Travels with Hayley

Rudely awoken this morning by a cacophony of blaring car horns outside the window – Oaxaca is a lovely town but it’s narrow streets just cannot cope with the volume of traffic now it’s so popular and therefore it’s constantly gridlocked with grumpy drivers. Fortunately I was due to get up anyway so after a shower (in the world’s worst shower – it batters you directly in the face and there’s nowhere to hide! We’ve had dreadful showers in the last few hotels – the one before this the head was split so fired the water sideways – you had to flatten yourself against the wall like a starfish to get any water on you…) out and about on my morning constitutional pre 7am.

Quick wander through town to dust away the cobwebs, inadvertently stumbling into a homeless encampment which I thought was just a lot of people hanging out in a park…beating a hasty retreat I met Judith and we took ourselves off to a hipster cafe for a little breakfast snack – I had a canelle which is a small French pastry with a very damp, custardy crumb and according to google, flavoured with both vanilla and rum might explain my excellent mood for the day!

Walking back home dodging the huge trucks, joggers (American, all of them. You can just tell) and people making their way to work for the day, enjoying the birdsong (it’s so loud here!) and VW bug spotting (we found out they were manufactured here in the 1970’s which explains why there are so many original ones everywhere – at one point today I could see 4 just from the one corner I was standing on!)

Although today was technically a ‘free day’, I’d booked a tour via Air BnB and persuaded Judith along for the ride. We headed into town to meet Fernando, a local architect – only briefly getting diverted by a beautiful art market full of really unusual paintings being sold directly by the artists – we reluctantly left empty handed, concluding the likelihood of getting them home non-crushed seemed somewhat low…

An excellent start as Fernando handed around a bag of Mexican sweets so with our sugar levels duly boosted, we set off. It was such a great morning, I was so glad I’d taken a chance on it. He taught us all about the important building materials they use here, how they are preserving the old buildings while embracing modernity and new techniques and took us to see examples of everything he talked about in a variety of places including hotels, cafes, courtyards, cultural centres, art galleries, art libraries (5,000 books just on art!) and bizarrely, the stamp museum. At each stop he very sweetly pointed out his ‘favourite’ something – we saw his favourite wall, favourite courtyard, favourite terrace, favourite floor, favourite gate, favourite place to work outside and memorably, his first, second and third favourite shadow!

His favourite floor was a labour of love – it’s a simple brick herringbone but instead of grout it has grass between it as that’s really good for drainage and eco friendly. Not only do you have to water this daily, you have to cut the grass 3 times a week – with scissors! On your hands and knees with scissors! There must be a better way…

We saw so many beautiful spots, plus a tree I’ve nicknamed ‘the pointy pencil tree – picture a bit further below. It was all just lovely – how I’d love to be able to ‘work from home’ in a pink shady courtyard or one smothered in bougainvillea.

One of my favourite facts was the state of Oaxaca has a ‘facade colour palette’ and you can only paint buildings in colours that are within it. Additionally, you can have one or two colours maximum on a building – ie you can have the whole thing blue, or the walls blue and the window frames white – but you can’t then have a pink drainpipe!

Lastly, no two buildings adjoining each other can be the same colour – so woe betide your favourite colour is pink but your neighbour already has a pink house – you’ll need to do some canny negotiating/throw some money at him to repaint it before you can have the pink casa of your dreams! I never really imagined Mexico as being quite so strict with administration – somehow it’s made me like them even more…

We were so lucky, we just happened to be in Oaxaca on Samaritana day, a religious celebration that happens once a year on the fourth Friday in Lent. The way this is celebrated is that everyone – shops, cafes, churches, restaurants, museums, private houses etc – give away free drinks and ice cream!

People roam around the city with plastic cups and the ‘good’ stalls have queues of hundreds of people waiting for their freebie. Everywhere is decorated with stunning flowers and greenery and lots of the women wore beautiful, heavily embroidered clothes with long, brightly coloured ribbons woven into their hair.

Whilst we were at the stamp museum (very impressive btw), the central courtyard was festooned with flowers and two ladies were there ladling our drinks from huge pottery vessels into brightly coloured cups. Fernando assured us it was all safe to drink so I accepted a tamarind water (tamarind is a tree that grows edible pods – they taste sweet and tangy, citrusy and like caramel all at once). I’ve had tamarind water lots of times before but never one so obviously homemade – all of the tamarind pods were still floating in this, it was delicious!

I was talking to the ladies giving out the drinks in my very broken Spanish, telling them how much I loved their outfits and thanking them for the drink. They were so sweet, they were miming come and work with them, I can dish out the drinks with them! Very sadly the tour was leaving at that point as I would totally have taken them up on the offer. Above where they were giving out drinks was a beautiful flower arch, hung with these amazing oragami hummingbirds made with sheets of stamp paper which I’d been admiring. As I reluctantly turned to leave there was a tap on my shoulder – when I turned around they had pulled one of the birds down from the arch and gave it to me as a gift! How lovely is that. And it’s from a penny black stamp sheet too so it’s half Mexixan, half London really. Like me at the moment ❤️

We ended the tour at a hotel when Fernando concluded the festivities by whipping a pack of cards out of his backpack and revealing he was an also a magician! He proceeded to do half a dozen card tricks which were pretty amazing I have to say – there was an Australian guy on the tour who was clutching his head after each reveal, he looked like he was worried his head might actually explode! I suspect he will return back down under quietly believing that magic is in fact real. Which it is, of course.

We went for a quick drink in a hipster cafe while we waited for a few of the others to come and join us where we were greeted by the immortal words ‘would you prefer a chair or a swing?’ Sure enough, there was a table for 2 complete with swings as seats. If only we weren’t meeting more people…

Moved on to a very local restaurant with a few families enjoying their lunch and took a punt with the entirely in Spanish menu. I got sopa azteca, a soup I’d had in Costa Rica and loved. It’s a tomato base with chicken, cheese, avocado chunks and strips of fried tortilla on top. It was really tasty and a bargain at £2.50! Even better was the live musical accompaniment that appeared from nowhere to serenade us all, party spirit all round today.

I went for a little solo wander through the town after lunch to admire the beautiful bright colours and celebrations everywhere and to just drink in the atmosphere.

Along with the beautiful architecture was a slightly odder view – hundreds of people had tiny yellow ducks clipped to them, mainly on top of their heads – and there were vendors all over selling them. I stopped a few people to ask why – the only one that spoke English looked puzzled and then said – ‘actually, I don’t know why!’ Well, that was good enough for me, if it’s not a prerequisite to need to know the reason to clip a tiny yellow duck to yourself then I’m all in! I bought one from the next vendor I saw and wore my feathered friend with pride. Although not on the top of my head, I am still English at the end of the day so Pedro instead resided on the top handle of my rucksack, watching my back from his elevated vantage point. I’m hoping he makes it around the rest of Mexico intact and can migrate home with me!

Back to the hotel, picked up my laundry – ooh I love clean laundry day on these trips – and then we’d sensibly bandied together and paid for a late check out room for the four of us girls, so went and had a shower and got ready for the overnight bus. Lyndsey was a bit sad to be leaving the hotel as it had mint teabags in the kitchen and, despite us all looking in every shop we went past, had not managed to find anywhere to buy her any. She’s been looking for 2 months as she’s been travelling through Asia before this tour and has had zero luck. I had a quick word with the hotel owner and he produced their single remaining box which I offered to buy but he sweetly insisted I took as a gift. It’s nice being blonde over here 😂

Quick and terrible dinner of a Kung Pao Buddha bowl at a hipster joint – it should have been lovely as all the component parts were nice but they’d emptied an entire bottle of teriyaki sauce over it. It was literally like soup and so salty it was inedible. Never mind, I’m still well stocked with snacks so I had some bread when I got on the bus instead, I should have just done that in the first place!

Onto the overnight bus for the 13 hour journey to San Cristabel de las Casas. I’ve never done an overnight bus before, only the overnight trains in Thailand and Vietnam. Let’s all send thoughts and prayers for a decent nights sleep and that the toilets on the bus are better than the ones on those trains…!

Leaving you with this excellent name for a tattoo shop below…

Lots of love always xxx