Thursday, October 7, 2010 Oaxaca Villages

I walked to the taxi stand and caught one to Zaachila, where Lonely Planet claimed, again, that there was a weekly market. But this time they were actually right! The market was great; awesome fruit and veggie displays, a shitload of peanuts (which are native to Mexico), loads of men in cowboy hats and short women in huipil dresses and pigtails, and my favorite, a turkey trading spot where there were turkeys everywhere and women holding them up and weighing them. This is Precolombian Mexico at its best... amazing! The only shitty part is it's kind of rude to take pictures, so obviously I just had to basically sneak them. I had two breakfasts; one was goat stwew and tacos, and the other was a huge mole enchilada dish. I made friends with some Mexicans who live in New Jersey and then an accountant who said he could move to the US if he wanted to , but why? His family and friends are here, living is cheap, and the weather's great. I took a shared cab back and then caught another shared taxi to the nearby town of El Tule. The highlight of that town is that it's claimed to have the biggest tree in the world. It was pretty freaking big, and is also claimed to be THOUSANDS of years old. I walked around and got bored so I took a detour, walking down rural dirt roads, not seeing much except for country houses, corn fields, wild dogs, and some kids. I took a taxi back again, and then got into a tourist van to Unesco site Monte Alban, which was, well, a mountain, with a bunch of Precolombian ruins, which were pretty impressive because they were big and overlooked the entire Oaxaca valley. I took a bunch of photos, including self-timers galore (surprise, surprise). Yesterday I saw this part of the market I really wanted to eat at, where the veggie guys give you onions, you go over to the carne asada guys, who barbecue whatever meat you want with the onions, then you go to the tortilla guys and get some tortillas, then finally you sit back down and the veggie guys and they give you pico de gallo, runny (aka the best kind) guacamole, cucumbers, cilantro, onions, and you have yourself the best food of your whole trip. It's like the Mexican version of BBQ, which are my favorite types of food: Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, now Mexican. I was still kind of sick, so I didn't go out.