Oaxaca

After a few days of relaxing in the sunshine we decided to head inland to explore the Mexican countryside. We caught a ridiculously early bus that spent the next seven and a half hours covering the approximate 200km! We literally stopped for every waif and stray that fancied a lift, I seriously reckon it would have been quicker to walk!

We eventually arrived in Oaxaca (pronounced Wahaka, I have no idea why!) and were surprised to find the city almost deserted of tourists. We later discovered that there had been serious rioting [all started by teachers demanding more pay, they have my support!] earlier in the week that had escalated into street shootings, the 'disappearance' of rioters and the burning down of hotels! Glad we discovered this once safely out of the city though and not while we were still there. Realising that something wasn't quite right we caught another early morning bus out of the city into the beautiful surrounding countryside.

We arrived in the tiny village of Cuajimoloyas (your guess on pronunciation is probably as good as mine) and were met by our guide for the morning, a pleasant little man who spoke even less English than we speak Spanish. Our guided walk was err interesting to say the least. We would be walking along when he would suddenly point at something, say it in Spanish and encourage us to repeat it in English, a kind of mutual lesson which was quite amusing, especially when Ad tried to work out the name of a cow by pointing at a bull and saying senorita! Our guide didn't have a clue what Ad was going on about so just laughed and smiled. Our morning hike was only about 7km but it covered a really hilly route, we were kind of high up (over 3000m), oh, and our guide got us lost three times! He would stop and say 'uno momento', look around him whilst maintaining a thoughtful look on his face and then point back the way we had just walked as if that was obviously the route we should be following! So, all in all we had a very tiring morning. We were shattered by the time we arrived in the even smaller village of Benito Juares where we were faced with the ordeal of ordering lunch without even the aid of a Spanish menu. A lot of smiling and nodding occurred on our part and we were thankful when a fairly tasty meal appeared in front of us!

Feeling revitalised we headed outside to meet our second guide of the day. A man named Jose (how Mexican!) who was leading us to our final destination by bike. Now, Jose promised that the entire 12km ride was flat or downhill so imagine my horror when we headed off up the hill. We rounded the corner and the hill just kept going, up and up and up. I was starting to feel more than a little anxious (maybe his English wasn't as good as I'd though and he'd mixed up the words up and down!) but luckily we reached the brow of the hill and it was more or less all downhill from there. To my surprise I loved the ride and all too soon we found ourselves in the quaint village of Lorita where we spent the night.

Our second day of exploring involved a 15km hike (again through pretty hilly terrain) but luckily we were walking with a lovely French couple (promised you'd get a mention Ben and Lauren!) who were able to not only speak French and English fluently but also Spanish and therefor made the whole experience a lot easier for us! During our walk our guide pointed at a whole in the side of the rock face and said something we didn't understand. Ben turned and told us there was an old gold mine there and we could go in if we wanted to. Mexicans don't have health and safety laws like we do so on our hands and knees we crawled in and sure enough there were tiny flecks of gold in the walls, pretty neat!

By the time we arrived in Amatlan we were pretty exhausted however the views and our gorgeous rooms with open fires (imagine Ad´s excitement!) more than made up for it. We watched the sun set in the distance and sipped Cervesa, life could definitely be worse!