Oaxaca (Pronounced: The place near Monte Alban)

Oaxaca is that rarest of towns, a place which came highly recommended and managed to live up to expectations. We arrived in the late afternoon, took a quick taxi across town and entered the curiously named "El Quijote" hostel. I say curiously named because Cervantes protagonist was surely a little self delusional, but this home from home was anything but.

The owners have set up a lovely little retreat on the outskirts of central Oaxaca. The dorm room has 8 beds - which sounds bad, but there are partitions, and no bunks. The beds are large and comfortable, and the room is cleaned every day, with bed linen changed and fresh towels. Compared to some of the hostels we have stayed in, this place is a delight. The only difficult part is deciding when to leave.

After completing the checking in formalities we strolled the the central square, named the Zocalo like the square in Mexico City. At one end of the square is the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, a beautiful building with a stunning interior. Opposite, at the southern end is the former government office, now a museum. The east and west sides are full of restaurants and shops. In the centre, almost hidden by trees, there is a bandstand, which was full of musicians for our first evening in Oaxaca. We sat down for dinner and enjoyed the music, and the slight but pleasant breeze.

Oaxaca is the main stopping point for tourists wanting to visit the ruins of Monte Alban, the former Zapotec capital, just 7km away. The road curls it's way up the mountainside until you reach the car park, full of locals selling straw hats to increasingly red tourists. The site is high (1900 metres above sea level) and we had been warned thrice to cover up with sunblock, with good reason.

Our guide, Alberto, delivered an amusing spiel, his repertoire littered with the many curse words of the English language: "the Zapotec, those bastards knew about skin cancer!"; "this was a big fucking city, man!". But besides turning the air blue, his commentary was very good, he explained many interesting stories and legends of the Zapotec culture. He was at pains to sell the Zapotecs to us, conscious of their being overshadowed by their more internationally renowned neighbours, the Mayans.

As you climb the final steps of the mountain the plateau spreads out before you, the stunning temples of Monte Alban become visible and you are conscious of being at what was a very important site. There are temples at the north and south, and several more in between, alongside other buildings like a ball court and a hospital. Climbing over and amongst these relics I felt like a child in a sweet shop, and when Alberto gave us an hour of free time before we moved on, I dragged Gemma first up the steps of the South Temple, and the across the plateau and up the steps of the North.

We stopped at the top and gazed down, at the increasing mass of tourists arriving at the site, followed by the local salespeople selling their own attempts at Zapotec crafts: a little jaguar face or a man playing a ball game made of pottery; necklaces of threaded beads and stones. But a look in the other directions was more rewarding, as there are several other smaller temples located on nearby hillsides, and the sky around is filled with birds, swirling around on the currents.

One curious thing which I couldn't help but notice was the absence of any decoration, no stone carvings to adorn the temples or altars. Either the Zapotecs didn't care for art, or they weren't as developed as Alberto made out. In fact I was completely wrong, when we returned to the car park we discovered a small museum which contained several highly decorated stone tablets, alongside pottery and even some jewellery. They had obviously been removed for safe keeping, and we later discovered that there were also some exhibits from Monte Alban at the Anthropology Museum that we had missed out in Mexico City.

On the same tour we were also taken to a church which had been built by the famous conquistador Hernan Cortes for his Mexican lover. A beautiful building that has seen better days, there were still one or two of the original frescoes visible on portions of the stone, culturally valuable because they had been painted by locals who had never seen a representation of Christ, so the Angels had many of the indigenous peoples features.

By this time we were ready for lunch, so Alberto led us to a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The restaurant was set around a small courtyard, which was full of representations of skeletons. We had narrowly missed spending the day of the dead in Oaxaca, which was unfortunate as the guidebooks suggest it is one of the best places to be. However even after the big day the peoples efforts remained on show.

In the restaurant, an all you can eat buffet affair - slightly overpriced but with a huge range of options - we both grabbed a plate and began filling up. Of course we didn't quite know what we were trying, but that's part of the fun of travel! I did manage to locate some of the local mole (pronounced Moh-lay) a sort of thick sauce that smothered a piece of chicken like the after effects of a devastating oil spill. It tasted vaguely chocolatey, but not in a good way. Instead I filled up on mini spinach omelettes and sweetened breads.

The following day we decided to take a tour around the city's many churches. As already mentioned, the cathedral was beautiful, but in fact Oaxaca's most famous religious building was the Santo Domingo church. For a start it appears larger than the cathedral, and whereas the cathedral is surrounded by other important buildings on Oaxaca's central square, Santo Domingo is a little further away and occupies a block to itself.

The doors are huge, and the spires reach up to the heavens, but the biggest treat is inside. The cavernous interior looks resplendent, having been redecorated a few years ago at the cost of 16 million pesos, with more gold leaf than I have ever seen - 60,000 sheets of 23.5 karat leaf according to Wikipedia. But although I struggle with the concept of spending so much money on one building when millions of peasants struggle for existence, I must admit the interior is just incredible, every angle photogenic, every corner drawing a gasp.

We also took a stroll through Oaxaca's two covered markets. The first,the food market, was not as pleasant as one might imagine, the inside smelt worse than than any market I've been in before (I'm including Mombassa in that statement) and for Gemma, well, the local delicacies, if I may call them that, were a little off-putting. Fried grasshoppers in chilli. At least these were dead, but when we reached the other, less savoury market, we discovered the live grasshoppers at a pet stall, kept as food for the 20 or so lizards great were cramped inside a small tank.

Leaving Oaxaca was a hard decision to make, it's such a peaceful, relaxed place that it would be very easy to stay longer. If our hostel had had a pool we might have been swayed, but instead we booked our tickets on the night bus to Palenque. We arrived at the station in good time, long enough to enjoy an ice cream but not so long as to be boring, and at 5pm set off. The bus made a couple of stops, including a 30 minute midnight meal break for the drivers at a rundown cafe. I got off, eager to stretch my legs, and ended up drinking a cold cola whilst relaxing on a child's swing. Despite that we did eventually manage to drop off to sleep, and awoke just as we arrived in Palenque the next morning.