In the city

On Monday, June 12 we arrived to our hotel, Posada Casa de la Tia, a light blue building located on calle Cinco de Mayo #108, near downtown Oaxaca. We dragged our luggage through a light blue-painted arched doorway; over an iron rod at the bottom of the black iron entry gate, into the open-aired courtyard surrounded by greenery and fuchsia bugambilias where we settled around the reception desk. After struggling to unlock our door we finally walked into our 3-person room and then carried our luggage up the stairs one by one. After I called “shotgun” on the twin size bed by the balcony and we settled in, we met the group downstairs at the lobby/courtyard.

We met our Oaxaca tour guide, Ana Maria de la Luz Rodriguez Jimenez, at the hotel lobby about 1 p.m. We then walked as a group about a block and a half east of our hotel to eat lunch at Hotel Del Virrey. The waiters quickly rearranged a few square wooden tables for us to sit as a group. At the head of the table closest to the bar was Ana Maria, to her right was Denise, then Karen, Mel, me, Mila, Jewelette, Alex, Gail, Brendan, Melissa, Mary, Giselle, Blair, and Aedan. The young waiters placed 3 pitchers of agua de guanabana in the middle of the tables which formed a rectangular 15-person table. For only $40 pesos I had a 4 course meal (including dessert). I chose the sopa de guillas over the crema de garbanzo to start off. I was very satisfied with my choice of soup. It contained spinach, pumpkin (the insides), and green beans. Then I added shredded green and red raw cabbage which gave my soup a crunchy texture. Finally I topped it off with a squeeze of fresh lime which perfected the taste as it gave it zest. I chose arroz for my second course. Someone pointed out that they were not use to having their rice before their meal. I concurred with them because I too am use to eating rice with my meal. The rice was white and yellow corn kernels. I decided to not eat all of the arroz even though I was enjoying it because I knew my stomach still had to make room for the main course and soon after, dessert. I selected rajas de queso which was delicious. The spicy black beans filled the left half of my white round plate. The other half of my plate was filled with Oaxacan white cheese topped with pieces of chile poblano, zuchinni squash and sprinkled with yellow corn kernals. After a few bites of my spicy meal, I asked the waiter for some tortillas. I rolled up a warm and soft tortilla de maiz and dipped it in the cheese and veggie juice. Boy was it yummy! I love cheese for those that did not know already. If I had not eaten the entire soup and almost all of the rice, I would have definitely finished all of my veggies and beans (I did eat all the cheese at the bottom of course). Because I eat so slowly, everyone was already getting their dessert placed in front of them as I was enjoying the last few bites of my cheesy main course. I chose the orange jello and savored every spoonful, especially the last 3 since they contained pieces of a fresh orange slice. After all this I knew it was time to walk around, explore, and at the same time burn the 2,000 calories and had devoured in just an hour.

As Ana Maria showed us the way to the town plaza or as they refer to it here el Zocalo I took a few photos with my SLR 35 mm Minolta camera. As soon as we arrived to the "unofficial" mercado, the girls and I wanted to start buying just about everything we saw. Ana Maria and Stan had informed us that a few years ago the street vendors were banned from the Zocalo. We were then told that they were there at the time taking advantage of the teacher protest situation. “Look at this” and “Check this out,” were phrases I kept hearing among all the busy sounds filling the market place. We gathered at a corner near a music vendor which made it difficult to listen to Ana Maria and our professors. While discussing of what was to be done the next day, I got distracted by a basket full of yellow, marble-sized fruit. For Pete's sake I cannot recall the name of the fruit (even after asking the dark-complected teenager what the fruit was called three times). He offered me one to taste but my taste buds did not acquire an accurate taste since I had just folded a stick of peppermint gum into my dry mouth. After confirming our plans for the next day and thanking Ana Maria, some of us stayed to site-see and the others headed back to the hotel...