Hola, Oaxaca!

Oaxaca is truly a city unto itself. So, so, so different from Guadalajara, it really could almost be a different country. Where Guadalajara is a modern, sprawling, cosmopolitan, world-business center of Mexico, Oaxaca is everything traditional, artsy, walk-able and pretty (if maybe a tad tourist-bent . . . but it is perfect, so who can blame them?). The buildings are an attractive mix of Spain's best influence and the streets are clean and wide. Churches can be found at nearly every corner and every one appears to have its own story, beginning, of course, with lots of gilt.

I have been searching for accommodation in the more unlikely places and have gotten an extroridnary peak of the “other Mexico”—the one that requires a gringo to get their feet a little dirty to see. I was invited to look at a room for rent by Irene, a woman I met on the way to Hierve de Agua, (a natural spring site high up in the mountains, with an incredible, multi-colored rock sediment "waterfall"). ‘Wild’ does not begin to describe it. Turkeys were running around, vegetables were growing around whatever they could find to grow around, the "house" had a sheet metal roof and a big bucket of water for bathing. She offered to bring a bed down from the roof for an extra $15 (bringing the total rent to $50 USD for the month) and to hang a poster over the hole in the wall (to keep the rain from coming in) in the room that would be mine. Needless to say, I was ready to move in immediately. Who could resist once she divulged that they were saving the biggest turkey for one of her grandkid's birthdays this coming month?

However, Pepe, my new friend and dear translator from Mexico City, suggested a bit of circumspection. So, we checked out several other rooms for rent, some of which were perfectly respectable furnished establishments for a perfectly respectable $100-120 USD per month, others of which were a tad more rustic, and possibly already inhabited by other people, maybe convicts, if the pictures of the young man wearing an orange jump suit and carrying two AK-47s in the picture taped to the mirror were any indication. The only way to find the perfect place (or indeed, to find anything) is through the intricate and ancient and not-even-remotely-foolproof Mexican grapevine. Here, I am learning, people are everything.

I asked everyone from little old ladies selling newspapers, to men with silver teeth smiling in doorways, to teenage girls with elaborate hairstyles and sky blue chucks working in trendy furniture stores. One woman my friend and I approached was standing in the doorway of her home, looking feisty and threatening to box her son's ears in terrifyingly rapid Spanish. We were certain that she had the ideal location in mind (if not also the answer to the meaning of life) as a knowing smile stretched across her face and she began to nod. Unfortunately, her classically machismo husband emerged from the house at just that moment and seemed bent on sending us away with no information at all. Dejected, we began to wander down the street when we heard a desperate hissing behind us. There she was, looking cheeky and full of information that might just lead to the perfect casa de Oaxaca for yours truly . . .

Of course, I make an idiot out of myself on a regular basis—apparently "soy tranquila" is a bit more appropriate than my unsuspectingly scandalous "soy facil" character testament when asked about my daily needs. So far, I have told people that I am pregnant and that I need to give them a bath, among other things. But, in the end, scandalous Spanish is still Spanish, no? Ándale!

I have faith that everything is going to work out in the end. The time is growing nigh to leave behind my hostel and sleepless nights cuddling my laptop and sharing a room with eight or ten exotic, lithe, wizened travelers of every sex speaking only remotely recognizable languages and wearing nothing but their underwear much of the time. Long live the world traveler!