Oaxaca is famed all over Mexico for its fine cuisine and the beauty of its city.
We arrived in Oaxaca early in the morning after a twelve hour bus journey. Amazingly we had all got quite a decent nights sleep although I ached like I had just done a triathalon and my feet and ankles were really swollen.
The taxi driver told us that it would be hard to take us anywhere near the Zócalo (where we wanted to go) because the Oaxacan teachers had been on strike for a week and were camping out - and so it proved to be. We had planned to sit in a cafe there and look around at hotels but as this wasn't possible he took us to a hostel mentioned in the Lonely Planet and we unloaded there.
The hostel was shabby, stinky and over priced - but more about that later! We took a walk around the place and the whole of the Zócalo (which is the main square) was a building site, and there were thousands of teachers living in a cardboard and plastic city all around it - amazing sight. I asked the kids if they could imagine their teachers doing that!!!
After a hot and unpleasant lunch, a few hours in the internet and finally getting our Cuban air tickets, we stumbled back to the hostel, only to find that mine and Mark's room was similar to sauna without the steam! Our room was at the top of the terrace and it had a tim roof and thin wooden walls - I quickly ajourned to the kids room which was pleasantly cool. After a long rest we trundled out to get some more food, the first nice looking place was a French resterant and we went there for ok but over-priced salads - and I tried a famous Oaxacan hot chocolate, which was indeed delicious. Then we went down to a kind of market area full of ice cream and cake stalls, had very tasty ice creams too, and then went for a stroll, only to find that in the course of four hours the teachers had completely upped sticks and gone with hardly a trace of them left.
That night, our room had thankfully cooled down and we went to sleep only to be awakened a few hours later by an enormous storm. It was bucketing down, with thunder and lightening very close and it was very loud on our tin roof - we couldn't hear each other speak without putting our mouths very close. I have to admit it was a bit scarey but then we started to get pelted by lumps of ice. It was hailing so heavily that somehow the hail stones were finding their way into the room and covering us. Once the light went on we could see that they were coming in everywhere and we had to sit on our bed under an umberella for a while!!!!!
Luckily we could see the funny side, but there was no way I was going outside to the loo or to find a drier room! Gradually it subsided, and we eventually got some sleep, but I can honestly say that I have never been hailed on in bed before, even camping in the most inhospitable weather in Britain.
I woke up with a renewed determination to move and Mark and I went and found a really nice place, quite close, that is actually cheaper and cleaner and we are all, once again sharing a room - which is the first time for a while.
I spent a good half hour researching good restaurants in the hope that we could finally find some of this famed good Oaxacan food. We ventured off, only to find that the ones I had circled either were too pricey for our budget or didn't suit the kids. We ended up eating food that none of us liked much but at least it gave Mark and Melissa the opportunity to sample grass hoppers! (they weren't nice). Again we trotted off to find a couple of nice cafes mentioned in the guidebook to get pudding and coffee, but with it being Sunday afternoon neither of them were open - however we finally did find a nice cafe and had strawberries and cream and cake - so a happy ending at last.
Despite our slightly disastrous start to our few days here, we are cheerful and optimistic that we will indeed come to like the place and will find some nice Oaxacan food. Big apologies to Érica, our Spanish teacher, who is from Oaxaca and who enthusiastically advertised its delights to us - as I said, it's just been an unfortunate series of events!
- Heather
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