Day 11-13: Oaxaca

The southern tip of Mexico supposedly has some very nice beaches, but as we did not have that much time to spare anymore, we had decided to go straight to Oaxaca, our last stop before Mexico City. This caused one big disadvantage, being the 12 to 16 hour bus ride between from San Cristobal to bring us there... We definitely did not make it there in 12 hours as we had a breakdown of about 2 hours in the middle of the night. Towards the morning we found out how wrong our thoughts had been about this region, as it turned out to be quite more mountainous. Mexicans have yet to discover the craft of tunnel building, so the combination of 10 curves on the road per 10 minutes with a huge lack of sleep and decent food made my stomach even more desire to arrive to our destination.

When we finally made it to Oaxaca, all we really wanted was a nice room with private bath to really relax and the thought of saving money for a sleeping place was far away banned. After some phone calls we found a very pretty hotel close to the city centre where a great shower and big beds awaited us.
We had intented on going to visit the widest tree in the world which happened to be close to Oaxaca, but this plan changed during our search for the correct bus. We found ourselves in a maze of streets packed with people and traffic, something which didn't comply to our idea of a quiet afternoon trip. Therefore we decided to keep the tree for the next day and go and explore the centre instead. Apart from the commemoration of some big riots the previous year, the city made a good impression on us. Many nice buildings, pedestrian zones, shopping facilities and especially great food. A speciality of the region were fried grasshoppers, but my stomach denied such delicacies, unfortunately. ;)

The next day we went on a tour to visit three important tourist places in the region. First El Tule, where the earlier mentioned huge tree can be found. It's not that high or old, but the circumference is about 58 meters. Which makes this a very big tree. :P
Next we went to a carpet weavery, where we were explained how the carpets which this region is famous for are all still produced by hand. There were some very beautiful ones indeed, but the time it took to weave a carpet also reflected itself in the price, so we ended up buying a small cloth instead. ;)
We hadn't seen any temple's or ruins that day, so the last destination of the day was Mitla, an ancient Zapotec place. It wasn't a grand as any of the other temple complexes we had seen before, but here the structures of the buildings were very different and most of all the special decorations.

Our last day in Oaxaca was actually supposed to be a travel day to Mexico City, but as we hadn't had time yet to see Monte Alban, Oaxaca's main tourist attraction, we decided to stay a few hours longer. A van took us up the hill which is in the centre of three valleys, giving you a perfect view when reaching the top. Monte Alban was the capital of the Zapotecs and apart from the temples, especially some rock pallets with carved out figures draw the attention here. They are called "The Dancers", but nowadays scientists are not so sure anymore. Apparently they think some of the figures might be women giving birth in standing positions...