Mexico [Part 2] - Viva La Guelaguetza!

Read here about how our Mexican adventure began.

We had spent close to a week in Brisas de Zicatela without doing much. A bit of walking around the village, checking out the beaches around and eating a whole lot of artesnal food. We left Brisas in a local bus that headed for Pochutla. In that bus, racing down an empty highway along the coast, with Mexican music blaring on it’s loudspeakers, I finally got the geographical feeling of being in Mexico, halfway across the world from India!

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Cabana in the Hills

It was in Pochutla that we finally hit on the Spanish language barrier. There was a short comic episode where I tried ordering some soup for breakfast and instead kept asking for ‘post’ 😑 Parul, being the amazing help that she usually is, kept laughing and shrugging her shoulders. Finally, I managed to order some scrambled eggs and Jarritos which made for a nice breakfast.

From Pochutla we took a van to San Jose del Pacifico, a small hill town mid way to Oaxaca where we were eventually headed. The route was so winding that even I, who usually does not feel the curves, started felt motion sick. Parul is much more susceptible to it so she must have been counting down the kilometers.

The town was so small that you could see one end of it from the other! We roamed a bit and found a small and basic cabana from an old Mexican lady. There was the language barrier again but we managed and paid her upfront for a night. The view from the cabana was worth every peso we had spent for it.

San Jose del Pacifico has a very strange speciality. It is known for Temazcal and mushrooms (hallucinogens and non). Tired, we did not feel like doing either that day but we did have some amazing vegetarian food cooked by a Portuguese man who had been to India a few years ago! The food was accompanied by some amusing conversation as our cook recalled the few Hindi words that he had managed to retain from his trip. The Mezcal was good. Cloudy as it had been all day, rain started drizzling and the small village got cozy.

We walked the 100 meters to the other end of the village and looked down the hillside to the green foliage and white clouds floating under us. Mountains are love in themselves.

We went back to the cabana as it got darker and saw a hummingbird darting over the flowers enroute. This was an extremely beautiful place.

Since the Coronas (the beer 😛) no longer seemed interesting enough, we walked to the center and had some hot chocolates that night. We had entered chocolate territory and out here you had to specify whether you wanted your chocolate with milk or water! We stuck to the milk and discussed how it was a shame that we were not going to spend longer here. In fact, we had skipped over a few interesting beaches along the coast as well which had come heavily recommended. Chachahua, a village where people lived off the land and planktons lit up the sea at night; Zipolite, a bohemian beach that catered to alternative lifestyles. We knew we were rushing but there was a reason for it. We needed to reach Oaxaca by the next day in order to see the beginning of La Guelaguetza, one of the few things we had decided on beforehand. We just hoped that it made up for all that we were rushing through.

We woke up at ease the next morning. The skies had cleared and we started a morning with a beautiful view. With a scenery so beautiful, you do not really mind how dilapidated the bathroom is. It is a pleasure to just stand there with a toothbrush dangling from your mouth. Beauty is a strange indulgence.

Viva La Oaxaca

We caught another van that was heading towards Oaxaca. The first half wound down the hill and I tried to sleep off the motion sickness. Once we hit the plains, the route became rather beautiful and took us all the way to Oaxaca City. Parul had already messaged our host, Fernando, and he came to pick us up from the bus station 😄 He drove us to his place which was on one end of the town. It was rather far from the Zocalo but connected by a direct bus so I did not mind. We spent the rest of the afternoon drawing up a rough plan of how to best spend our time in Oaxaca. Marianna, our hostess, joined into the planning once she was back from work and then we headed downtown for some food and drinks with them. It started raining outside as we sat talking and drinking at a cafe. Our hosts told us more about the typical food and drinks of the area and shared with us an entire list of places to go see in and around Oaxaca. There were a lot of free museums around town that they recommended highly. I was really enjoying the AirBnB experience. Not all of them had amazing hosts, but the one that did made up for the ones that did not 😄 Post dinner we parted ways with our hosts and got drenched in the rain trying to catch a bus back to the AirBnB.