The Selina hostel seems to be a big chain and rather expensive – but I got it as a special offer 😉 They offer some free stuff like morning yoga classes (too early, and not early enough as I have other stuff to do 😉 ) or workshops. However, the wood carving workshop didn’t happen on the day I would have wanted to do it, so I found out where they did it and went there myself.
On my first day, I met Ricardo from CDMX for breakfast – to then go to Teotitlan del Valle. We took the bus – and it was kind of hard to find the right one. We just had to ask each of them haha.. On the way, we more or less accidentally ended up at the giant ‘Arbol del Tule’, so we saw that…
and then took the next bus, and finally a shared taxi from the highway to the village itself. It was dead. So empty! But there were tons of carpet weaving shops. Even Ricardo bought a tiny woven mug rug kind of thing 😉 And I managed to buy some yarn! Hardly any had colourful wool scarves, only the standard white/beige/gray stuff. I found one shop, though, that had one, and tried to remember it for later, and then we walked around some more, the village was still dead, the market was, too, and then we went to a restaurant that was recommended by one of the shopkeepers. I had my mole negro, the place felt very touristy and not touristy at all at the same time, and the food was really good. Then we tried to find that one shop again, that had the scarf.. and it took us several tries – they just all looked exactly the same!
Then we went back to Oaxaca. First the shared taxi to the main road, then bus. In Oaxaca, I went ‘home’ to leave my stuff and then back to the center, where we accidentally met again 🙂 There was a tiny ‘piedras’ something stall, and he said that’s some kind of famous snack there: a hard (old?) bun soaked in vinegary pickle sauce, with some pickles,.. I guess it’s edible. Better than the stuff in Istanbul. I also tried whatever buttery drink in the street, and realized the whole city is full of markets all selling more or less the same handicrafts.
The next day, we went to the archgeological site of Monte Alban. By bus 🙂 Which worked just great. With a cute little coffee shop on the way there, and some breakfast on the bus. We spent some hours walking around there, taking photos, and sitting in the shade, then went back – he was going to meet friends.
The wood carving workshop was fun! The place was a bit hard to find, but I walked into another lady looking for it, and we wondered together, where it might be 🙂 I carved my very mexican design, and bought a ‘carving tool’ and got a piece of wood, to go on at home 🙂 Getting ready for my own tshirt printing! Everyone in the city seems to be doing those wood-carving prints, be it on walls of buildings, postcards or tshirts. I bought a tshirt from a girl in the street. And I bought a leather thingie to tie back my hair, from a weird guy, also in the street 😉
And then I accidentally walked into some neighbourhood party: I was just walking along the street when a girl came out of a courtyard carrying a tlayuda on a plate.. I looked in there curiously.. and a woman who was standing outside with a man grabbed me and told me I should go in with them, it’s their party, and the food is free. I wasn’t very convinced, so they kind of pushed me inside, to the food area first, got me a tlayuda, then a meter to the right for a tequila. I felt very wrong there, obviously not belonging to this group of neighbours, but was happy about my food 😉 And then some guy, my wild guess is that he’s some kind of politician as there are posters around and stuff seems to be going on, wanted to take a photo with me, in front of the bar. No idea what is going to happen to those photos, but it was a funny situation. And I got a photo of us, too 😉
Finding the bus station back to CDMX was kind of hard, as google maps showed several ones and comments weren’t clear at all, as to which is the correct one. So I walked to the wrong one. There was nothing at all. It was around 11:40 at night, and I asked the first ‘safe’ people – a couple – if they know.. they asked a shopkeeper, who didn’t know, and then they said they’d walk there with me. It was maybe 5 minutes further north, and the man was worried I was missing my bus, he wanted to stop one outside in the street, but no, I still had quite some time to wait 🙂 The bus terminal was small and not too nice, just outdoors, under a roof, but it was ok. The bus did show up, they cleaned it (haha) and we left.