Oaxaca

After giving up on a restless night of loud TV and people walking in and out of an eight-bed dorm room, we made it to Oaxaca around 4 this afternoon. ¨We¨is me and Julia, a German biologist taking 3 weeks of her enviable vacation time to travel around Mexico. She decided, in the haze of last night´s persistent rustle, to pass up Puebla for Oaxaca with me today. You have to try really hard to travel completely solo most places, and that turns out to be the best part - that you´re rarely really alone.

After checking into a hostel dorm, we headed to El Zocalo, the main downtown plaza flanked by your typical cafes, shops, and itinerant trinket vendors. The atmosphere is lively and comfortable. We took a table at a cafe to refuel after the long, though beautiful, 7 hour bus ride with Coronas for Julia, soup for me and chiles rellenos to share. People sat on the benches in the plaza or milled around, some passing through, enjoying the dusk hours after a long day, some selling, some begging, all including children. After being raucously refused our offering of bread to a small boy who instistently demanded nothing but pesos, we got into some conversation and a toast with some guys at the table next to us. After walking around, we closed the evening with a milkshake and hot chocolate.

I am so happy to be here. A half world away from Mexico City, I look forward to tomorrow being the first day I will wake up and sleep in the same place. Plans are simple. Orientation day. No rush to go anywhere fast, as I still have over two weeks to go.