We arrived after a short flight into Oaxaca city and set about organising Pauls birthday. The FitzMeagers were on a flight landing 2 hours after us, so we got straight to work. We checked into the air bnb where the delightful owner helped us with directions to the best cake and balloon shops. When we returned, the owner, cleaner and her children helped Adam and I to blow up the forty balloons and decorate the apartment for Pauls arrival, they were very sweet. Once Paul, Kath and Lilah arrived the rest of the day was spent eating and drinking. We picked up a chicken feast from the open flame rotisserie vender for lunch and headed to Casa Oaxaca for dinner, where we feasted on Southern Mexican style seafood and where Adams soup was prepared at the table and served with boiling hot lava stones. We drank sparkling and espresso martinis and enjoyed immersing ourselves in the Mexican décor and food.

Kath and I decided to leave the boys to watch the basketball and head to the Jardin Etnobotanico. Setting off by ourselves for the first time in a long time, we got to the entrance gate and quickly realised we had both departed without any cash or cards to pay, such spoken for woman! I attempted my Spanish and asked if we could pay post the tour when our husbands arrived to pick us up, but no joy. Luckily a lovely American man overheard our conversation and kindly paid for us! The tour was in Spanish which meant that we really didn’t get everything we could have from the experience but luckily we had a group of kind bilingual woman touring with us who offered to do some translating along the way. The garden site was secluded behind a huge brick wall and spread over 2.3 acres of land, owned by the Santo Domingo church. They were designed by artist Francisco Toledo, to showcase a diverse range of native Oaxacan flora and included plants which had grown only within Oaxaca state. The gardens were gorgeous with towering thin cacti walkways, native trees, succulent and cacti ground covers, vegetable gardens and a glass house regulated by naturally occurring underground thermals. It was a well-designed and innovative place, if only we understood the finer details!

We hired a driver for a day and headed about 1.5 hours out of town to the petrified waterfalls at Hierve el Agua, natural rock formations that resemble cascades of water. Small trickles of rain water that are rich in calcium carbonate, trickle slowly down the rocks and leave white calcium deposits, like stalactites, along the cliff faces, creating a white, water like marking on their face. They appear to be water falls stuck in motion. There was a picturesque bush walk that looped us above and below the cliff faces and ended at turquoise blue rock pools where we swam away the Mexican heat and snacked on cucumber sticks with lime and chilli, a revelation. Our second stop was the Don Agave Mezcal restaurant where we had a non-eventful lunch but intriguing Mezcal tour and tasting. Interestingly Mezcal is produced from different agave originating in Mexico. The agave are chosen for their different flavour characteristics and once harvested are cut down into pina’s, and buried underground in a pit with flavoured timber and volcanic stone to cook. Once the pinas have softened sufficiently, they are transported to a horse drawn mushing yard where a horse repetitively drags a huge stone over the agave to turn it into a straw like, wet slush which is transported to huge distilling barrels. Once in the barrels, a fire is lit underneath and the vapour that escapes is collected and bottled as Mezcal. The flavours were dependant on the agave that was chosen however there was mention that their most famous bottles ‘secret ingredient’ had the Mezcal vapour passing a raw chicken carcass on its way to the bottle! Tasting the Mezcal was an experience. Not dissimilar to the Pisco in Peru, we struggled to finish our tastings and delighted Paul by offloaded our share to him. The last visit of the day was to ‘El Arbol del Tule’, a Montezuma cypress tree, located at the church grounds of Santa Maria del Tule. It is said to be around 1500 years old and has the widest trunk of any tree in the world, measuring in at 42 mt circumference. It was huge and beautiful and seeing the sights of the cute little town of Tule was a nice way to finish our day.
Adam and Paul headed out to do a food tour. They were taken to street vendors and the local market where it seemed the heart of the city was found. They tasted the traditional juice of Horchata, made of ground rice and spices, fried grass hoppers, a Oaxacan pizza and ended at the meat section where they selected their cut, had it barbequed before their eyes and delivered to a communal table.

Oaxaca City itself was gorgeous, covered with colonial buildings, beautiful central squares where communities gathered for events, almost daily street parades with huge dancing puppets with excited followers, and great food, particularly the sourdough bakery Boulenc. Kath and I enjoyed floating around the artisan markets and jealously window shopped the handcrafted rugs and bed covers that were far to big to fit in our luggage.