Oaxaca

It took a couple of days to get to Oaxaca so I had to stop off at Juchitan for a night. En route, I got stopped at one of the numerous army checkpoints around which I assume are set up to keep the army out of trouble. I was kind of tired and a bit hungover so during an inspection of my panniers, the boss man asked `drugs?`to which I was sorely tempted to say `aye, a wee dab o speed wid be just the ticket man` to quote Spud but decided to keep my trap shut as they had a lot of guns and not a lot of humour. I was kind of pissed off I had to pay $15 for a room with a toilet without a toilet seat but there weren`t many other cheeper places that I could find with parking. Great street food in the square here though, I reckon my sister would approve as virtualy all Mexican food seems to come with chili.

Monte Alban- nice but not quite Tikal

So from Juchitan, it was an easy 1/2 day ride through some rather pretty scenery. I really enjoy the scenery so far, the only thing that spoils it are the Topes (speed bumps) which are placed every 10ft or so. The first hostal I tried from the book had closed down but I eventually found a decent place (the name sounds like a plate of ice cream) with some form of bike parking. I spent a couple of nights here in a dorm room which wasn`t so bad once I took some sleeping pills and shoved my ear plugs in a bit more to drown out the snoring. I visited the ruins at Monte Alban, a short distance out of town which were nice enough but didn`t really compare to the ones at Tikal. Oaxaca is a pretty nice place and apart from the severe downpour on the second night but it was entertaining to watch the students parading outside after breaking up for the year and then disolving into a fist fight later.

El Studentes