Today we go to Oaxaca but first... (as all great plans start). I've mentioned the National Museum of Anthropology several times and I'm going to say it again in case you haven't gotten the hint – this museum rocks! This is the Louvre (or the Smithsonian if you don't know what a good museum is) of meso-American civilization. I can't stress enough about how impressive this museum is. A couple of years ago I went to the Smithsonian and my summary went something like this – art museum is a joke, Air and Space museum was great, Holocaust museum one of the best in the world, Native American museum was an insult to Native Americans. The Smithsonian is a hit and miss experience but when you get to the four story Native American museum and realize that two stories are empty, one has half filled with a gift shop and one is full of pictures of artifacts you'll be wanting your money back (it's free). There is one small wall with Central American jewelery and such but it only makes you with you'd bought a different plane ticket – to Mexico.

Anyway our bus was scheduled to leave at 1 pm and we needed to check our bags at 12:30 which didn't give us a lot of time with the museum opening at 10am. We also needed to be completely packed up by the time we left the hotel because we'd just come back to turn in the keys and catch a taxi to T.A.P.O. Station. In the process of packing our bags back up Piper's zipper totally split and not amount of jury rigging by me could get it to work again so all of her stuff needed to be unloaded and packed up in the free space of our bags. Yes, I said free space. I was going to take a picture of our “kit” because I've had so many requests but in all honesty I was so busy the night before we left I never went to bed so no pictures. My rule when leaving the house is that each person has one carry-on bag that's 2/3 full so we have room for souvenirs. All four of our bags have a total weight of 60lbs and last us for months at a time. This includes my Mobile Internet device, a laptop, enough clothes for 6 days, all toiletries, guidebooks, journals and any other miscellaneous items. Because this trip is only 10 days we actually left with less than that which meant that after buying souvenirs we were still able to get Piper's junk distributed between our bags. This also means though that we no longer had room for pottery from Oaxaca so we'll need to find another bag.

Once the bags were packed we hit the street to the Metro station. Thirty minutes later we're exiting the Auditorio station and walking toward the museum. Starved we stopped at a street vendor and bought 4 carne tacos with cactus for a grand total of …. wait for it.... 20 pesos! That's $1.50 for four folks... The walk to the museum took 30 minutes and there was about 10 people in line when we got there. I could have gotten a discount for at least one of my ninos but I was in a hurry so I paid full price. Each two story building has a section of time and/or a certain civilization or group of civilizations. We went straight for the Teotihuacan building which also housed the Toltecs and a few others. We've been here before so we skimmed a lot. After that we saw the Olmecs, the Aztecs, The Maya and many other groups before deciding it was time to go. We had 15 minutes less time to get back than we took to arrive. As we were walking out the door we noticed the line had grown to about 100 people. Somewhere in the back of the mind I was reciting what EVERY guidebook says, show up when the doors open and you'll walk right in. Show up later and you'll be spending valuable vacation time standing in line. One hour made all the difference.

We walked about a million miles per hour and hit the metro in full stride. We made our connection, got off a stop early to save time and just missed our taxi because we were 4 minutes late. Still not bad, we'd shaved 10 minutes off our time. The hotel called another taxi while everyone used the bathroom and we waited. An unmarked car showed up but I wasn't surprised because what happens is hotels pay family and friends of family to do taxi duties and since we'd stayed there before we knew the drill. The hotel said it would take 30 minutes in the taxi and we only had 40 so we didn't have a lot of time to spare. We'd done the same trip in 24 minutes on the metro so I was questioning my choice in taking a taxi. For the first 15 minutes we crawled along the street slower than walking speed and I was really starting to question the decision but once we got out of the historic center things sped up and we arrived at the bus station in 24 minutes – the same as the metro but we paid $9 more for the convenience. Running through the bus station we arrive at our gate 15 minutes after luggage check time but they took it anyway. Not having anything but one taco each we grabbed some junk (literally) from a stand next to our gate and boarded the bus. Since it was first class they gave us drinks when boarding and we had our junk food which got us through the trip.

Part of the reason I rally for rail so much is right of way. Theoretically we could have right of way with buses but for some reason we don't. In Mexico City they have bus lanes where only buses are allowed which makes sense. On the freeway though they have no such thing and we sat in traffic for an hour just trying to get out of the city. They played a movie in Spanish that I now want to see. I have no idea what it's called but it takes place in San Francisco and India. The synopsis is that a call center worker in India gets a thing for a bank customer and calls him repeatedly until she decided to fly to meet him. It was hard to follow because of my lack of Spanish lingual skills but it seemed interesting. They also played Fire Proof which I've seen before and once was enough. The last movie was one with John Cusack in it and was painfully slow so I listened to podcasts.

The area around Mexico City is dry and arid but there was a time when it wasn't. Apparently the natives that lived there over forested and stripped the land of trees. The Spanish later drained the giant lake Texcoco which made matters worse. However, once we got up into the mountains pine trees appeared and you could have imagined without too much trouble that you were in the Rocky mountains. I think imagining the Cascades would have been a stretch but the mountains were similar to the rockies. Later the pine trees turned to cactus forests and Itzy and Popo loomed in the background. Popo is a smoking active volcano and Itzy is a snow capped inactive volcano. I will have to look them up but I believe they're both between 18,000 ft and 19,000 ft. Both very tall. There's a story behind them but I don't have time to tell it now. Something about an Indian girl and her boyfriend falling in love and Itzy's father sending Popo off to war to become a man but then lying to Itzy about him dieing. Juliet of course, I mean Itzy dies of a broken heart and Popo follows soon after. Seems humans the world over have similar problems and come up with similar stories.

The land eventually turns to cactus forests so dense they could be pine trees and then you come into Oaxaca state. It's interesting that crossing borders between Mexican states is about as much work as crossing into Canada with border police brandishing machine guns and body armor. We whizzed right on through since we're a bus but we had to do three state crossing en route so that slowed us down a bit. We finally pulled into Oaxaca city 40 minutes late. The hostel was about 1 mile from the station but we decided to take a taxi anyway. If you ever want a story to tell just take a taxi in a Latin American country. I'm going to skip it because I've told it before but I will say that it seemed like the taxi's ability to turn and stop were not equal to it's ability to go fast. Just so I didn't have to explain or the directions in Spanish or retrieve the address I told him the zocolo and thats where we went. Total cost was about $4.

Being dropped in the zocolo at Christmas time is like joining the circus. Street performers, live bands and chicklet sellers swarmed but we were able to beat them off and proceed to our hostel. You might be wondering why a family would stay at a hostel instead of a hotel. The short answer is that Oaxaca has been overrun by tourism (I'll get to adding more about that later) and the entire city was booked. Hostels used to be just for people under 30 years of age and only dorms. There were no private rooms available so I rented 5 beds in one room so we wouldn't be sharing. All 5 rooms cost me $40 a night. I can handle that since it comes with free breakfast and Internet. The bathrooms are down the hall but we've had a lot worse...

I'm going to plug the hostel for a second because I think it's worth it. It's the Paulina Hostel about 3 blocks from the zocolo and is so clean you could lick the floors. Any Mexican city is noisy but Paulina has an internal garden area where you can escape the chaos. It's also interesting to note that there are giant holes in the roof that lead to a pool of water on the first floor. This concept that you don't actually need a roof is a bit foreign to me since I live in a land where heat is necessary in the winter and shelter from the rain is useful. Here the hallways are open to the environment as is the aforementioned giant hole in the roof over the pool of water. It reminded me in a small part of being in the Amazon. Just for reference it's December and 81 degrees out. The temperature here only varies about 10 degrees a year. Also the dining area is open to the garden area so as I type this I'm sitting at a kitchen table outside. I wish I had a hammock is what I wish. I'd like that.

The last thing I'll say today before singing off is that we ventured out and decided to celebrate our coming to Oaxaca by eating anything we wanted. That meant we went to a really fancy white table clothed restaurant with balconies overlooking the Zocolo and I ate my Mole Negro. It was excellent of course and Natalya had Mole Almendrado since she doesn't eat chocolate. This too was excellent. The waiter rushed over at one point and laid a cloth napkin on my lap and I looked down and realized I'd dropped mine. He whisked it away to the cleaner pronto. The food was expensive by Mexican standards but all four of us ate fine food for about $40 total.

Upon finishing we were beat and returned to the hostel to hit the hay. Tomorrow is market day...