Oaxaca, Mexico - Part 1

Oaxaca, Mexico

It has been the worst start to a holiday ever. I managed to get a nasty cold the day before we left and am recovering slowly. The flight was torture.

But bit by bit, I’m feeling better. As Nancy’s dad Dick said, ‘Bad beginning, good ending.’ I finally got my camera out today. We’re looking out on the cliffs of Bahia de Santa Cruz with the great Pacific Ocean beyond. The sun sets right over those cliffs.

The place we’re staying has three bedrooms, one up and two down, but the main living space - living, dining, kitchen - is beside the pool and open to the air with a huge roof over and fans in the ceiling. The temp has been around 30 Celsius with sun and a bit of cloud, but there has been a consistent and lovely breeze off the ocean. This open-air idea is very different than Florida where you were either by the pool or inside with the AC on.

It turns out that Oaxaca has over 800 bird species, the most in Mexico, with some 100 being endemic to this area. And while several sites are offering birding trips, we have discovered that a fair number of those birds like to land right beside our pool and take a drink; including an impressive black vulture who eyed us over unperturbedly and took his time sipping up the pool water. There was also a woodpecker pecking at a cactus! I’ll try and get the woodpecker (or is that cactuspecker?) later. The dove is an Inca dove, the lovely bird with blue and orange is the Orange-breasted Bunting, and the orange and black bird is an Altamira Oriole. The large iguana was on the roof next door - they have a look of great wisdom to them.

It’s a ten minute walk down to the small but pretty Playa El Arrocito beach that was mostly empty in the morning but full of local holidayers last evening: we were the only non-Mexicans there. There are villas and condos cheek to jowl all up and down the hills here - those non-local folks seem to use the other bigger beaches in the area.

We’re taking a boat ride tomorrow morning that visits most of the seven bays in the area - Tuck and have been practicing our snorkelling in the pool as supposedly there are sites you can snorkel in. Should be interesting 🙂

I’m learning some Spanish - dondesta (where is…) - cuanto cuesta (how much is…) - justa arriba de la colina (just up the hill, where we were trying to tell the unfriendly taxi driver we wanted to go last night) - etc. 

Until my next post when hopefully I’m feeling all better, hola!