Seasons of My Heart, Stories of My Stomach.

Oaxaca is a beautiful place. It only took me about an hour to figure that out upon arriving here and setting off to explore the markets and town square. From the Zocalo, full of people and energy at all hours, to the Benito Juarez market serving up everything from mezcal to pig's feet, and the delicious $2 dishes of the comedores at the 20th de Noviembre market, it is currently on the brink of rivalling San Cristobal as my favorite place in Mexico. I have spent four days here, and if I had the time I would stay another month, as it seems as if there are endless possibilities of things to do and see, and I have only scratched the surface. I haven't eaten a single meal in a restaurant here, but have rather tried a different street vendor on every occasion, and had some of the best food on my trip doing so. From tlayudas, huge crispy tortillas covered in spicy bean paste and topped with tomato, avocado, fresh cheese and sausage, to the local speciality of mole, a dark sauce composed of a number of spices and a dash of chocolate smeared over a plate of chicken and rice, the food is exquisite. For that reason, I have spent a large amount of my time this week eating, whether it be full meals, or simply snacking on chapulines between them, dried grasshoppers seasoned with lime and chili pepper, sold by the basketfull by old ladies on the street. So although I have spent time searching for black pottery in San Bartolo de Coyotepec, and bright hand carved alebrijes in Arrazola, I have decided to dedicate my only Oaxaca post (as the whole blogging thing takes time out of the whole eating thing) to the cooking class that I took yesterday.

When I was in Belize, I saw a show on the Food Network where some professional chef was in Oaxaca preparing a chapuline-covered tlayuda with a woman named Susana Trilling, who owns a cooking school in the heart of the Oaxacan valley. I immediately scribbled down the name of the school, although quickly realized that it was one of the recommended activities in my guidebook. I soon forgot about it, but almost two months later I would be in Oaxaca and flip past the dog-eared page in my Lonely Planet. Sure enough, two days later I was standing with a group of nine other people, being the only guy not accompanying a significant-other and the only one under the age of 40+ish, waiting to be picked up.

We set off to the Etla market, just outside of Oaxaca City, where a wonderful woman named Yolanda showed us around and explained all of the things being sold there, from the dozens of types of chilies (each used for a specific type of dish), to the limestone wash used to rinse out the pottery used to bake tortillas.

We got demonstrations at every stall that we stopped at, had full permission to take as many pictures as we wanted at them (not an easy task for anyone that has visited a local indigenous market just about anywhere in Central America or Mexico), and, best of all, indulged in more free samples than you get on a weekly trip to Costco. The market was impeccably clean compared to almost every other one I have seen on my trip, the people were all smiles, and nobody got pickpocketed, which is always an added bonus to a market trip.

After several hours touring the market, we were brought to the comedor where we would have lunch, served with the Oaxacan specialty of 'chocolate con agua'. When I ordered 'agua de chocolate', Yolanda told me that I needed to watch my inversed wording, or at other comedores I might end up with a cup of brown dish water. Oops.

After some time spent browsing the market on our own, we headed off to the cooking school itself, where we would be led through a five-course meal under the supervision of Susana and her team at Seasons of my Heart. The school is a beautiful building pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and even with the address I doubt anyone could have found it without a local guide. However, it is indeed a tucked-away gem, wonderfully decorated and full of everything you could possibly need to make a traditional Mexican dish. After introductions and enough freshly-squeezed juice to go around, we sat down and were briefed on the dishes we would be making, their backgrounds, and the composition of their ingredients. We were then divided up into teams of two, each working on one of the five courses. I ended up on the appetizer, whose name I don't remember, but essentially consisted of a bean-mixture-filled freshly made tortilla, covered in a spicy chili salsa, all made from scratch. Win.

We were quickly thrown into the mix, and it turned out to be less of a class and more of a 'here are your ingredients, here is your recipe, here is the kitchen, let us know if you need any help' kind of deal. This threw me off at first, but before long I was throwing stuff around and whiping up my dish like the goofy-looking kid in Ratatouille before the rat starts showing him what to do.

Labor of love.

After a couple hours and a couple beers, everyone had finished their dishes, and the table was set. During the class, I talked to a few of the other people taking the class, who were all curious as to why I was there. 'Do you do a lot of cooking at home?' No. 'Do you have Susana's cookbook at home?' No. 'Are you training to be a chef?' No. It was a simple answer, I told them in the end, I just like to eat. And eat we did.

Buen Provecho.

White Sand & Whiter Skin.

After a wonderful few days of missed connections and layovers in surprisingly not-so-seedy border towns, I finally arrived to the coast of Oaxaca. The first stop was Zipolite, where I arrived in the back of a pickup truck early in the afternoon, and quickly found my way to the zen hostel of Shambhala. Sitting on a hill on the western edge of the bay, my guide stated that there was no alcohol allowed, which was a bit of a deterrent at first, but also had me figuring that it would be a very relaxed setting. Sure enough, I was greeted by a wonderful Italian woman at the reception, and was soon taking in the following view from my dorm room.


I wasn't too sure about Zipolite at first, because there really wasn't anything to do there. But I quickly realized that I was still on a three-day bus-filled rush, and that nothing to do was exactly what I needed to be doing. I spent the afternoon and next day walking the beautiful beach and reading in a hammock, overlooking the swell crashing over the rocks.

Quite chill, Zipolite is really a place to soak up the sun and kick back your heels. It's also quite well known as a nude beach, especially in the western cove where my hostel was situated. However, this memo seems to have missed the supermodel crowd and been caught by the old-wrinkly-white-men crowd. This was no Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition setting, let me tell you. Every so often you would be innocently be walking down the beach, and suddenly get hit by a flash of blinding white skin burning your retina. Like a solar eclipse, you know it's damaging, but there is a strange urge to catch a glimpse, even if you regret when you do.

K6A Crew gets up in Zipolite. 514 to ... whatever area code Zipolite is.

I spent my second day swimming, walking around, and exploring the rocky coves that are scattered around the outskirt of the western end of the beach. After a few Cuba Libres, a pizza, and an hour sitting on the beach gazing up at shooting stars while listening to reggae float through the air, I called it a night.

The next morning, I took off to Mazunte, where I ended up only staying one night before heading off to Puerto Escondido. There, I met up with a friend from San Cristobal who was on her way out. Although we only had a few minutes to catch up, I was unfortunately brought back to the realities of travelling when she told me how another friend we had met in San Cristobal ws held at knifepoint in a taxi while his bank account was drained of 4000 euros in Managua. After four months of travelling without any serious incidents, it was a stark reminder about how these things happen...

I made my way to Puerto Escondido, home of the 'Mexican Pipeline', the most famous surf beach in the country. When it gets big, this place can be firing at 20+ feet, which is intensified by the fact that the waves break really close to shore. Apparently people walk out of the water with broken boards on a daily basis, and, on rare occasion, unfortunately some don't get to walk out of the water at all, as reminded by the shrine that sits halfway up the beach.

Although it's currently low-season, it seemed like all of the decent places were full, and those that still had room were too expensive for my budget. After two hours of walking around, I finally made a deal with a guy about a hotel I thought I had seen, and that he told me he worked at. He gave me a card with the price we had agreed on, told me to give it to the girl at the reception, and assured me that it was the 'yellow one up on the hill', which I had been to and was beautiful. Of course, it turned out to be the white one around the corner from the yellow one, and it was a dump. Luckily enough, I finally found a place on my walk back to town, owned by a lovely couple from Mexico City, and spent the next four days lounging in the sun, watching the surfers getting barrelled (or thrown over the falls), and exploring the main drag.

I had seen posters for a surf contest run by a local shop, and was excitingly expecting grand-stands, lots of music, product tosses, and awesome surfing all day long. Apparently my expectations were a little high, as I couldn't even find the contest on the first day that it was apparently running, although there were a couple of kids running around town with contest t-shirts on. Apparently it wasn't quite at the same level as the tow-in contests held on Zicatela when it gets big.

Giving up on watching big wave surfing, I decided to go fishing to make up for the fact that I would be missing Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing back home. My reasoning was that I could do this by catching a huge mahi-mahi or sailfish, which I could then turn into a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner of my own.

After chartering a captain to bring me out, we loaded up the boat at were off before 7am, trolling the waters as we puttered towards the deep blue. Four hours later, we hadn't even gotten so much as a bite, and I returned to shore feeling rejected, although slightly amused as my Dad's old saying rang in my head, 'That's why they call it fishing, and not catching'.

The only upside to my failed fishing trip is that we saw a ton of turtles hanging out at the surface, some of which were HUGE. Even better, we had a pod of dolphins swim with the boat for about 5 minutes, of which I got a great video that I will eventually upload.

Rubbing salt in the wound - I saw this on the beach when we returned without catching anything.

Still a little dissapointed with the results of my fishing expedition, I decided that it was a sign to move on to my next travel destination of Oaxaca, so I booked a ticket that afternoon and got my stuff together. Still Thanksgiving, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner and a few beers on my last night in town, so I headed to a restaurant and ordered a Corona to start with. Little did I know, because the local elections were taking place that weekend, the town had to be dry by law. Definitely time to move on...

A Comedy of Errors.

So with another three hours to go before my night bus leaves, I figured I would bring things completely uptodate with a story of the wonders of Central American transportation.

After leaving Honduras I caught the bus to San Pedro Sula, and after waiting around for about an hour grabbed the connection to Copan. Upon arriving to Copan, I found out that the normal shuttle that runs at 5:30am to Guatemala City was no longer going at that time, but only at noon. Unfortunately, that didn't work since I had to catch a noon connection, and the shuttle ride takes about 5 hours. Of course, the only other option was to take the 6:00am shuttle with Plus Travel Guate, as previously stated the worst travel agency in Central America. I took my chances, booked my ticket, and after dinner and a beer called it a night.

The next morning came bright and early, and I was waiting outside at 5:50am, as per my instructions from the agency. When 6:15am rolled around, I wasn't surprised that they still weren't there. At 6:30am, I knew there was no point in worrying about it because there was nothing I could do anyways, but I was not happy. The shuttle finally pulled up at 6:45am, before taking another 15 minutes to pick people up. No worries though, because I should still be able to make it in time for the noon bus, if only just in time. Or so I thought... About halfway through the ride, we got a flat tire, and had to pull over to change it. Fair enough. Then we stopped at a tire place to get a new spare. Again, fair enough. But then we stopped at the bank so the driver could take care of some personal finances. And then we stopped at the gas station for a 10 minute break, as if we hadn't gotten enough of them at that point. When we finally rolled into Guatemala City, it was about 12:30pm, and my hopes of the noon bus were long gone. No problem though, because another company had two afternoon buses at 1:30pm and 3:00pm, and with a 6 hour ride to Tapachula from Guatemala, I would still have plenty of time to catch my 10:45pm connection onwards to Mazunte...

After a taxi ride to the bus station that cost me almost as much as my 5 hour shuttle from Copan, I arrived at the Galgos station only to find out that the bus was at 2:00pm, and not 1:30pm as stated on the website. No sweat. Although I wasn't thrilled with the 200 peso ticket cost, the alternative was staying in Guatemala City overnight in order to save ten bucks with another bus company, but lose a day of travel. I cut my loses and bought the ticket. 2:00pm rolled around and we still weren't boarding. 2:30pm brought no such luck either. Finally, at 3:00pm, we were all on the bus and slowly rolling out of the station, only to hit rush hour traffic on the central drag. Great.

Although the bus company quoted the journey as 6 hour, it ended up taking 7 hours, mostly due to bad weather and traffic, which is really no fault of the company. Again, no sweat, because even at 7 hours I would have a comfortable 45 minute cushion to buy my next ticket and hop on a new bus. We crossed the border, where the money changers tried to screw me with the exchange rate. Officially you should get 1.53 pesos to the quetzal, but they wanted to give me 1.40. No way. I decided I would rather risk not being able to change over $100 worth of Guatemalan quetzales than to get played by the sleazy border dwellers. After realizing they weren't going to rob me that easily, one guy finally offered me 1.50, which I knew I wouldn't get any better than, and had already set as the point at which I would agree to change my money. We worked out how much I had and what it translated into pesos, and made the swap. I made sure to count my money, and sure enough, I had been short-changed 100 pesos (just under $10). Apparently they figured that they could win by giving me a better rate but not giving me all the money they owed me... He played dumb when I told him I was missing 100 pesos, and so he took it back and counted it again. This time, he recounted and got to the right number, but I was onto his tricks, and kept my eyes on him as he slyly pulled a quick change and pulled out another bill from my stack. I called him out on it, and this time he made the mistake of passing me his calculator - I now had a bargaining chip. I counted it out real slow to him, as if he were the idiot that I was being taken for, and he finally handed me another 100 peso bill in exchange for his calculator. Another changer had lent a woman with a baby from my bus some change to pay the exit fee, and she only had American dollars, so she asked if I could pay him in pesos and she would change money with me (because she knew I had the right rates). I paid the guy and later realized that he screwed her on the exchange rate (and subsequently me since I paid him), but I nonetheless felt more vindicated than normal with my border crossing experience. I hate borders.

After the border it was a short 10 minute bus ride into Tapachula, and we pulled into the station at about 10:10pm. I found the ticket counter and asked for the 10:45pm bus, to which the lady said something about 11:10pm. OK, so the bus just changed departure by about 30 minutes, no biggie. Then she said that there was another bus the next day at 10:45pm. I was a bit confused, and asked her if I could leave on tonight's bus, to which she replied it had already left. Obviously seeing my confusion this time, she pointed to the clock and said ¨11:10pm¨. I had not taken the time zone change into effect when planning my elaborate host of bus connections. Perfect... Tired and wanting a shower and tv, I found a hotel that wasn't a dump for 200 pesos, and called it a night after some dinner and flipping back and forth between Fast & Furious in english and The Departed in spanish.

I woke up late, had breakfast, bought my ticket and checked my backpack, and headed to the town center. There, I met a crazy english-speaking local guy that went from mean-looking to really friendly (although in an eccentric crackhead way) when I told him I was Canadian and not American. After a nice little chat where I tried to stay talking while also figuring out if this was a scheme where one of his friends was trying to pickpocket me, I shook him in a very friendly manner, and walked around the market for awhile. There I walked through the butcher section, with every imaginable animal part lying around. While I normally don't consider myself a squeemish person, but when I saw a set of two whole skinned cows' heads looking at me, I decided it was time to get out of there before I lost my lunch...

I visited the archaeology museum, spent some time updating the blog, bought some supplies for the 10 hour night bus ride, and then walked back to the bus station where I am now across the street killing time. My only consolation is that at this time tomorrow I will be sipping on an ice-cold Corona, watching the surf crash down onto the beach of Mazunte. Life is tough.

Hello Honduras.

The beautiful thing about travelling alone is that you can change your plans on a whim. I had planned to head right back into Mexico after visiting Xela, but sitting at the kitchen table one night, I saw a flier advertising a shuttle service to Honduras. That was about all I needed to decide on taking a visit.

Unfortunately, the shuttle service wasn't all that great. I took an Adrenalina Tours shuttle to Panajachel, which was great, because I saw an agency there that offered another shuttle direct to La Ceiba (the start-off point for the Bay Islands) for quite cheap. When I got to Panajachel, I was told by Plus Travel Guate, which I now know is the worst travel agency in Central America, that there were four daily shuttles to La Ceiba. When I showed up, there were none, and couldn't guarantee there would be one the next day. Perfect! I settled on another shuttle to Antigua, where I could try my luck again. Once there, the same agency told me that they didn't have anything leaving for La Ceiba and didn't know when they would. I finally found an agency that had their act together, and got things organized to get where I had to go.

We had a layover in Copan Ruinas, right after the Honduras border crossing, where I hit the ruins with Jeremy, a new friend from London who runs an internship website called Global Nomadic. The ruins, although not as impressive in scale as most of the others I have seen, have incredible stelae and carvings throughout the entire site, which is the main draw. The craftsmanship uis amazing, especially when you consider how long they have been around and all of the stuff that they have been through.

The entrance to the ruins was a steep $15, which would have been twice as much if we had opted to buy entrance to the tunnels as well. Instead, we found the back door to the tunnels, played dumb when a restoration worker asked to see our tunnel entrance tickets, and paid him $5 between the two of us to show us around and watch out for the other guards. Sometimes corruption works your way in Central America.

After Copan, we made our way to San Pedro Sula, where we immediately stepped off of one bus and onto another headed to La Ceiba. That worked with me, as the only stories I had heard about San Pedro Sula at that point had been from a guy working in northern Guatemala who, on two seperate occasions, saw someone get shot point blank there. Once was in a restaurant, where two friends got into a dispute at the table, and one put a bullet in the other. Life is cheap there, apparently.

On the long bus journey, the topic of hamburgers came up. Jeremy had never had a Wendy's burger before, which I couldn't believe, especially since he's been travelling the world a handful of times already. We joked that we would find a Wendy's in La Ceiba, which seemed unprobably because a) we were getting in at about 10pm, and b) we were in Honduras. Of course, as soon as we got off of the bus and into a taxi, Jeremy asked the driver if the town had a Wendy's, and after renegotiating our fare, we were soon ordering double-cheeseburgers to go. Win.

The next morning we took the ferry to Utila, the backpacker headquarters in Honduras' Bay Islands for anyone that wants to learn to scuba dive for cheap. After talking to about 6 dive shops (there have to be about 15 on the island), we decided on Alton's. From everyone that we talked to, they had the perfect mix of being chilled-out and professional all at the same time, plus they had a great dock set-up with hammocks and a bar serving breakfast, lunch, and drinks. Jeremy had already done his scuba training, so I was on my own, and settled in with my PADI manual to start learning about to wonderful world of scuba.

The next day I met the crew that I would do my dive training with. Two Aussies and one girl from Ottawa, all of who now work in Whistler, living the dream of working and partying by night and snowboarding all day everyday. We began open water certification with some really corny PADI movies made in the 80s, and confined water training where we did stuff like removing water from your mask and taking off/putting on your BCD in the water. By the second day, we were ready to begin our open water drills (further out in the ocean as opposed to off the side of the dock), which made things a little more interesting. All in all though, when I finished the course I still wasn't all that impressed with scuba diving. Sure it was cool, and underwater everything becomes a new world, but it didn't live up to the standards I had set for the experience. I was planning on taking off after my course, but the other three from my group were sticking around for the advanced course, and I finally decided to do the same after having made such a detour to learn to dive. In the end, it was the best decision I could have made.

We opted for NAUI certification instead of PADI for the advanced course, namely because you get an extra dive and you are certified to dive to 40 metres instead of 30 metres. We hardly had to do any classroom work, as everything was dive briefs rather than watching boring movies and reading thick textbooks. The first dive we did was a buoyancy dive, which consisting of mastering (to the best of our novice abilities) floating underwater by controlling only your breathing. We hovered rightside-up, upside-down, and everywhich way, swimming through hoops and going through obstacle courses. The second dive was a navigation dive, where we used a compass and buddy teams to swim a big square, and then used natural landmarks and find our way back to the boat. Ash and I got lost on that one, but backtracked and eventually found the group, to the relief of our instructor. The next day was a big one, with three dives planned. The first was a deep dive, where we swam down to 125 feet, stayed there for a few minutes to see if we would get nitrogen narcosis or not, and slowly started an ascent, with two deep stops and a third safety stop at 5 metres. After a long surface interval to let all of the nitrogen out of our systems, we jumped back in for a fun-dive, where we just checked out the reef and found moray eels, lobsters, crabs, and a ton of coral and fish. We headed back to the dive shop and did a dive brief on hat would be the third and final dive of the day - a night dive.

The whole course would probably have been worth it if all we had done was the night dive. What an experience. You hop into the water with a flashlight, and everything beneath you is pitch black. As you descend with your light searching downwards, the coral bottom slowly emerges from the darkness, and you're in a new world. The creatures that usually hide out all day are on full display, and every turn of the flashlight brings something new and exciting. There's definitely an adrenaline aspect to it as well, because well, you're in the ocean and you can't see anything, but you know there's lots of stuff that can see you. We saw bioluminescence (James Cameron jacked that for Avatar) and a load of jellyfish, which of course we were greeted with as we ascended to the surface at the end of our dive. Jason got stung on the lip, of all places, which was ironic because he was wearing a full wetsuit and I had on nothing but a pair of boardies and a rashguard. All in all the nightdive was amazing, and pretty much got me the most stoked on diving as a whole at that point.

On the last day, we had a wreck dive, where we mapped out the Halliburton, and then a specialty dive. Most of us opted for photography, so we swam around for 40 minutes taking pictures of stuff. I will post some of them once I get copies from Ash, but there are a couple good ones of green moray eels and some big lobsters. Ash and I wandered off for a bit, and weren't really checking our depth gauges... The next day we both felt like we were still on a boat, rocking around, and after checking our dive tables realized there was a good chance we passed the no decompression limits for our dive plan... Oops. Luckily it was all good, and more than 48 hours later neither of us have passed out from nitrogren bubbling up inside our bodies. Win.

Because I spent most of the week underwater, and my camera is only rated to 10 feet, I don't have many pictures from Utila. However, we did take part in a booze cruise, so I grabbed a few snaps there.

Before I end this entry, I have somewhat of an online-bone to pick. Before heading to Utila, I read a blog entry basically giving the reasons why Utila is the worst island in the world. Now I'm all about personal opinions, and find it totally acceptable that this individual thought this way, but I had a completely different experience and figured I would share it by doing a comparison of Utila and Caye Caulker, which the same blogger was quite fond of.

To begin with, I will address the issue of sand and beaches. Caye Caulker does indeed have small sand beaches, whereas Utila only has two and you need to pay to use them. However, Caye Caulker does not, as stated, have streets of sand, but rather sandy streets. There is a difference. Plus, the beaches on Caye Caulker aren't that clean, and the only reason that the main one stays clean is because they bring in new sand everyday. A second point: if anyone has visited the back (and less walked down) section of Caye Caulker, than they would know that it is pretty much a disgusting landfill. Utila was nowhere near as bad as Caye Caulker in terms of garbage.

Next issue: bugs. Yes, Utila is covered in sand flies that you can hardly see and give you bites that make you want to scratch your skin off for weeks later. However, I will take an island full of sand flies over one full of bed bugs any day. Although my experience with bugs in Caye Caulker may not be the experience of every backpacker there, it was still mine. Sand flies will not hitch a ride in your backpack for over a month, only to jump out in another country and yell "SURPRISE!".

On the issue of food, I do admit that Caye Caulker wins hands down. Tastier, cheaper, and more options. Touche.

In terms of the cost to get to the island, it does indeed suck that it costs $20 to get to Utila, but it's almost as expensive to get to Caye Caulker. At the end of the day, unless you want to swim there (or pay double to fly there), you don't have much of another option. Plus, contrary to what I read in the blog, nobody spewed on the ferry over to Utila, and there was a pregnant woman on board.

Addressing my own personal points of comparison, I think the locals on Utila are way friendlier than those of Caye Caulker. Say what you want about laid-back rastas, my experience there involved a ton of locals harassing me about not being interested in their hotel recommendations, or trying to sell me $5 coconuts.

I can't compare the divingand snorkelling, because I wasn't certified when I was in Belize, and I spent all my time diving in Utila so I didn't do any snorkelling. However, I think that Caye Caulker probably wins out, at least on snorkelling. They also have the Blue Hole, a diver mecca I am told.

All in all, Utila definitely isn't an island paradise. If you're not there to dive, you'll probably get bored really quick. And if you're not careful, you probably will get run over by an over-entusiastic local on a motorcycle. But the locals don't harass you, the diving is cheap and professional, and I didn't end up with little red bugs infesting all of my belongings. Whether one is better than the other isn't really the point, but I definitely think that it is a bit of an exaggeration to give Utila the title of "worst island in the world". I'm sure there's a little plot of sand somewhere off the coast of some godforsaken country that can claim that title.