The coast ends

Here we are, inland, Oaxaca City, and not sweating nearly as much. We traveled with Greg from Puerto Escondido to a little beach town called Zipolite. By traveled with I mean that we cleared a little space in the back for him to lay down on. Probably not the safest, but who knows if the buses here are much safer. After stopping for fruit and veggies and a coco frio we checked out the beach town Mazunte. After getting bitten up by mosquitos in daylight and being told that you had to get indoors before dark or you would be eaten alive, we decided to move on to the next town. Zipolite is a new-age town that allows nudity(men from what we saw) in one part of the beach. Before we knew this, we were checking out a hostel at that end of the beach and looked down to see a large naked man just standing in the break-zone getting pounded by waves. Partly due to this view, we went to the center of the little village and got an inexpensive room. That night we got eaten up from mosquitos and decided that we would move on and continue looking for surf. We had a spot circled, Barra de la Cruz inbetween Zipolite and Salina Cruz. After missing the turnoff we finally got into the city and went down a long windy dirt road to the beach where we found a break with infinite potential, but not much happening at the time. We would`ve stayed and waited out the wind, but you couldn`t camp at the beach and the only place we heard that you could camp in the town was on a rooster farm. ¨Get to bed early, cause the roosters wake ya up pretty early¨ was what one guy told me. After thinking about it for a while we pushed on to Salina Cruz where there were a few breaks to the north. We took a long washboard road to the beach Playa Azul where we almost had the doors rip off from the wind. We felt like we were in some sort of Star Wars dunes scene. Sand was flying all over the place making camping difficult and surfing impossible. There is a flat corridor that connects the Gulf with the Pacific that funnels wind. The right pressure systems were around that made for some of the fiercest constant wind of the trip. We found a hotel in Salina Cruz and when the wind didn`t die down at night we made the decision to move on to Oaxaca instead of waiting an indeterminate amount of time.
The drive to Oaxaca had us going uphill for the majority of the time. Since our minivan is not a mountain/extreme heat vehicle, we had to have the heat pumping and pull over every once in a while to avoid making it breakdown. One of these stops we met a man who had a little Mezcal/avacado farm. He had lived in Salt Lake City of all places for five years. After getting to Oaxaca we parked and walked around looking for a place to stay. Luckily we found one with parking fairly close to the center of town. The markets here are crazy. It seems to me that one could buy just about anything, but if you`re in the market for grasshoppers, Oaxaca Cheese(which believe it or not gives WI a run for its money), chocolate, mole, or Mezcal you`ve hit the jackpot. The first full day here we drove out the the ruins Monte Alban which situate on mountain-top near Oaxaca. The drive there was one of the scariest of my life. We got on what in my mind was narrower that a typical one-way street curving up and around a mountain. About halfway up the road, a taxi came screaming down on my side of the road and skidded out just missing us. Luckily nothing happened, but I decided that the wide United States roads might be a good thing. Monte Alban was an impressive sight filled with ruins of all shapes and sizes and men around every corner to sell you relics. On the way back to Oaxaca we found the road with two lanes which was a big improvement over the less than one. We weaved our way around the city and found the mechanic that had been recommended to us earlier on the trip and his shop, Mecanica Extrema. We figured if he was an extreme mechanic, he was someone we wanted to get to know. He told us that he would raise the exhaust so it doesn`t hit every speedbump and do a check to make sure that we would make it back. I personally don`t have any doubt about the van, but it can`t hurt and getting work done here is ten times cheaper than in the states. This should be done tomorrow morning, but who knows? Today we took a bus to El Tule where the tree with the most girth in the world is located. Let me say, this was one big honking tree. We got a guided tour from a seven year old boy showing us all the hidden animals natually shaped into the trunk of the tree. Everyother group that we saw with the boy was laughing hysterically a few times throughout the tour. I`m thinking something was lost in translation? Maybe he didn`t want to show us the naughty ones? The rest of our time has been spent walking around, stopping into the mezcal(tequila´s evil cousin) shops and sampling all the different kinds, going into chocolate shops and seeing which types we still like and trying foods typical to the region. My cheese intake has increased quite significantly.

Tomorrow we are planning on heading north toward Mexico City, not to the city, but towards it. We don`t know exactly where we will stay, but the plan is to visit the sun and the moon temples to the North-East of Mexico City the following day. Hopefully the car will be ready, we´ll see how extreme he is.