Bus over the Sierra Madres Mountains

Yesterday was a long day.

We had a lovely breakfast at our B&B (Oaxaca Ollin), then packed up and took a taxi to the bus depot that our guide was kind enough to find for us, and ask questions from them the day before. The bus we were taking is a 12 passenger van, which included the driver. After buying our tickets, we sat and waited for it to leave, however, a couple of young italians who purchased after us took our front row seats. I motioned to the woman who we purchased our tickets from that we have very long legs and we would need those seats. The couple was not pleased. But after I brought it up, the driver and the ticket seller got together and assigned seats as to the order the people purchased them, ie. last purchaser got the last row......I was hoping they took gravol.

Our guide HIGHLY recommended that we take gravol, he advised the 7 hour trip, to go only 250 kms, was nothing but switch backs. He did say that we were lucky as we would be taking highway 175, it had the best roads, not 131 as it was terrible! He didn't realize that about 1.5 hours into the journey, the van takes highway 131:( He was right, these roads are terrible!

I can't say that the gravol was necessary, but we weren't taking any chances. The van was hitting pot holes, veering around pot holes, screetching around corners and generally going like a bat out of hell. All normal Mexican driving :)

We finally made it to PE around 6:30, jumped into a taxi and headed home, without my wallet though! Some how it was either picked, or it fell out somewhere, lucky for me it only had about 170 pesos (15.00) or so, and none of my ID. I kept this little change purse in my pocket as a bit of a decoy and for beach trips and only noticed it missing when we got back to our Casa and I tried to pay the driver.

Today we have mainly caught up on laundry, bought groceries, made sangria and Hibiscus agua. I purchased the dried hibiscus flowers at the market as we had the best Hibiscus (jimica) water when we were in Oaxaca city. I thought we should give it a try. After purchasing our fresh produce and some local bacon (toccino) we headed to the local "Walmart". Everyone from town calls the local la tienda 
that is somewhat larger then most, the "Walmart". Found pre made Jimica Agua in bottles.

One of the most interesting local Mexican things are the door to door Gas sales men. They drive around selling tanks of Propane for your house. Propane is the fuel used for your stove and hot water heater. The truly interesting thing about it is they drive around from around 5 am and all hours of the day with their loudspeakers blaring. It is music and singers and a cow mooing, as far as I can tell they are saying; blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, gaaasss de Oaxaca! Moooooo! over and over and over. Charming, just not at 6 am on vacation...... Nicer are the water door to door salesman, just leave 12 pesos in your used 20 litre water bottle on the front porch and they will deliver you a new one, anyday of the week.

Here are some of the last pictures we took in Oaxaca. We had the light on our side so took some pictures of one of the amazing churches on Garcia Vigil street, as well as a few shots of the same street:

Until tomorrow..