Oaxaca and area

We had paid for 4 nights when we arrived, planning to do some serious relaxing and a little sight seeing. Oh. And a load of laundry.
 

Thursday morning we just pottered around a bit in the morning, filling the fresh water tank and draining the holding tanks.

Art also admired the folding solar panel spread out on the car next door. Graham and Janet are on their way to Uruguay in it! They have put in a lot of thought and planning, the pop top little car nicely set up. There is room for both of them and the dog to sleep inside!





Then we piled into the Jeep as set off for the town of San Bartolo Coyotopec, famous for it's shiny black pottery. We didn't really need to buy but hoped something would strike our fancy. We browsed the dozen or so stalls in the Artisan Market and picked out a few nice small pieces.

With our goodies carefully professionally wrapped in newspaper we tucked them behind the seat and continued south towards the larger town of Ocotlán in search of a nice place for lunch. It was a beautiful drive on a beautiful day.






We didn't quite get there, coming across this wonderful place along the way.







We pulled in and found a place to park in the shade of a tree. With the rear windows replaced with netting and the top partially opened, the dogs remained nicely cooled by the breeze.

A nice touch, a waiter was there to open the car door for us!


Once we were sure the dogs would be fine we entered the restaurant and chose a table on the wide shaded porch and began to peruse the menu with anticipation.


The State of Oaxaca is of course the home of the famous mole sauces. Please note that in Spanish the final e in a word is pronounced. The word is pronounced "molay". It has nothing to do with an underground dwelling animal!

Gillian was delighted to find a yellow mole on the menu. One she had not yet experienced. Nor has she yet--they were out of yellow mole!

Gillian finally settled on the Polly en mole colorado (coloured) mole, essentially red, while Art went for the Chile Relleno with fruit and nuts.  Art won. Gillian's dish while tasty was just a little plain. We had forgotten that most of these dishes are served with only the meat, a lot of sauce and rice. Art's chile relleno on the other hand was stuffed with chicken as well as vegetables and covered with a sweet white sauce and pomegranate seeds.

The restaurant was decorated with all types of bright beautifully whimsical objects, it was very colourful and very pleasant. Especially the "cat".

Sated, we returned to the dogs and the Jeep and headed for home.

 



The drive home was as pleasant as the drive out.

 (It may be difficult to see, but the motorcycle above carries two policemen, the passenger complete with automatic rifle.)

Saturday we took a taxi to the zocalo (square) in centro, leaving the dogs a couple of Kongs full of peanut butter to keep them busy for the next while. The taxista took us by a somewhat roundabout route, avoiding the worst of the traffic. Fares are set region to region not by time or actual distance driven.



We had first visited this place more than 20 years ago. We remembered listening to a Sunday concert by the Oaxaca Symphony orchestra. Today was Saturday; no Symphony, but music nevertheless.

Another memory of this place from the same trip, was getting our shoes shined after returning from a tour of the Monte Albán  ruins. The shoe shine man was quite surprised by Art's Spanish--we had just completed a three week Spanish immersion course in Cuernavaca--and was astounded to find that Gillian spoke Spanish as well! He seemed quite happy to chat with us about all kind of things.









 One big difference this time, this big tree in front of the Cathedral had been still standing! Looks like wind damage. Art was wishing he could have nicked a bit of the wood to take home to his lathe!










We spent some time wandering about seeing the sights, including this delightful electrical connection in the middle of the paved strolling paths, supplying power to the sound system of a human rights display.






Next on the list of things to do was checking out the many restaurants before settling on La Primavera (Spring) on the corner for our lunch.

There were a couple of young ladies at the next tabled. Art asked in Spanish were they were from and they responded hesitantly "um Inglatera". Art being himself, he carried on in Spanish and asked what part of Inglatera. When they told him he said in his best (not really very good) north of England accent "Well that's all all right then".

The were both startled and laughed out loud. We all chatted for just a few minutes then left them to their lunch and paid attention to ordering ours.We had a delightful meal, then once around the zocalo again, found a taxi and headed for home.



It was a little different on the way home. The traffic was horrendous; stop and go, or rather stop and crawl. We were almost overcome by diesel fumes by the time we were safely back in the park.

The dogs were delighted to see us of course. After a bit of a walk around the park we began to clean up and put things away in preparation for our departure in the morning.

Later we wandered up the street to have a drink before dinner (not that either of us would be able to eat much!)  We found what we first though to be a bar but turned out to me more of a night club. It had a nice long bar, lots of tables and blaring recorded rock music. At this time it seemed to be catering to the after work crowd although a few families came in with quite young children.

After a couple of beer, Gillian went to pick up the laundry which she had dropped off in the morning while Art went directly back to the rig.

An early night tonight, it would be a rather early start tomorrow.