Oaxaca

Mitla ruins.
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Got up early thinking I'd get an early bus to Oaxaca.  Arrived at the bus station to find that the earliest bus left in about 2 hours time!  That'll teach me to check bus times when I turn up in a place.  Spent an exciting 15 minutes trying to make a cake-selling Mexican woman understand that I wanted to buy a Danish Pastry.  For some reason she just couldn't grasp what a 'Rollo de Canetta' was even though there was a sign on her stall saying 'Rollo de Canetta' that was placed on the tray containing the desired 'Rollo de Canetta'.

More Mitla ruins.
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Checked in to Hostal Santa Isabel, which seems pretty good (although there were lots of long-term guests who didn't do anything other sleep most of the day).  Went for a walk around town and stopped in at a few museums.  Seems like a bigger version of Puebla with proportionally more churches.  The market is pretty decent to dive into whenever you get a craving for Chapulinas (smoked or baked grasshopers).  I tried a few and they're OK but they're not going to become a staple of my diet!

Oaxacan Church.
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Spent a couple of days going to sites around Oaxaca with an American guy from the hostel and his mum who's visiting.  Went to the ruins at Mitla and we were going to go on to Hierve el Agua which is a series of hot pools and a petrified waterfall but it was closed for some reason.  We wouldn't have gone to the ruins if we'd known el Agua was shut as the ruins weren't that interesting.

The ruins at Monte Alban are pretty spectalular, not as big as Teotihuacan but they're on the top of a hill and the views from the tops of the pyramids are pretty damn good!  Went to El Tule which is village containing whats supposedly the biggest single biomass in the world - a bloody big tree!  It's something like 48 metres high and 54 wide and its' trunk is 14 metres round.  It is just a tree at the end of the day though, but what made it worthwhile was some guy from the church next door, for some bizarre reason that only Mexicans understand, throwing money out of the door.  I obligingly picked up about 4 1/2 pesos which nearly paid for the bus there and back.

Monte Alban ruins.
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Spent most of the evenings going to a few bars (mainly El Elephante) with some of the people from the hostel.  Couple of guys in the hostel from the Pays Basque region of Spain had brought a traditional musical instrument from Spain with them and they were playing it the club to some of the songs and it sounded cool!  Tried some of the local drink called Mezcal, which is pretty disgusting.  Think it's made from a type of cactus but I'm not sure.