Pulpo and D invade Mexico

Pulpo here (or Dr. Beeson to my friends)--

Mexico has been very enlightening. I now know how to say "Do not flush tampons down the toilet" in four languages. I also learned Wales is not the same as England. Other than that, all I've learned is that Mexico pretty much stinks....More to come later, after we get back from the crappy beach (topless girls, cheap beers, and clean water make the beach in Puerto Escondido particularly crappy).

Vamos a la Playa!

Tomorrow morning we are headed to the beach for a couple of weeks. We won't have free internet, so I'm not sure how much we'll be able to post until Monday, the 18th, when we head to Puerto Escondido.

This week has been busy. On Monday, we went on a tour to El Tule (the widest tree in the world, it is 2000 years old), Teotitlan (the village where they make rugs), Mitla (Mixtec ruins), Hierve el Agua (a spring of mineral water 9000 ft up in the mountains, this was the coolest part), and last but not least, a Mezcal distillery (it was VERY stinky).

Tuesday, we took the 2nd class bus up to a town in the mountains, Cuajimoloyas, and hiked for a few hours. This is quite a story that we promise to tell soon. This day definitely deserves it's own post.

Wednesday we ended up doing very little except walking around the city looking for a bus or collectivo to take us to Monte Alban (more ruins). Never found anything so we went to the bus station to buy our tickets for the ride tomorrow.

Today, we went to Zaachila, another village just west of the city, with Carlos. Thursday is their market day so we checked that out and then headed to a restaurant for lunch. Sammer will have a lot to say about that later...it was fun.

So here we are...about to sign off from the interwebs for the next few days at least. We are definitely looking forward to the beach, but not the 10 hour bus ride! If we are going to finish our "loafer's manifesto", we need to get to loafing a little more (right, Drew?)! :-)

There are a couple of newer postings below, and check out the new pictures, we actually put comments on them this time.

Package tour of a few cities

So we took a package tour to a few different places. I usually steer away from these things, but transportation to all these places would have been difficult and this would be an easy way to see everything.
We first went to Tule a 2000 year old tree.

Very cool and we didn't mind seeing it again.

Next we went to Teotillan del Valle. A little town famous for it's rug weaving. We got a demonstration and an explanation of the weaving process. Everything is done by hand, from spooling the wool to creating the dyes. It is a very labor-intensive process and and takes about 16 days to make 1 average sized rug.

The most interesting part to me was the dye process and all the natural substances where the dyes are derived. Red was particularly interesting, it comes from a fungus that grows on a cactus. The fungus looks white, but inside is a red coloring that is non-toxic and is a beautiful deep red. Greens come from plants, blues come from some type of chalk-like mineral that they cook down. Really cool stuff. But at $150 for a rug and no job they were a little beyond our reach.

Onward. Next stop is Mitla. Some Zapotec ruins that have been continuously inhabited. Nobody really discovered this like Macchu Picchu, people have been living continually around here for hundreds of years.


Next was the highlight, Hierve el Agua. It means boiling water, but the water isn't hot. It was named that because the natural mineral water looks like it is boiling.

From the 'main' road it took about 30 minutes to get up a rutted dirt road to the parking lot, then a 10 minute hike down to the springs.
The setting is dramatic. Perched right on the edge of a 500 foot cliff. You can't really tell but behind me in this picture is a little ledge then a sheer drop. Pretty stunning place to swim.

The water is so full of minerals when it spills over the edge it forms calcium deposits that look pretty remarkable.


So now to the Mezcal factory. You would think this would be the highlight, but it was pretty dirty and smelled like hell. I mean, if this is a distillery that is tour-worthy, then where is the rot gut stuff I have been drinking made? I'd rather not know. They take the hearts of the Agave and then roast them in a big mound for 5 days or so. It is a slow roast and gives Mezcal it's smoky flavor. This is a point of pride since most Tequilla is roasted by gas.

Once the agave is smoked, it is ground by a big stone wheel pulled by a donkey to extract the juice. Everything is still done real traditionally like in the old days.

Brooke's description of this is apt so I will not try to improve upon it.
'the apparatus. This is a fully functioning distillery that produces thousands of bottles, but inside it looks little better than a crack manufacturing house'

This tour almost made me stop drinking Mezcal. Almost.

So we end the day with a few shots and head back to our place. All this guided tour stuff leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth so I aim to get a real adventure in the next day, and we got one.

Sunday

Watched Carlos' son, Carlos, play soccer today. It was 5 on 5 on a small indoor type field, like in the beginning of Trainspotting. Good fun.

Then, I made a discovery at the store:

Who knew our boy Bubba was so popular in these parts, having a cold drink named after you is quite an honor. I'll have to let him know that it does not mix with Mezcal or Tequila, just to save him the trouble.

Dia en el campo

Picnic with our boy Carlos and familia. We went to a little countryside spot about 30 minutes from town near a little river. It was a farming area and very beautiful. It was Carlos' sister-in law's birthday. They were very nice people. His little nephew had an Austin shirt on which just blew Brooke and I's mind, so now he is our poster boy.

Hamburgesas and Tlayudas (corn empanadas) where on the menu and they were great. Afterwards Carlos made some balloon toys for the kiddos
(he used to work at the Mexican Chuck-E-Cheeezes) which they freakin' loved. They were all very adorable. Two were named Diana (Dee-awna) and Camila (Kah-mee-lah)
which it took me a minute but I realized were the princesses of the UK and Wales respectively.

Afterwards I went to hit the volleyball around with Carlos and his son and sister

While Brooke played with the kiddos.

Brooke says...First we were "stabbing" each other with our balloon swords (only mine was a flower), then we moved on to another game that I like to call "Hug the Guera" (hug the white girl). The oldest girl kept would count to 10 (in English), then she kept saying "castigo". I have no idea what this meant but whoever had the balloon on 10 had to hug someone, and it was always me. It was fun to me, but then later she made them start doing push ups on 10. hmm...I asked Carlos what castigo means and he said it was like a punishment. Ok, so hugging is in the same vein as push ups? Whatever, it was fun.

Afterwards we went to this cool old church nearby in Cuilapam (Kwee-lah-palm).

It was never finished, but it was stunning and had great views of the countryside from the top.

There was a huge swarm of bees inside so we took that as a sign to leave. As we left the strangest thing happened. All kind of people were coming into the courtyard, there were fireworks and it looked like a parade and a fiesta was about to start. Shocking huh? Nobody came by to offer me shots of Mezcal, so for some entertainment I hurled Carlos' son over the edge of the church and we called it a day.

Mas festivales

Yeah, so the next day we saw the reason for the impromptu parade in the middle of the night. We stopped by to check out a church and the same people were there. It was 'el dia del mercado', I guess a day to celebrate the market or something. People barely need an excuse to celebrate here. There was some crazy guy with fireworks on his head

accompanied by the ever present 'Mezcal guys'. It is like they all go to a class where they are equipped and trained. They are all armed with the same clear bottle with no markings, about 100 plastic shot glasses and the inability to take no for an answer. There were three of them this time and they each felt the need to pour me a shot, and being sensitive to local cultures, I felt it would be rude of me to refuse. Excuses like, 'it is only noon', or 'we are right in front of a church' did not seem to hold any water.
Church was pretty cool

but it was time for some lunch, pastor in particular.


After lunch we checked out the big cathedral, the temple of Santo Domingo, which is pretty massive
and beautiful in it's own right and holds a lot of the treasures of Oaxaca's history from the pre-colombian to everything about Benito Juarez. Very impressive.

Re: Comments and an Update

Hola, Brooke here...

I love that people are posting comments, thanks! I am glad to know that people are actually reading this thing.

For Kristin...Par Que is butter girlfriend! ;-) You are close though, it's porque. I use that one a lot.

Michele - Sadly, Dora did not fit in the backpack. I have seen many Dora's here though and she always makes me smile. :-)

And to Weldon, we haven't been posting because we spent the last 2 1/2 days being sick. At least I did. Feliz Cumpleanos a mi, right? So here is an update after eating Tlyuadas with Alex...

I went to class the next morning, Sammer met up with his new buddy Carlos, we came home and ate lunch, then I was getting excited to go out to eat for my birthday that night and Montezuma reared his ugly head. I hate that guy. I finished an entire book in 3 days because I didn't really leave the house. Sammer, being the sweet guy that he is (I mean, super-tough-masculine man), went to the store and stocked up on supplies to make me feel better. It worked and I'm all good now.

Tomorrow, we are going to a small party at Carlos' house with his family. Carlos is a guy we met through my Spanish tutor, Laura (that is him on the left, in case you weren't sure of the other two). He lives in San Diego but is here visiting his family and wanted to practice his English. Laura hooked him up with Sammer, who wants to practice Spanish but doesn't need a tutor or class. Carlos is really great and super nice, we like him a lot. I'm sure we'll post something about the awesome fiesta tomorrow.

One more thing...A parade came down our street last night at 11:30 pm. Loud, booming fireworks, a band, a queen and all. I am not making this up.

Tamale guy is here, gotta go! xoxo!