled in a huge turtle and lifted it into the boat.

It was pretty awesome, Al took a fancy to it and has been talking about it ever since...it's name is Turbo by the way... courtesy of Al...



He's called that cos Al released him back into the ocean and he swam away in a flash - he obviously didn't like us as much as we liked him! We then got dropped off on a tiny beach where a local restauranteur ran out to great our boat. He took us to his small beachside restaurant (he raked the sand in front of the deck chairs which was so sweet) where he offered us freshly caught fish – we immediately said yes of course. He set about cooking it and we had the best lunch ever (maybe because we hadn't had breakfast and were starving, but fish and chips have never tasted so good!)



The Pacific Ocean is like swimming in a bath – it's amazing!
We saw three sting rays in the sea next to us and then we headed for our cerveza (beer) and fish lunch. The boat took us back to P.Escondido and we have since spent our time here strolling on the beach, swimming,
looking at the surf shops (but not buying cos we're poor travellers), eating fish and watching the local fishermen bring in their catches.
The people we have seen here are poor and do what they can to make a living, but everyone we have met is so unbelievably friendly – as those who were with me in Croatia last week will certainly agree it couldn't get worse than that in terms of friendliness, but here they are the opposite – so proud of their work and so friendly and music is a big part of their lives – they are very musical and noisy – it's great. Those who were with me will also recognise the saying 'The Adriatic officially sucks!' Well i'm happy to announce that 'The Pacific officially rocks!'


Tonight we head off to San Cristabel de las Casas – a hilltop city in Chiapas in the jungle.
Can't wait. And tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day, one of the biggest fiestas in the country, should be great.

Until then amigos, adios. x

p.s. for those of you who are interested, my Spanish is sloooowly improving, but thankfully I have Al here to help me as otherwise i'd be really stuck!