My first hostel room

Arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas today.

By now i´ve been on the road for about two weeks (feels like forever) and finally today i got my first hostel-room. While i love couchsurfing, i found myself missing the pre-packaged chemically processed breakfasts, long lines for the "free internet PC" at the hostel´s lobby and constant noise of partying post-teens. But although i adore communal dormitory showers as much as the next guy, i decided to splurge and get myself my very own private room, ensuite :). I´m going to take private shower after private shower after private shower.

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Later update:
that private shower thing didn´t work out as well as planned. My bathroom only had water in random minute intervals, so most of the time i was freezing my naked butt off in the shower cabin, waiting for the next gush of water to come :)

Therefore, i DO NOT recommend "Planet Hostel" in San Cristobal de Las Casas, which besides the water problems had also incredibly cold rooms with zero sound-isolation. The complimentary breakfast was worth about 5 pesos (about 4,5 EEK), so make your own conclusions about the quality of it.

180 pesos (about 160 EEK) / double bed / ensuite / per night.

Giant photostream of lovely Oaxaca

Bustling Oaxaca city:

Coca-cola could be a national drink, it´s everywhere, even in the poorest of villages!

Parking in India was wonderfully creative, but in Mexico it´s creative and functional: available parking spaces are "blocked" by some objects. If you want to park there, you pay a small amout to "the manager" of those objects and he will free the space & keep an eye on your car while you´re away.

The best part of my day: getting wonderfully fresh fruit

Indigenous women of Oaxaca region

In the evening, food vendors come on the streets:

Eating in Oaxaca

La Biznaga restaurant:



I love the creative way to put menus hanging from the ceiling

I was nosing around in the kitchen

Sauces ready

Around Oaxaca

Agaves, the ones which tequila is made of

El Jardin EtnoBotanico, Oaxaca

At some point Luis got tired of babysitting me and dropped me off at the EtnoBotanical Garden so i could busy myself independently for 2-3 hours. If i´d be into botanics, i would have l*o*v*e*d that place: all kinds of imaginable cactuses, weird looking trees, rare plants etc. And the tour-guide seemed very competent and dedicated. I swear, he stopped next to every root and branch to give a 15-minute lecture about it. And by the looks of it, they were very detailed and informative lectures though i have a suspicious feeling that i wouldn´t understand big part of them even in English, not to mention in Spanish, which was the case.

So i busied myself with taking photos and got constantly left behind or strayed. In the end i involuntarily pissed off the tour-guide, gardener and even the gate-keeper, who were constantly ushering me back to the right path to catch my tour-group (the garden had pre-defined roads where one was allowed to walk on).

I call it: "The tree of thousand eyes" :)

Two trees inside one bark