Mexico City to Puerto Escondido

Lost in Translation...so its been a while.. We are in Mexico, we have left behind the 1st world luxuries, thirsty Stead and English!

Our journey to Mexico City started at our awesome little hostal "recommended by Kath". It was like having a personal tour guide. He started us off on the Rodeo Drive of Mexico City. We soon realised that is one of the very few luxury streets in Mexico - we spent our time zigzagging through the historical district of the mammoth city to Almedia Central - Mexico´s Central Park. We then made our way through the 2nd hand parts for washing machines district and into the Zons Rosa - the pink zone - so cute (camper than CT!) and down the drag to an area called Condesa where we had dinner and chilled and learnt more about Mexico´s history.

So if we weren´t shattered enough from exploring the city we headed off to Mexico´s largest pre-hispanic empire. Where I had Sweaty Betty marching up the ancient pyramids of the sun and the moon at an altitude of 2,200m which made the climbing pretty tough but they were all worth it as you realised it´s the only time you are going to have to climb it and not part of your everyday sacrifice to the God´s.

After exploring Mexico City´s streets once again we were off to Oaxaca (Wah-hah-kah) City. Oaxaca is a really arty and cultural city and the home of Mezcal. We spent our time exploring quaint streets and the many plazas filled with markets and Mexican music. We ended up at a Mezcal bar. Mezcal is supposed to be like a more refined and flavoursome version of Tequila. This is where we met a couple who had just survived a major accident which involved rain, steep cliffs and several buses and were celebrating life. We just happened to be on the same wave length!!

Spent the next day doing tourisy things exploring some more ruins, carpet factories, 54m diatmetre cyprus trees, a mezcal factory and petrified waterfall and baths which was a pretty cool day learning useless interesting facts.

We have just completed the 10 hr crazy bus journey (Shands likes to discribe it as driving along Chapmans Peak for 10 hours in terrential rain, fog and several landslides)down to the east coast to Puerto Escondido which serves up Mexico´s pipeline consistantly to all the surfers gathered from around the world. Time to test if I´m still a finely tuned athelete, well tomorrow - surfing lessons begin for us! Still time to enjoy the sun downers now!

P.S Sash we also know what it feels like to be lost all the time. Never so much as when we enter a restaurant....asked for menus and instead received a 4 course meal - the main being meat and veg wrapped in dried fish. WOW. Karyn bring on your fish pie anyday!!