Music, Vibrant Life, and Shaking Earth

Our new hotel is a little scruffy but cheap and clean and a little closer to the Zocolo or town square in the center of the historic district.
This town is beautiful with old colonial buildings painted in vibrant sun kissed colors and the Mixtec people are dressed in hand made clothing with beautiful decorations. The town square has buildings with covered arcades around it and a huge bandstand with music playing nearly every evening. Lots of fireworks on Saturday night and everyone out late having a great time. We are really loving it here and feel very at home. Lots of international tourists and international residents and we found a great Italian place around the corner and we were able to have pizza and gelato



We have spent our first couple of days just wandering the historic district and getting oriented with the town. We have found a great coffee roaster/shop close by and a another small shop were they are grinding fresh chocolate a few blocks over. There are 3 bakeries within a few blocks and we have both had the best Mocha's ever! Love this Oaxacan coffee and chocolate. Lots of shops and stalls with beautiful embroidered clothing, woven goods, pottery and crafts on every street and corner. Glad we don't have a car or I would be tempted to load it up with stuff I don't really need.
Last night just before we went out to stroll the square and have dinner we had a short earthquake. Another interesting experience. Turns out it was a 5.9 but centered between us and the coast so was just a rocking/rumbling/shaking for us. It set off the car alarms on the street and then the warning sirens came on all over town with loudspeaker announcements. Great system they have here. We hear that this city has been nearly destroyed twice by earthquakes in the last few hundred years. Our hotel is in a very old building and we are on the top/second floor so we think it will hold up fine, if not we will at least be on the top of the pile if it goes down!
We are going to be heading out for day trips to some of the small villages were the crafts are made, and two of the ancient cities over the next few days. They have some really good week long Spanish classes and some short one day cooking classes but we haven't decided how long we will be here. The reason this place is so wonderful is because it is fairly isolated in a bowl at 5000 ft and it is surrounded by higher mountains. So we will have to make some hard decisions about getting out of here. West down to the coast is a grueling 8+ hour bus ride on a road that is famous for making the most hardy and well seasoned traveler car sick, then it will be several hundred miles and many days winding up the coast by bus back to Puerta Vallarta. South and east is a 10+ hour bus trip to Chiapas and then maybe another 12+ hours to the Yucatan and a change of tickets to fly out of Cancun. Or else a trip retracing our steps back through Mexico City and then west. At least 3 days of bus travel that way. There is a small airport here but flying is not in our budget. Then again we are pretty close to the border with Guatemala. Hmmm. Lots to think about and we cannot believe that we have been gone a month already. It has gone so fast. We are still having a great adventure and not ready to see it end. More later.