Rocking Oaxaca

Do not be fooled by our first impressions of Oaxaca. Day 2 changed our perceptions faster than getting kicked out of a Mexico City taxi for pronouncing Mixcoac as "Mix-Cock" (its Misx-gauc). Part of the shift was due to again meeting up with Alheli who offered to host us at her parents house 10 miles west of Oaxaca. She assembled an elite line-up of cathedrals, ruins, markets, and restaurants that wowed us from sun up to sun down.

The day started with a smaller set of ruins in a town called Mitla. We were the first ones on the scene which allowed us to explore in the early morning dew. We were some of the first ones to explore the corridors and descend into the tombs. The ruins remained uncrowded for the duration of our stay which was refreshing given the insane crowds witnessed at Teotihaucan. We also explored another Zapoteca site at Yagul. It was significantly larger and better restored. It was cool to see ruins in different states of restoration.

We spent the duration of daylight dodging thunderstorms in local markets where we ate crickets, flan, and every fruit we were unable to identify. In the center of one of the markets was a 2000 year old tree. The locals have assigned each knob and crooked branch of the tree an animal likeness. Andrew and I engaged in a hotly contested game to guess the representative animal before Alheli revealed it to us. The results are still pending a judgement on whether guessing ostrich counts for the knob assigned turkey.

A shot of Mescal (a local smokey flavored Tequila variety) will be waiting at 121 New York Ave for the first to correctly guess the animal represented by the knob pictured below: