Fun at the beach

Welcome to San Agustinillo

After three weeks "hard" work and studying it was time to relax and spend some days at the beach...

While still in Oaxaca, Lara, another Swiss student and myself realized that we both had more or less the same travel plans and we therefore decided that we would go to the coast together. On Sunday morning, July 8 we left Oaxaca and travelled to San Agustinillo, a small fishing village at the Pacific Coast, near Puerto Angél and Mazunte.

We very lucky to find a very nice cabaña right at the beach and the place was really "a sueño" (a dream), as the name already indicated. For those interested, here the link to the website:
http://www.unsueno.com.mx/html/index.html

Patrick, the American student who was staying in the same host family than me, sort of got tempted by our plans as well and decided to drive to the coast by motorbike. As he was a bit more adventurous than us girls, he put up his tent right at the beach and used our cabaña for a shower from time to time.

Monday, July 9 was my birthday (thank you very much for the numerous emails and sms) and of course we celebrated in style and even had a small cake with a giant candle (there was not much of a choice in the few small shops in the village)

Early morning boat tour to watch and swim with some giant turtles....

I had quite a hard time not getting seasick as there were quite big waves and our lancha (boat) was rather small and moving around like a nutshell.

Our cabaña right at the beach

Impressions from the beach

Good bye Oaxaca

Maria and Manuel, my host parents with their dog Boogie

Time in Oaxaca was flying and my three weeks were over so fast. I met a lot of very nice and interesting people and I would like to say thank you and good bye to all of them; hopefully our paths will cross again sometime somewhere in the future...

My host family with Patrick, Sarah, Manuel, Maria and Adam

(from left to right)

Marco, my Mexican intercambio

Sarah, relaxing in Monte Albán


Patrick and Adam enjoying their Mexican beer

Patricia, Marco and Mirjam





Lara, Marco and Bettina

(Lara is now travelling with me and you will see/hear more of us soon)

Trip to Ocotlán

Friday, July 6 was already my last day at school and therefore Bettina, Janina, Lara (pictured from left to right below) and myself decided to skip the conversation class and visit Ocotlán, a town in the south of Oaxaca.

They have a very nice market every Friday and we also had a look at the church and the town hall, where some big murales of Rodolfo Morales (one of the most famous Oaxacenian painters) are on display.

Ocotlán is also famous for its colourful pottery figures of women and we visited the house / workshop of Josefina Aguilar, who makes such figures. I could not resist and ended up buying the women with the blue skirt and the melon in her hands (second from left in picture on the right below).

I hope I will find somebody who will carry her home for me sometime soon......... Esther, Romy?!

Procession in Teotitlán del Valle

Teotitlán del Valle is famous four it's weaving tradition but the reason we went there yesterday afternoon was a different one.
Sarah, the American girl living in the same host family with me and another of her classmates were invited to participate in the procession of the village.
In the old days it was the tradition that all young, single girls (well, they also used to be virgins in those times...) would walk in a procession around the village, wearing the traditional costumes and carrying some pictures of the virgin Maria, Jesus or some other holy figure on their head. All the man of the village would watch the parade and select their future wives among the girls in the procession....
Every family has to send a number of girls to participate in the parade and since the family of Sarah's teacher only has one unmarried daughter, they needed some more volunteers! So she and two other "gringas" walked alongside about 100 local girls and women and it was really very impressing to see the parade around the village.
Afterwards we were all invited to have something to eat in another family's house and it was such a nice experience to see, how friendly and open these people are, even though they are really poor and have to work hard to make their living.
The evening ended with a rather adventurous trip back to Oaxaca, as there were no taxis and because all local people were at the party and did not want to work, we got a ride with the local police car down to the highway. There we waited in the pitch dark for a bus and were lucky that one passed by after a wait of about 20 minutes and actually saw us and did stop as well...
I think I wouldn't dare doing this on my own, but since we had two guys with us and were a group of nine people, it was quite fun.

Excursion to El Tule and Hierve El Agua

Hierve El Agua
Hierve el Agua is a mineral spring that forms two natural swimming pools and created some huge formations on the hillside, that look like frozen waterfalls.
The water bubbles out of the ground and is very clear and refreshingly cool....... a nice treat on that hot Sunday afternoon when we visited the site.
(see picture above, from left to right myself, Patricia from Holland and Miryam from Baden/Switzerland)

El Tule

Tule is famous for his "arbol del Tule", which is claimed to be the biggest tree in the world. I am not sure if this is really true but it's dimensions are impressive anyway: the tree is 58 meters around, 42 meters high and about 2000 to 3000 years old.

With a lot of imagination you can also see all kind of animals and other creatures in the tree's trunk and branches.

Baseball game

Last Thursday the school handed out some free tickets for a game of the local baseball team here in Oaxaca.
Due to a rainstorm and also because Mexican time is not really the same as Swiss time, the game started almost two hours later than announced. When we students arrived, the stadium was still very empty and we had a lot of time to kill before they finally started........
We left after about two hours into the game and I still didn't really understand much more about the baseball rules, but it was a nice experience anyhow!!

Mitla and Monte Albán

Hi there, today some history class about two pre-Hispanic ruins which are both around Oaxaca: Mitla and Monte Albán....

In my next entry (hopefully sometime soon) I will then share some pictures about this weekend's trip to Tule and Hierve El Agua, so keep checking the blog for more updates!!

Monte Albán
The ancient Zapotec capital Monte Albán is on a hilltop, overlooking the valley of Oaxaca. The site was first occupied about 500 before Christ and at it's peak time about 25'000 people lived up there.
We went there early last Sunday and it was great being there with almost no other people around and enjoying the absolute silence and the fresh morning breeze. Only around lunch time more tourists and locals started coming as well; by the way, in Mexico all museums and historical sites/monuments are free on Sunday, therefore a lot of Mexicans like to visit these places as well and you can see whole family excursions and school trips.....

Mitla

On my first weekend in Oaxaca, Sarah (an American student living in the same host family) and myself did take the bus to Mitla, about one hour from Oaxaca. It was a very interesting ride with us being the only two gringos on the bus, sharing the space with local folks and some of their animals as well........ the trip did cost us about 2 CHF and you only pay the driver when you get off the bus, nothing like at home I'd say!

The ruins in Mitla are not really very big but have been a very important Zapotec religious center.

On the way back to Oaxaca we stopped in Tlacolula, where they have a very colourful market every Sunday. I will upload some images in my next entry.