day 12

february 6, 2014

8:45 am:

we slept through our alarm this morning and didn't wake up until 7:15. it was okay, because we just took a $40 peso ($3.50 CAD) cab instead. it was nice to take a cab anyway, since we decided that today would be laundry day. we had a few giant bags of laundry, which we've dropped off, and will be done tonight for $140 pesos ($12 CAD). not too bad!

pretty flowers near our school

6 pm update:

well, spanish class was much better today. we had a good time, and conjugated some verbs, and i actually feel like i learned a lot. we're still planning to leave saturday morning for zipolite (thanks adrian for the suggestion - we asked our spanish teacher about it today and she said it was beautiful and cheap and a great place to camp!).

after school, we spent a bunch of time trying to load opensource maps onto gina, to no avail. luckily we've just arrived back at the oaxaca trailer park to find that chloe and toby are here now, so we'll see if they have any advice.

after our failed mapping adventure, we went to a little place called los quintoniles for a late lunch. it was well-reviewed in the lonely planet guide. anyway, it was alright, though it's advertised specifically as being vegetarian friendly, it only had one thing i could get, and i had to ask for it without cheese. regardless, it was good - i had a veggie sandwich and mike had a tlayuda (sp?) a giant flour tortilla with all sorts of meat and veggies and local cheese (which is weird and comes in ball-format. we bought some. it's like string cheese in appearance, i'll let you know how it tastes once i try some. update: mild, like those bococcini things). all together our meal was $60 pesos ($5 CAD), so i really can't complain.

after lunch, we went to the mercado (market) and bought avocados and bananas and potatoes (bags of each $10 pesos each, or 90 cents CAD), and cheese ($20 pesos, or about $1.80 CAD). i also was finally able to change all that useless canadian money i have into sweet, sweet pesos. the place we ate lunch didn't have beer, which we clearly needed, so we ended  up hitting up a bar around the corner from the market for 2 beers each, which cost a whopping $100 pesos ($9 CAD) total.

at the bar. hair metal lion.

we picked up our clean laundry (which they had somehow compacted to 1/3 it's original size, however after investigation, i have confirmed that nothing is missing. i have also confirmed that i have worn a total of 3 shirts on this trip so far. i am disgusting.), then took a cab home ($50 pesos or $4.50 CAD). now we're sitting in the shade with rum smoothies.

homework time

10 pm update:

i made black bean curry and baking powder biscuits for dinner :)

  
so we were just hanging out, drinking beers, when toby and chloe and sarah and heni and the dogs all showed up. we went to the grocery store around the corner and picked up some more beer and veggies, and they have invited us to a barbecue at the overland oasis tomorrow night. clearly we are going.
we have to get up earlyish to go to spanish class, but we don't have anything that needs to be done after that. we'll likely come back here and have a siesta, then head to the o.o. to get all the rigs situated. it might be interesting. apparently there are 2 rigs there already/will be tomorrow that will fit in the little space we parked in the other day, then the defiant, carpe viam and skyhorse all need to squeeze in. it might be tight, but it may also prove to be a fantastic feat in truculant tetris that will go down in history. not the sort of thing we'd want to miss, regardless.

after that, we're headed towards zipolite (we'll see if this happens saturday, but after a barbecue full of exciting new overlanders, well, who knows). we're super excited to be at a beach - the city is fun and nice, but some extra-hot weather, some swimming, some beachy bonfires... they sound really good about now. :)

ps - mads and andrew, WE HAVE A BOUCH!!!