Thanksgiving

The Oaxaca coast is prime sea turtle laying grounds, and nearby to our hotel was the state's sea turtle hatchery, so for Thanksgiving, we went to see the little lovelies. We expected something a little more sophisticated than a self-guided tour, completely unsupervised to all of the various open-air tanks, but had a great time.

The family enjoyed seeing a monster of a turtle swim along in his own tank.

At every tank, the turtles would swim over, hoping we would drop in some food.

The babies were stored in treys sitting on a long table, arranged by age. If we had wanted, we could have reached in and pocketed one. They too knew that humans=food.

At the end of the tour, there was an aquarium in which we could view the turtles swimming. It was dark and hard to get a good shot of moving creatures, but one turtle obliged me by being dead.

Bahía de la Luna

The beach at 6:30 in the morning.
The view from our cabana.
Our cabana. This is an eco-resort, so each of the cabana's had a palm roof (even on the inside), no air-conditioning, no hot water, and mosquito nets over the beds. We knew all of this in advance, and I warned the family before we booked it. We thought the lack of hot water would be the thing we liked least, but on those sultry nights, we really wished we had some AC.

The night we checked in, a troop of leafcutter ants was busy at work and crossed the path to our cabana. Otherwise, the cabana was fairly bug-free. The next day, the ants were no longer there. But that evening we discovered them again. For some reason, their newest path went right into our cabana, to our bed, and over our mosquito netting. We had the ceiling fan on full blast, so the leaves they were carrying acted like sails and would either blow the ants around, or the ants would lose their prizes to the top of the netting. The ants would then try to go out and get their leaves, but the fan would press them against the netting, pinning them there. We're not a very bug-fearful family, but we made certain to tuck in our mosquito nets firmly. A few managed to wander inside out nets, and we'd smash them and toss them off. It made for poor sleep all all-round. The next morning, Raul and I looked up to see we had a canopy of leaf detritus and dead ants. The maid cleaned it all up, and we didn't have a bug problem after that.

Bahía de la Luna is located right on the Boquilla beach -- a fairly secluded beach in this very protected bay. Because it was so calm in the bay, there was excellent snorkeling, kayaking, and swimming. We could let the girls swim and play with no fear of their drowning. The other nearby Pacific beaches boasted fierce waves, good for surfing but terrifying for families. It was not uncommon for us to get up at 6:00 with the sun and go down and swim before anyone else woke up. Breakfast at 8:30 was always appreciated.



The only real disadvantage of staying on a beach in a bay was that there were no good seashells to collect. But Zorra and Nevara discovered a nice little workaround. There were thousands of hermit crabs, from tiny little things to great big monsters. These hermit crabs had the same problem that the girls had: no shells on the beach. But being aquatic animals, they would go collect their shells from the sea floor, then climb up on the beach here. The girls found that if you put the hermit crab down on the ground but held onto the shell while he tried to crawl away, he would eventually sacrifice the shell to escape. We ended up with a lot of great shells due to this cheater method, and we wish those poor hermits luck in finding new homes.
The hotel had a Hermit crab race track, and the girls gathered a big box of crabs, then went to the other guests (about 6 other people) and the managers Anna and Pablo and had them pick out a crab to race. Anna declared the winner would get free dessert, so Zorra picked out a crab that had already won earlier that night. Sure enough, she has a good eye for winners, and Zorra had free dessert.

Here's a poor naked hermit crab.

Car Shots -- Oaxaca

After we had spent a few days in Oaxaca, we started our jouney south to the coast. From Oaxaca City there are two "highways" down that hit the Pacific about 60 kilometers apart from each other. One, Highway 175, went directly to our destination, so we headed that way, stopping at various artisanal markets along the way.

We really liked the named of this town -- Xoxocotlan. Raul called it "Hugs and Kisses, Hugs and Kisses Cotlan" which is vastly more pronouncable than it probably really is. The highway went from 4-lanes to two, then passed through tiny little towns paved with topes (speedbumps). Then we came to a long, straight stretch where we could see for a long way, and could see the people ahead of us all turning around. We had hit a strike. The road was blocked both ways. So, being only a few kilometers from where the two highways had split, we backtracked and took the other route rather than wait it out. A few kilometers down the new highway, we came to another roadblock. This one was a truck that had overturned, and in no time we were on our way to the Sierra Madres del Sur with only 6 windy hours of driving ahead of us.

Still in the valley, we started seeing these shrines on the back of trucks. We would see many of these decorated with streamers at many of the villages.

So as we got into the mountains (very very curvy), we kept coming up on cyclists. They were a bit of a hazard, especially at the speeds at which Raul was driving. Finally, we came upon, not cyclists, but relay runners. These suicidal athletes were escorting their village Virgins to the next shrine. The relay runners were carrying some sort of relic or other holy item while this shrine followed behind. I don't know anything else about what was happening, but these kids seemed to having a great time. We passed about 10 different shrines in various states of procession, many parked with their people to get lunch at a little roadside taco stand.

So recall how we had taken this alternate highway, taking us out of our way by 60 kilometers? About 45k from the coast, we wound our way through a little village tucked on the side of mountain. I was nauseated from the drive and had a miserable headache. We got to the other side of the village, and there was a roadblock. We were something like 2 cars from the strike so we could see their signs of what they were protesting: regional crime. Oh, the irony. We headed back into the village, and Raul asked the pharmasist if there is another route. Yes, he said, but it is very dangerous, and anyway they have that blocked off too. We were stuck, so we went back to the roadblock and waited it out. An hour later, they let us through, holding hats for tips and donations. Raul reached to get some change, and I stopped him. It was bad enough that we were held hostage for on hour; I'm not paying their ransom.

Roadblock #4 -- cows. We skirted past them. We also hit a goat (the goat got away unharmed), dodged a number of donkeys, and managed to not run over any cyclist/runners.

When we hit the coastal highway, the speed limit was 20 kph. My car doesn't even know what that is. We were flying down the road, passing people left and right. At one point Raul giggled and said, "I'm going 6 times the speed limit. Ooh, now 7 times!" (The coastal highway is fairly straight.) We got lost finding our hotel that was located at a private beach off the highway. When we couldn't find the landmarks listed in my directions and the sun was long since set, we stopped for help. One person responded, "Playa Boquilla? There is no hotel there. It is a solitary place. You don't want to go there. The road is not safe." Raul and I have separate cell phone providers, and neither had reception, so we had to trust in the directions that came with the warning. Those directions got us happily to a place where my hotel directions made sense, we crawled along the very washed out road, pulled into a parking spot, walked down to the hotel office where we were greeted with, "Welcome to Bahía de la Luna. Let me show you to your cabana. We're serving dinner right now. Is snapper okay?"

10 hours later, we had arrived.

Monte Albán

The leafcutter ants were working so productively that they had cleared a path across the grass. We found the ants to be just as cool as the ruins.

Zorra is my child, made in my image. As a result, her anxiety threshold is fairly low. She had no problem running up to the top of this most high pyramid. But coming down the steep steps with a handrail completely unnerved her. The rest of us, with no fear of heights but a healthy respect, jogged down the steps and spent the next 5 minutes coaxing Zorra down. So of course I took her picture, which angered her and made her move faster. At the bottom, her anxiety was crashing past her livable limits, so anything that might bother her was apocalyptic. So, as you do, we had a long family chat and a cool down -- at the top of the world. A few deep breaths, hugs all around, and all was well again. Which was good as we had about a million more steps down to get back to our car.

Lovely

Mitla