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I am sort of lying with this blog as we actually aren't in Mazunte at all, in fact we are about 12 hours inland in a place called San Cristobal de Las Casas. However due to my rather poor show at updating the blog whilst in Mazunte, a result of idleness and remoteness, I will tell you about a place called Monte Alban and then Mazunte before moving onto San Cristobal.
Monte Alban is about twenty minutes drive outside of Oaxaca and is a Zapoteca Indian ruin. I'm not going to tell you any of the history about it in particular since I dont really remember much as our tour guide was subpar. Moreover any information I did give would only be coming straight from Wikipedia, and quite frankly you can look at that yourself, I'm, not here to look up stuff on Wikipedia for you, I mean who do you people think you are? I have half a mind to sack his whole thing off and not bother if that's your attitude...Anyway, so to get to Monte Alban you have to take what is known as a "Colectivo" which is essentilaly a taxi shared between about ten people, so this means you have to ride around in a crowded van with strangers not really knowing when it will stop, eerily like being arrested in England. When we got up to Monte alban, which somehow translates as "White Mountain", we paid our entry fee and decided to find a guide. There are probably about ten freelance guides who stand around outside the entrance and we picked the one that just looked like he knew everything there was to know about the place. Anyway looks can be deceiving because he either didn't know anything that interesting or just didn't want to tell us because all I really learned about was how to make a dye from a prickly pear and that the Zapotecs made circular stones in honour of the sun. This was pretty interesting, for a few minutes, but after two hours I was praying for some info on human sacrifice or animal killing or baby eating, or any kind of ancient ritual. As it is I didnt find any of this stuff out but became an expert on the cultivation of 'Chicinilla' a red dye. The guide was a man called Victor who was 85 if he was a day, a bit unstable on his feet too which is probably why he chose a job as a guide around a ruin with massively steep steps and platforms to climb. Actually I shouldnt joke because at one point he did fall over, and there was that awkward moment you get when old people fall over where you are just hoping with every fibre of your body that they get up again. When he fell he uttered something really poetic like "Finally I have fallen, after 50 years it has happened, I have fallen" which was a nice touch I thought, very dramatic. Aside from the guide Monte Alban is obviously very impressive, I don't know if Caroline has put photos up on here of it and I don't know how to check, but if there are look at them and if there aren't then google it or something, if you want.
Mazunte is on the southern side of The Pacific Coast of Mexico and is the most southern point in the state of Oaxaca. And it is hot, very very hot. too hot if anything, my english skin wasn't prepared and on arrival I set about doing the decent English thing and got down to some serious sunburn action(not pictured). The beach is amazing and this picture shows the view from our cabana on top of the cliff. The walk was a pain but I suppose the view just about made up for it. Most of our days in Mazunte were spent lazing around on the beach doing very little until we had decided that it was an accpetable hour to begin drinking. Caroline found a bar which did really nice 2 for 1 cocktails all night so her and Louise pretty much worked their way through the extensive list. The barman could make a good mojito or daquiri with fresh lime juice but they didn't even have Stella so I caused a bit of a fuss. The bar, "Estrella Fugaz" (Shooting Star) was really very good, the food, drinks and service was fantastic, especially the fish which you could see being caught in the morning by the local fishermen. You know the food is fresh when something is off the menu because "the fisherman couldnt catch any this morning'. Still, bit annoying, that is the advantage of Birdseye frozen fish fingers...always there when you need them. I suggested this to the chef and I'm pretty sure he was grateful for the advice.
We also managed to get scammed into a boat trip on one of the days, we were suckered in by promises of seeing all sorts of wildlife, backed up by a photo album that looked like a collection of postcards from sea world. Anyway in the end we did see a few dolphins, a turtle and something which the guide said was a whale. This "whale" was fairly far away and the guide seemed fairly unbothered about getting much closer to it so I am going to be a cynic and suggest that it wasnt a whale but a rock or another boring dolphin (seen one seen them all). Oh yeah also we saw this crashed plane on the beach, a little biplane split into pieces scattered along a few hundred yards of beach, sort of like a scene from 'Lost', only smaller . The guide told us that this was "trabajo de Colombianos" or "work of colombian people". caroline immediately started assuming the worst in this proud nation of people and said Cocaine, I reserved judgement and told her how bad it was to assume such things and that just because they were Columbian didnt automatically make them drug traffickers and that she was just reinforcing a stereotype. Anyway i finished this self righteous indignation just in time for the guide to tell us exactly how many kilograms of cocaine were found on the plane wreckage....I think it was ten, which is a respectable amount of cocaine for any man to be carrying in such a small plane, Columbian or otherwise. Anyway the most interesting thing about it was that it happened about five years ago and nobody had bothered to clear it up, it had just been left there to become a tourist attraction, and a bloody good one at that, more interesting than the dolphins which didnt jump out of the water or anything! Such a ripoff, next time i see a dolphin it had better be jumping through a hoop to catch a fish in its mouth or I will lose interest in the species entirely, 'oooh look, it's swimming happily in its natural habitat' Boring. Anyway enough about them, wasted too much of my life on them already without writing about them too.
One of the most entertaining things about Mazunte was the extremely bohemian hippy types. I have never seen such a high concentration of white rastafarians in my life, it was like the AGM of the dreadlock society. They were doing all sorts of new age things which quite frankly made me feel uncomfortable. They were normally to be found on the beach doing progressive and world benefitting things like Yoga or juggling or playing with a crystal ball. At one point I had had enough of this sort of thing and approached them looking to engage them in converstion. I delicately explained to them how really money and the West arent all that bad really and that they should be grateful to live in a free market economy and that buying stuff really is so much fun. Again, they were swiftly convinced and I believe most of them took themselves immediately for a haircut and a shave, a couple of them are applying for jobs at JP Morgan as well, so I like to thing I left my mark on the place. Just always trying to help, I am a selfless being.
Then the time came to leave Mazunte and head over to San Cristobal which is, as i already said, where I am writing this from. We took one of the coached which took about 12 hours, which was really good fun, thoroughly enjoyed by all. We took some great photos of the coach but unfortunately they got somehow deleted when we were transferring them and only the boring ones of the beach and wildlife made it. Sod's law, c'est la vie.
Right so now this one is finished I think, there is nothing more to tell, but brief synopsis; I am in Mexico, the beach is hot, the food is good, the people speak Spanish, Mexico is a country below The United States. Think that about covers it...I will do the next one about San Cristobal if and when I feel like I can be bothered.
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