Liu's Motorcycle Diaries: Mexico City to Oaxaca

We enjoyed another free, very nice breakfast of coffee, juice, fruit and toast with gravy before heading off on our 5-6 hour drive to Oaxaca. At some point in the night, a car ran into our bike and broke off one of our side lights. No big deal, but made us realize we should continue our quest for places with parking garages from now on. I wasn't in the best of moods today since I woke up sometime around 2am and spent the next 40 minutes vomiting in the bathroom from my midnight snack of spicy doritos, so I was a bit tired and the thought of getting on the bike was more painful than I could imagine. Though, my mood quickly changed after about the first hour of the drive. The road to Oaxaca was some of the most beautiful riding we've seen thus far. With long, high bridges and mountainous turns, Eric and I spent most of the drive saying “wow, look!” to each other. We stopped to get some gas and happened to run into a group of about 6 other bikers. They all lived in Mexico City and were on a two week trip down to Chiapas and back. They would see some of the sights we planned to see as well, but they were on a much tighter schedule. They left before us, but we ended up catching up to them at a construction point. We were able to ride with them for about 2 minutes before they all blasted by us. They were all on 1200's so our bike was much slower than theirs.

Looks like just cloud coverage but is an active volcano.

Ever so briefly riding with other bikers

Mountains of cactus (i)

Oaxaca City, is the capital of the state and is a very large colonial town. The town once known for its gold mining is now most popular for its wide selection of food, coffee, shopping, culture and festivals. We also read before arriving that Oaxaca was home to one of the most active and beautiful zocalos (town square) around. We hadn't booked a hotel room the night before since the wifi connection was not very good, so we pulled over to view our options, found a decent place with parking, and headed that way. On booking.com (guaranteed the cheapest hotel prices around), the price for the room was 500 pesos (38 bucks). Though in checking in there was a sign displaying rooms for 450 pesos per night so we only payed 34 bucks. We were starving so we showered and took a stroll to find the street market which was supposed to have a wide variety food selection.

Eric and I discussed our opinion of Oaxaca while heading towards the market and agreed that it looked about the same as every other colonial town we've recently been to. Pretty but nothing spectacular. And then we hit the zocalo. What can I say? It was fabulous! To me what really makes a town unique are the locals and what they do with what they have. Some towns can have the most beautiful town square but under utilize it making the town seem kind of dead. That was definitely not the case here. The church is beautiful, the square is one of the largest I have seen, and there were locals everywhere enjoying life to the fullest; touts selling balloons, taco stands galore, families playing with small kids, a large game of chess played by young kids, karate shows and much more. We eventually made our way to market before they closed since it was getting late.

Baked crickets!? We weren't brave enough to try them..

Eric read about there being a foodie lovers street in the market which sold grilled vegetables and meats. We walked through the market once or twice and couldn't find the street we were looking for, but then turned a corner off to the end of the market and whala! There it was! Just the sight of this street made us much more happy to eat than we ever should have been, though the whole process was a bit confusing to us both. There are many separate stands who are selling vegetables and meats independently. Kind of lost, we just figured we would take our chances and let one of the workers show us what to do. One stand sold us our vegetables and lead us over to the meat stand where we ordered our meats. Then we were told to sit down while each stand grilled up out items. Once brought out, this is what we ended up with:

After dinner we walked around the market and bought some snacks, including my oh so favorite spicy dried mangos, and decided to try a local dessert alcoholic beverage popular to the town. We spent some more time around the zocalo before heading home just sitting and people watching. If there were ever a perfect town for people watching in Mexico, this town would be it.