A Year and a Day #14: Oaxaca – Mexico

Oaxaca
Tuesday, 21st October 2003

I had a great, great week in Oaxaca. It felt particularly good
because there were some things I wanted to do in the city, rather
than just show up and eat food, and I actually succeeded in doing
them. It sometimes seems like everyone arrives in Mexico with
particular vision of what they want from this huge, diverse country.
For some it is to visit the beaches in Baja, others it is the
Mediterranean-like social life of Guanajuato, for others the
beautiful mountain town I’m in now, San Christobal de las Casas. I
don’t think I had any place in mind consciously beforehand, but
Oaxaca was definitely it, I quickly realised.

Since arriving in Oaxaca, and even more in Chiapas, the days of me
not standing out too much in Mexico (I’m not that tall and have dark
eyes and hair) are patently over. Oaxacans are generally smaller and
darker skinned than northern and central Mexicans, Chiapans even more
so. The plus side is the sense of celebrity � people, especially
young people, have no inhibitions about staring.

NB: Oaxaca is pronounced something like “O – har – ca”, although I’m not that sure
about the r.

NB 2: Best to assume going forward that all the conversations I write about with Mexicans are in Spanish, and all with fellow tourists are in English.

Oaxaca Street Children.org

Friends in Oaxaca

On my second day in Oaxaca, I saw a flier for a local volunteer
centre for street children. Oaxaca is not a rich part of Mexico, one
statistic is that the Mexican government considers 77% of the
population here to be living in extreme poverty. I’ve always wanted
to do some volunteering on this trip, and while I had no illusions
that I would be able to achieve a lot in a week, I was very keen to
get a taster of what it would be like and do even a little to help,
seeing as I’ve enjoyed travelling in Mexico so much.

The first day was pretty bewildering. I always forget how much
patience one needs. Despite varied past experiences, I seem to always
imagine some scene from Good Will Hunting: I will show up and turn
the childrens’ lives around within an hour and a half. Of course,
what always happens is at first they just ignore me. The centre is
meant as a safe place for the children of poor families to get a meal
before school in the afternoon, play, do homework, maybe take a
shower. Most of the volunteers spend the day generally sitting with
the kids and helping them play games or draw, play piano etc, but it
is up to you to take some initiative (or work in the office if there
for longer).

I saw a tiny dark child in his school uniform silently
threading beads on a wire. Optimistically I asked brightly, “What is
your name?” Immense midnight eyes looked up at me for a second, “Jose
Luis Olathabal Phillipe,” or something like that, in a voice too soft
to hear. “Sorry, what?” I leaned forward, but my slot had passed, he
returned to his beads. Hmmm. We both sat in silence for a few
minutes. “Ok, see you later,” I offered awkwardly, and uncertainly
joined in a card game with some of the older kids and a more
experienced volunteer.

But slowly relations improved, and I found out
a few of the older children wanted English lessons. By Thursday, I
started the day playing poker with several kids (I won), spent an
hour teaching English to a bright 14 year old who wanted help with
his homework, and then spent the rest of the morning (I stayed in the
centre 10am to about 2pm) whirling the smaller kids around. This was
their favourite pastime, to be picked up and spun around, “vuelta!
vuelta!” At first I grabbed them by the wrists and flew them around
as quickly as I could, but I was afraid that it wasn’t a good grip
and would end with a child’s brains dashed out on the centre’s
playground. So I got them to climb on my shoulders, or grabbed an arm
and a foot and spun them like an “avion! avion!”

Soon there were
three children at every moment grabbing me and demanding to be next.
When I sat down for a rest they got on the table and jumped on my
head, when I picked one up another would jump and cling to my legs.
Once I looked down for who was next – it was the tiny boy from my
first day. He was so light I simply picked him up under the arms and
whirled around – his immense eyes opened up even wider as he screamed
happily. It was instantly eerily reminisent of a story they
repeatedly read to us in primary school, about a giant who owned a
walled garden and children who creep in to play in it, and as the
giant is dying the tiny quiet child turns out to be a child-like Jesus
or something.

Morbid recollections from primary school aside, I feel very pleased
that it was quite possible to show up and join a project like this,
if one is only willing to spend a bit of time looking around. When
planning this RTW adventure, there seemed a lot of organisations and
travel agents keen to convince people that unless you book in advance
(through them), volunteering is impossible.

Friends Reunited

I met so many people in Hostel Moneda back in Mexico City, and all of
them were heading down to Oaxaca. I met up with two cool people,
Rebecca, from Vancouver Island, and Greg, from New York (well, they
were cool except for their belief that imitating my accent was
funny). We went salsa dancing, Greg and I visited some of the bars of
the town, including a fun flamenco guitar night, and the three of us
made tentative plans to possibly meet again in Guatemala. I also met
up with two Slovenian girls I had visited Teotihuacan with – Barbara
and Meta. I ran into them after they had been in Oaxaca for an hour
and they had already acquired a self appointed “guide” (see below for
more on this) – so were very happy to see me if only to help get rid
of him. Myself and Greg and the Slovenian girls went to a bar called
Buddha’s, and they tried to scam us into paying an extra 20 pesos
each, even threatening to call the police on us. Unfortunately, for
them, Greg speaks excellent Spanish and until going travelling had
been a New York investment banker � suffice to say, no extra money
was handed over.

Oaxaca’s Zocalo

This was the relaxed, congenial centre of the historic town. Oaxaca,
or at least the centre, is full of tourists, but doesn’t feel
touristy. The cafes and bars under the arches on the edge of the
zocalo were full of some of the tallest, whitest tourists I’ve ever
seen anywhere, but further in to the square it was all Mexicans on
the park benches, and small but passionate political rallies were
held on two of the nights I was there. It was a wonderful place to
come, sip a coffee or beer and peoplewatch foreigners and locals.
That is, if one didn’t mind being hassled a little. Please insert a
sarcastic emphasis on “a little” as you read this. Begging,
particularly child begging, is pretty rampant in Oaxaca, and the
beggars got kind of unpleasant some evenings. It felt strange
spending the evenings irritated at the children trying to sell me
chewing gum or woven trinkets, then spend the next morning playing
with probably the same kids in the Street Children Centre. Whole
families sat begging on the streets, the father’s hand out for money
as his kids hugged him. Ballon selling is huge in the zocalo for some
reason – one night I watched a tiny, serene child hold the rope of a
great cloud of helium floating ballons while his mother was keeled
over with tiredness. He tugged on the rope quietly and all the lurid
colours bobbed up and down gently in the dark evening. It is scenes
like this in Oaxaca that made me want to reach for my camera � but I
never would, too embarrassed of thinking of desperately poor people
as part of the tourist attraction.

There are other kinds of hassle in the zocalo. Guidebooks and
language schools warn visiting women about the “zocalo boys”, local
guys who spend all their time in the square trying to chat up foreign
women. Rebecca got particularly tired of the apparently endless
stream of sad looking men begging to be her boyfriend. I tend to get
all high minded and prim when I hear about this kind of thing – but
while sipping a Zocalo coffee, I noticed a pretty Oaxacan waving at
me, and was like, “Well hello, princess….” She came over, we
chatted for a while, and I got her email address. Does that make me a
zocalo boy, or her a zocalo girl? Not sure, but either way, she
didn’t respond to my email until I had arrived in San Christobal, so
nothing more to report.

In my sleep I hear: Uno-dos-tres, cinco-seis-siette

One of my plans for Oaxaca was to take lots of salsa lessons, in an
effort to be less than awful at this. We found a school on Calle
Guerro, so we paid 40 pesos a night for a pretty grueling and exact
lesson in how difficult salsa is. The less said about my first couple
of lessons the better (Rebecca decided not to partner me anymore
after one session), but once the maestra decided she’d better not
inflict me on any other women, and so I danced with her each night,
things got a little less uncoordinated. By friday I elicited a few
approving “bien!”s from her at the end of the session. I am under no
illusions though that I am ready to claim the night in any serious
salsa club. However, more practice planned in Guatamela.

A couple more good things about Oaxaca. The food is pretty much as
good as anything I’ve eaten in Mexico. Only the fish tacos of La Paz
come close. Restaurants throughout Mexico do a “comida del dia” � a
set menu, usually consisting of a soup, a meat dish, bread, tortillas
and a coffee to finish. In Oaxaca, everyday-sounding comida del dias
would hit me with unexpectedly delicious sauces, a particular
highlight was a dish of rice and chicken in spices and apple sauce.
Another eating highlight in the city is in the “20 of November”
market � what one vegetarian dubbed, “the valley of death”. Take a
wooden flat basket from a stall, go up to one of two dozen identical
meat stands and select a slice of beef or string of sausages. It is
grilled sizzling brown in front of you, then find an old woman
selling oversized tortillas and buy a couple. Then take the basket to
the guacamole and chopped vegetables stand and combine for a
significant plate of food. Some things to be aware of: it’s kind of
expensive to do if you are by yourself (the guacamole people refused
to give me just a dollop no matter what I cajoled), it’s probably not
a good idea to make this your first meal in Mexico (I was fine, but
my stomach had had five weeks to adapt), and it’s probably not a good
idea to get a chili roasted and added to your creation. I consider
myself relatively hardened, but had several “lost minutes” after one
trip to the market, futilely quaffing water and making hacking noises
until the pain went away…

Secondly, the church of Santo Domingo is fantastic. An absurdly
baroque intricate ceiling, walls and pulpit � I’ve seen a lot of
churches, but this was really something. The museum next door was
good too. A section about one of the indigenous peoples of the state,
a mountain culture, confirmed a a long held conviction of mine. One
of the nice things about English history is that every country in the
world I’ve visited that has a coast line, there’s always some point
where the English sailed up, burned a few towns to the ground, did
some looting and sailed off. I was delighted to read that these
mountain people had originally lived on the coast, but in the 17^th
century English pirates sailed up to Oaxaca, burned their village to
the ground, and they had to move inland for safety.

Monte Alban

Monte Alban is Oaxaca’s pre-Hispanic ruined city of choice, but it
did nothing for me really. A fantastic restored military base on a
mountain top, but to Rebecca and myself, when we visited, it just
seemed like a big pile of rocks. Perhaps I’m just not a ruins person,
despite my choosing to do a history degree. I’ll happily talk for at
least an hour about the development of castle design in early modern
Europe, and which of the academic schools of thought I belong to
(pray you never experience this) � but after twenty minutes in a
Monte Alban or a Pompeii, I’m looking for the exit sign. One thing I
will say for Monte Alban, the view was incredible. If Monte Alban
genuinely was a military stronghold, as is currently thought, it gave
the builders a phenomenal panoramic vantage point around the
beautiful countryside of the area.

An evening and a morning in Tehuantepec

I arrived in Tehuantepec because I wanted to split the 13 hour
journey to San Christobal de las Casas in half, and thought it
couldn’t hurt to see a bit more of Oaxaca than just the city itself.
Tehuantepec seemed to summarise all the problems inherent in going
off the beaten track. A warm, sticky town near the Pacific coast,
famous for elegant, traditionally dressed matrons and very noisy three
wheeled chariot-like standing taxis (often one saw the former
standing Bodessia-like on the latter). In fact lots of things in
Tehuantepec are kind of noisy, such as the thousand strong
orchestrating black feathered birds in the town square, and also such
as the fan in my room. This fan makes so much noise I’m surprised
earth’s gravitational field is able to restrain us, but in fact it
produces but a weak breeze. However, I was loath to turn it off,
because, you see, my room genuinely stank, it stank like a stagnant
bathtub after a month of a sweltering summer. My room stank when I
entered it � but I felt more keen to leave the first one I was
offered, as it had an unclosable window to the night, and I suspected
I would wake up covered in bites. The trick, I’m finding with smelly
hotel rooms, is once you’re in, you stay in � the nose adapts
quickly, but leave and the acclimatisation has to restart from
scratch.

Worse than the wave of odourtory revulsion on re-entry is
the accompanying wave of self revulsion � the realisation that you’ve
been happily breathing in putrid air, like a dog gladly ripping at
rotten strips on the street (and I don’t use that simile idly in
Tehuantepec). Why did I stay in this lovely concrete pseudo-building?
Simple, it was the only cheap place in town. This is the worst thing
about getting off the beaten track, at least in North America, that
budget accommodation stops being backpacker accommodation: friendly,
welcoming, essentially clean, actually cheap; and becomes
accommodation aimed at the least well off people in society, who have
nowhere else to go: not clean, not enjoyable or welcoming, and worse
still, not actually cheap (I paid 80 pesos for this room).

Outside, Tehuantepec town centre is lively and quite brash and food
is kind of expensive. I ate tacos in the zocalo and a local dish of a
kind of fried shell with meat in another square. By nightfall the few
other tourists had retreated to their hotel and I wandered the zocalo
with everyone else. I was clearly a novelty, but seemingly a
dangerous one, as though a hated dictator had ordered the town not to
associate with the English, and only a few brave souls dared meet my
eye. I decided I wanted a beer, perhaps understandably, but found
only a few bars studded among the centre’s streets, all filled with a
mildly menacing collection of older men watching sports. As neither
the sport nor being menaced appealed, I was at a loss.

I came to a
cornershop with outdoor seats playing Radiohead’s “Creep”, and
figured this boded well for the place. They didn’t serve beer, but I
figured it was beyond the time to be picky. I was approached by a
local student with strong booze on his breath who wanted to talk.
Conversation was strangely hard, our Spanish seemed to be
incompatible. His friends started milling around, and at something of
a social impasse, I showed everyone my photos of my trip from
Whistler to Mazatlan. These were fortunately very popular, especially
the ones of Baja California, as was the picture of my friend Blair
from San Diego. It seems a photo of an attractive blond girl is a
useful icebreaker everywhere in Mexico. Then the shop was closing, I
didn’t feel like going drinking with them, and so went back to read
the Mark Twain book Greg had leant me.

I woke up at 4am, sensed no more sleep was coming and so wrote down
the above. At 7am I went looking for breakfast. Overnight, the
dictator appeared to have been deposed: people shouted buenos dias,
kids called “hello” in English, and at the food stall by the market I
was an immense source of hilarity. Everything I said generated gales
of laughter from the cooks and customers � no idea why. Somewhat
perplexed and chagrinned, I sat down and ate my beef tostadas.

The journey to San Christobal

The bus drove through the tropical flatland of the Tehuantepec
isthmus, then up into the mountains on the border of Oaxaca and
Chiapas. This green, jagged collection of farms and mountains, with
the mountains slowly pushing out fields until the only flat surface
was the twisting road, was simply stunning. Most people do this trip
in the night, which is a great shame, and kind of scary to think
about now I’ve seen the road in daylight. That the Spanish decided to
conquer this region is surprising, that they succeeded seems
incredible � although I guess there are maybe easier ways in to
Chiapas to the north.

In Chiapas’ capital Tuxtla, I went into a restaurant next to the bus
station. Everyone, and the place was packed, stopped meals and
conversations to stare at this tall white man with a big rucksack. I
smiled at everyone and said “O-la!” brightly. Everyone went back to
their meals, deciding it was better to stare at me surreptiously and
continuously.

Caught a bus up to San Christobal � a fantastic journey up into the
mountains, villages perched on the ridges of hills, mountains and
rained lush green plateaus everywhere I looked. The sense of leaving
one world for another was very strong. Unfortunately, a truly bad
film, “Evil Woman”, was playing in English, and so I spent most of
the two hour journey with my fingers in my ears trying to block it
out. I’ve seen a lot, and I mean a lot, of bad Hollywood movies
during seven weeks of travelling on buses in Mexico, but I think this
was the worst.