Thewesternprovinceblog

Día 33 – excursión a Monte Albán 

Hola todos disculpa por la tardanza with the blogging. Long story short I’ve been staying in a place where the WiFi has just been dogshit and have had to watch my data usage hence the delay on the blog. After my arrival in Oaxaca I spent Tuesday exploring the city and while there were some nice spots in and around town it really wasn’t much to write home about. However I did book onto a tour for Monte Albán, where the Zapotecs came down from the sky.

This was the first guided tour of the trip and it was good. I couldn’t decide on English or Spanish so flipped a coin and got English. I was at the meetup point for 0800 and 23 others came round waiting for the bus. It was an interesting mix of Brits, Americans, a few other euros and a big family of about 8 Aussies. On the bus up I ended up being sat next to one of the Aussie girls from this group and got chatting and turns out they were over there for some wedding as one of their family married a mexican and got the whole tribe over for the festivities. It was good fun chatting to them but unfortunately once again was their last full day before flying home so did not swap details.

We soon get to the site and meet up with our guide, a chap called Miguel who was very knowledgeable on the Zapoteca peoples and their history which goes back to around 2000 BC, predating that of even The toltecas of Teotihuacán.

I will do a video on Monte Albán to cover it in more detail when I am somewhere with better internet access, but the TLDR for now is they were another advanced civilization much like the Maya or Aztecs and had their own brutal tendencies around the ol’ human sacrifice. Its not confirmed if true but one of the most gruesome forms of it. Let’s just say it’s a good job this place was abandoned by the time of the Spanish Conquest otherwise this would have been given no quarter how scary such things would have been to see in person.

This tour went on about 4 hours with 2 hours of guided tour and an hour to have a free look round yourself. Good stuff and then straight back to town. In my opinion this was just right – no time to get taken to silly tourist trap places in between. Would highly recommend.

Coming back I had to decide whether to move on or stay the weekend. I eventually decided on the latter and found what I think is a nice social hostel and I move over there tomorrow. It seemed like a better choice than rolling the dice down in Salina Cruz, which doing some digging on it while it has a nice beach is also a miltary port town so doubtful I’d meet too many other tourists down there. I plan for my stay there to be short as just a pass through to Tuxtla, Chiapas. Also I needed to do laundry too so more time here doesn’t hurt. It’s a chill enough place and have felt safe here as well. Might be able to get another excursion in as well let’s see how it goes!

It’s my last night in ‘Casa Cambrian’. Tomorrow I move to the new hostel. Here’s hoping the RNG 🎲 rolls us good people over there! Getting a bit fed up of meeting crazies and people you can’t read too well!
Eso es todo. Catch you mañana!