Travels with Hayley

Off to the public bus station this morning to catch the 8.30am to Oaxaca (by the way, it’s pronounced Wa-hah-ca in case anyone doesn’t know), stocked up with enough snacks to feed the five thousand – it’s only a five hour journey, why do I assume I’m going to wither away and die if I don’t have an armies worth of rations on me?! Suffice to say I’m good for snacks for the rest of the week…

Lucked out with the front seat and spent most of the journey napping, listening to music and watching the parched, dusty landscape speed by. The scenery was very dramatic, with sweeping valleys and huge rock formations but so bleached and arid, with just the occasional green tree or cactus springing up to break up the beige.

We passed through tolls where sellers were clustered around in the blazing sunshine trying to sell snacks and assorted wares to the drivers and then in what felt like no time at all we had arrived in Oaxaca.

We headed straight out to explore, first through a market selling all of the normal food, plus an abundance of bread which it’s apparently famous for here, especially one called ‘yolk bread’. We tried a sample, it’s essentially a drier version of brioche. It’s not unpleasant but don’t book a flight to come and try it or anything…

After a quick mooch about we stopped for a late lunch at a stall right in the middle of the marketplace. Oaxaca is famous for it’s mole sauces which contain fruits, nuts and chilli peppers, plus spices like pepper and cumin – or as JJ puts it – it’s our version of curry! It was just too warm for that though so Lynsey and I went off menu and had some veggie plates made up of all the side orders instead! I had squash blossoms, rice, black beans, avocado and Oaxacan cheese. When this is melted it’s like mozzarella, but raw it’s much dryer and much more flavoursome than mozzarella.

It’s made it onto the top ten cheeses of the world list, a fact that the French are allegedly less than impressed about! It was really tasty and a nice change to have a meal that contained no meat or bread products. It reminded me a lot of the set lunches we had everywhere in Costa Rica that I absolutely loved.

Next stop was to try some dried grasshoppers – I’ve had them before and they were ok but these ones were actually seriously tasty – they were roasted with chilli and lime and good and crunchy. JJ buys them by the kilo to snack on during tours but feels bad for the hotel cleaners as ‘my floor ends up covered in dried grasshopper legs!’ What an image…

We also tried a locally produced snack called a cocada – a small candied lime stuffed with a sugary coconut mix. It was ok, although you couldn’t taste the lime much really, the whole thing was just a very sweet and sticky mass. I’d much rather have a bounty bar frankly but I kept that thought to myself!

Each time you turned a corner you came across another fascinating section – a whole block devoted only to hats, one to intricately detailed, colourful leather goods – shoes, bags, belts etc, pets around another corner, butchers another. Stands groaning under the weight of produce and goods everywhere you looked.

We wandered through a few other markets, some of which had a very different vibe to anywhere else we’d been, much more of a cute, young, Instagram aesthetic, selling more Ibiza-esque, hippy clothes and jewellery, organic ice creams and there were even some stalls selling Korean corn dogs and K-pop merchandise so you know the cool kids have made their way here!

I bought myself a bunch of the tiniest bananas you’ve ever seen, no more than 2-3 inches long with really thin skins. They’re the best bananas ever, incredibly sweet and not at all mushy. I really wish we could get them at home. Pinky finger for scale below!

Continuing our whistle stop tour we also popped into the cathedral (not a patch on Puebla’s, I’m becoming quite the cathedral aficionado…), a mezcal shop (no thank you, one sip in Mexico City was enough thanks!) and just generally enjoyed a bit of architecture and people watching.

Back to the hotel for a couple of hours rest and then four of us headed out with JJ to a famous street food stall situated down a grubby alleyway. We’d never have found it on our own but it was jam packed with people jostling over the food and sitting on little plastic stools with plates piled high and spilling over the sides with food (appetites are big here!)

Their speciality is tlayudas, an enormous, very thin bread that is spread with flavoured lard, then filled with refried beans, a smooth guacamole, cabbage and Oaxaca cheese. Balanced on the top is your choice of meat – beef, seasoned pork or chorizo. So obviously we tried all of them! The meat was all delicious, really tender and spicy and I liked the tlayuda too, the bread was super thin and crunchy which isn’t a texture we’ve had in bread here so far and I actually thought it was made it much nicer than the standard taco.

Drinks were available from a huge icebox – we got bottles of the wildly inappropriately named ‘Squirt’ – honestly, you couldn’t make this up could you…One of the guys I was with said it wasn’t everyday he got a squirt down a dark alley! For shame, and in front of Jesus too who was watching the whole thing from a shrine alongside us…

There was a lovely woman sitting eating there who had such a joyful energy about her and such a great face I asked if I could take her picture? She was a bit shy at first but then really got into it, she was so sweet and funny. See the beautiful results below.

This really is a very pretty town, not as grand or majestic as Mexico City or Puebla but so colourful and charming – albeit with chronic traffic and currently the loudest fireworks I have ever heard – and yet we can’t see them at all weirdly. Dodging the cars of every shape and size from huge American style trucks to vintage VW beetles – (so many beetles, they are everywhere, must be a hipster thing!) – we headed to the main square as we were assured there would be some live music playing. Sure enough we immediately stumbled across a band playing salsa and I was straight up for a dance with an old gentleman in a very fetching diamanté baseball cap, spinning around as efficiently as one can in sandals on cobblestones!

As we left the ‘dancefloor’, an elderly lady told me in Spanish my dancing needed work – I mean she’s not wrong but I was a bit crushed until someone with better language skills retranslated that she actually said dancing is hard work and was referencing the fact I was out of breath and sweaty! Neither were exactly a compliment mind you but still…

Another guy asked me to dance and ended up quite taking quite the shine to me…to the point he suggested we should be married that very day. When I politely declined this very kind and not at all inappropriate offer, he decided to try and change my mind by serenading me with his guitar in the middle of the town square…

The highlight of the whole thing was when he passed me his phone so he I could type in my Instagram for him to follow (don’t worry, I’ve already blocked him!) – the front page of Instagram shows dozens of pictures of things you might be interested in, based on the normal things you look at on there. His was all naked ladies! He hadn’t realised when he handed the phone over until I pointed it out. I’ve never seen anyone be so mortified, we were all crying with laughter!!

After his serenading didn’t work, and his pleas of ‘you should keeessss me, keeeeesss me on the mowthhh’ were denied, I had to make up a ficticous girlfriend before he started crying (I could have gone for boyfriend but felt girlfriend seemed more finite that I could not be persuaded into the mowthhh kissing!) He grabbed his chest declaring ‘my hearrrt is broooken, broooken!’ and made his way home – to his mother’s basement I would assume…I knew the Spanish for I have a husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend would come in handy at some point…

Somewhat exhausted by this encounter we made our way back to the – I think slightly unfortunately named – Happy Express hotel (it sounds like it’s rentable by the hour doesn’t it…) and crashed out for the 7.30am adventure to start all over again tomorrow!

Lots of love always xx