Emma was still in Mexico City continuing her Spanish language course so I decided to squeeze some more solo travel in Oaxaca. I booked into Casa Angel, a highly rated backpacker hostel on Hostelworld. Even though I'd enjoyed the last hostel a lot, I started to form a weird older guy complex and mentally made a note that this could be my last on the backpacker scene. I arrived. Thankfully no pool party upon arrival this time and after the 7h ADO bus, it was straight to bed in my glorious pod.
Even if it could have been my last, hostels are definitely the best choice when you're solo and I felt like this was further cemented by events over the following days. Beyond making friends and visiting the local haunts around the beautiful town, it was the organised activities that really shone out. From the cheap and popular happy hour before salsa class to the walking tour graduation/carnival extravaganza, it was a lot of fun.
Daily happy hour was like the hostel's town hall. Everyone would join without fail. 2 (decent) margaritas at £4 it wasn't long before everyone was tipsy, integrating and chatting away. On my first night, I'd made some friends including a tall Dutchie called Stijn, amongst others. A strategically designed, free Salsa class offered by Casa Angel soon followed. People were initially reluctant but with all in an inebriated state, the charismatic teacher was targeting people individually and able get them going one by one. The set up was guys and girls in rotating concentric circles ensuring every possible mixed pairing was achieved. It was a whole lot of fun but weird older complex in my mind I made some excuse for the toilet every time I was placed with the type of partner that would have judgy eyebrows raised in the streets questioning our pairing. While the need for the bathroom was fake, the relief was real. With everyones hips now looser it was on to club and a vinyl bar but I left as the younger crowd began their customary pairing off.
During the Euros opening game I met Matt & Jo, a couple from London who'd similarly started their travels on Jan 1st in India. While they'd done most of their trip just the two of them, Matt's old friend from previous travels, JP, had joined them for their Mexican leg. The 4 of us instantly hit it off and I spoke at length about Emma and our travels and we shared stories at length given all the parallels in our respective trips. Matt & Jo, clearly smarter than us had figured out how after spending every single second of every single day with each other for 5 and a half months meant you run out of things to say, stories to tell. It's not long before you're regurgitating the same 'funny' story Emma was in 'hysterics' about on date number 3, only for her now to be rolling her eyes at my shit chat. I realised I wanted a third wheel too, I wanted a JP.
The hostel had put on a walking tour and I'd signed up to do this with my new friends and try and form a crew with which to go out with in time for Emma's arrival. The tour was informative and we learned about Mexico's Narco-politics and more about the Oaxacan state and city. It was however cut short as we stumbled across hundreds of people having a street party reminiscent of carnival. The jovial locals were dancing and drinking, and it wasn't long before we were offered shots of mescal. And then another. And then another. And then another. They pulled us in to dance with them and we happily joined in and had a great time. Confused as to what was going on, our guide confirmed it was a graduation ceremony. If only we did that instead of picking up our uni degrees all stiff and upright donned in full robe. We were poured shot after shot of mescal by locals before the sky opened and torrential rainfall had begun. We sought shelter in the nearby Irish bar continuing to drink while I attempted human theft in the form of JP for Emma and I.
A few margaritas down, happy hour then turned into open Mic night and Matt even got up and performed some England Euro themed karaoke as we waited for Emma's arrival. Her ADO experience, sadly, nothing like mine and she was heavily delayed. We all eventually decided to head out, with me doing an Irish goodbye on the walk to the club.
Emma got in at 3am so after a lie in, our first day together in Oaxaca was perfect. We had some breakfast at the hostel followed a leisurely day strolling around the town:
We had rooftop garden coffees or in my case a delicious cold spiced water-based cacao drink with cinnamon, cardamom and orange zest at Amá Terraza.
A tasty traditional Oaxacan vegetarian lunch in Levadura de Olla courtyard. You could clearly see it was popular with the locals.
Art gallery browsing where Emma picked up a creative piece from a prominent local artist Omar Hernandez, which I can only describe as 6 maize-themed ceramic squares joined by barbed wire to form some form of portable kitchen tile sample. (Edit: I have since used ChatGPT to decipher the terminology and apparently it is called assemblage art, which I assume is pronounced in a way that rhymes with menage).
It was then back to happy hour cocktails whilst watching a drag queen show at the hostel. Emma had finally met Matt, Jo and JP and we all got on really well. More attempts at stealing JP were unfortunately thwarted but finally Emma and I had people that were happy to listen to our stories. We met yet another Hiatt Baker (Bristol University) guy called George and instantly recognised the well spoken handsome yet chaotically unstable character that felt so familiar. We all had a fun night out and finally after a 2 year hiatus, with Emma's encouragement, I was drunk (confident and pain free) enough to whip the feet out on the dance floor. It felt good. The moves were back and working to a point where it may have piqued interest of (bi-curious?) George and the queen from earlier who was also in the club. I immediately found Emma and we danced the night away.
Sore heads the next morning I tried to sweat it out with a run before the new crew all assembled to watch the England game in the hostel. Luck lustre but at least England won 1-0 with wonder kid Bellingham scoring the header. We then parted ways with the crew and left for Puerto Escondido, leaving JP firmly at Matt & Jos 3rd wheel after any final attempts to sway him were rejected.
Our days in Puerto Escondido could have been blended into one. It felt like a bit of a digital nomad hotspot for the US where prices had been driven sky high. It had no soul. We checked into Casa De Olas, and given roads were pretty terrible we had to walk part of the journey in torrential rain after overpaying an opportunistic crafty cab driver. The hotel was a bit of a disappointment given the price and after a walk down to the restaurants in the flooding torrential rainfall we settled for an average falafel and burger/chips and started to miss Oaxaca.
The next days consisted more of life admin and Netflix with a meal thrown in here and there. Our hotel went from bad to worse as we experienced incidents such as having a leak from the ceiling, accidentally stepping in unmarked wet concrete outside the hotel (where they were fixing the roads) and a dead bird on the balcony after complaining about said leak (perhaps placed there in revenge). My Hollywood foot print even lead to being asked if I want to give the workers some money to compensate even though it had not been cordoned off or marked at all. The one saving grace was that the hotel had a tennis court, and Stijn, who was also around in Puerto Escondido, came around for a game in 31 degree heat. We played with rackets that slipped off our hands every shot and a set of balls that were inconsistently bad.. one rock hard, one hollow and soft and one super fuzzy. It was a fun game against challenging opposition, which was brought to an premature end when a giant Iguana decided to 'streak' across the court.
We continued to eat out but given the inflated prices in Puerto, we were fast running out of cash and with no cash points working (we tried 5) it felt like all was going wrong. Eventually we managed to broker a deal to overpay at a restaurant to get enough money for the cab ride back to the bus station so we could leave this mistake of a stopover and head back to wonderful Oaxaca.
We had a full day in Oaxaca and hit up the hotspots we'd missed the previous week. They were so worth it! First up.. Árbol del Tule, the tree with the thickest trunk in the world. The girth of it left Emma wide eyed and open jawed in a way I'd never seen before. Her awe, admiration and happiness continued for entire 30 mins that we circled around it's 42m circumference and left me feeling somewhat insecure that I have never made her feel like this. Then came Monte Alban, a Zapotec ruins high up in the hills of Oaxaca. The lack of tourists and the fact you could climb up the ruins meant some of the views you could see of the main courtyard and surrounding valleys atop some of the ancient pyramidical homes were breathtaking and made me wonder whether any similarities existed between London and the pre-Colombian Mesoamerican prime real estate market. We topped off the amazing day with a fancy dinner at Origen which was perhaps a bit too chaotic for Emma's ever developing vegan microbiome but left me feeling nicely satisfied.
I had accidentally booked an internal flight back to Cancun for the 2nd England group game and with money dwindling we didn't try and change it. The weather had started to turn with hurricane season looming and the Yucatan was no exception. After a super turbulent flight, which lasted the entirety of the game, no more or less (couldn't even catch bits on iPlayer), we arrived in Cancun and headed to Valladolid for our last stop of the travels. The rain was non stop so thankfully we had decided to finish with the amazing Hotel Boutique Olbil Valladolid.
We spent our last couple of days with more leisurely roaming and occasionally sprinting (in the torrential rainfall) around the small quaint colonial town of Valladolid. Highlights included:
Our massive daily breakfast spread full of fresh fruit, smoothies and avocado toast done Mexican style.
A popular vegetarian restaurant, Le Kaat. The food was accompanied by a local singer guitarist who played some Coldplay getting us excited for Glastonbury.
Nena Nena, where the enchiladas and micheladas were some of the best we've ever had and the owner kept us occupied with a head to head drinking ring game, whilst we waited.. great idea.
Pak'al - a Mexican vegan restaurant with garden seating where, even though the food was great, the mosquitos were the ones doing most of the dining.
Finally we finished the Mexican leg with an early ADO bus to Cancun and headed to the airport. We were initially disappointed as we had to have our final meal of the trip at Guacamole Grill, a 3.3 star rated place on Google maps. For the first time in 6 months Google had lied as we were given french fries cooked to perfection and some guac from a 'Guacamole Girl' making it fresh from the ingredients in her cart, right in front of us. With no JP and our conversation exhausted of content, we played many rounds of Scopa and Monopoly deal as we have done throughout the travels. A great way to finish our huge adventure abroad. In the end you could say that we were both the winners because we had such an amazing time travelling together, but if you said that, you'd be wrong. I won more games of Monopoly Deal and Scopa. I am the winner.
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