Birdwatching part 3: why?

 A relative asked me once "So, is bird-watching basically Pokemon?"  Which I interpreted to mean "Is birdwatching basically just a game of trying to find as many new and exotic birds as you can?"

At the time, I dismissed her characterization, and came up with all sorts of rationales why bird-watching is more and different than a "hunt" game.  But her question made me think. Especially in Mexico, I've spent so much time getting excited about seeing birds for the first time.   Is it really Pokemon after all?

Honestly, there's an element of that.  There are birders who are "listers", who will make long trips to see that single species of bird that they need to complete their lists.  In Huatulco, we went on a guided birding expedition with another couple, both professional biologists, who at least initially seemed more interested in seeing a single individual bird of a type that they hadn't encountered before than enjoying all of the other exotic and interesting birds that surrounded us. And Harvey and I are not immune to the call of an unfamiliar flash of feathers either:  we were thrilled to see our first trogon, parakeet, and squirrel cuckoo. We loved seeing so many new warblers.

But birding is more than that, even for us.  We are still birding in Vancouver, 10 years after we began, and we don't even spend much time chasing after rarities.

So what is the attraction? 

For me, I think the biggest reason is that it forces me to pay attention.  

The more attention I pay to the world around me, the more birds I see and hear.  There were birds in the centre of Mexico City, a huge intimidating conglomeration of buildings, concrete, and people.  There are birds in my local parks.  There are birds at the beach, on the water, in my yard.  If I don't stop and pay attention, I don't even notice that they're there.

When I see birds, I try to identify them.  Why?  After all, it can feel kind of awkward and pointless to turn from your binoculars to your phone (or book). And while you're doing so you're obviously not looking at birds. 

One reason:  memory.  By the end of a couple of hours of birding, it's easy to forget some of the birds that you've seen.  Keeping a record (in eBird, or on paper, or even just in your head) helps remind you of the numbers and diversity of bird life around you, and it's way easier to keep a record of bird names "yellow-rumped warbler" or "vermillion flycatcher" than it is to remember "those little stripy ones with yellow patches" or "the brilliant red bird"!  Identifying birds is the only real way to keep track.

Second reason: the more attention I pay to the birds I see, the more species of birds I find and recognize.

How does this work?  Well, say you're in Mexico and see a brilliant red bird. You might think that identifying it will be easy.  But when you turn to your reference material you'll discover that there is more than one option.

Vermillion flycatcher compared to a Scarlet Tanager

Other tanagers

Things get even more complicated when you spot a little yellow-and-black bird.

Townsend's Warbler

Note the arrow and the second dot.  There are a bunch more options not shown here.

This is the point when you either give up on birdwatching, or you get hooked.  

To identify birds you need to pay close attention to to details of the bird itself (size, shape, leg colour, bill shape, markings, habitat, behaviour, songs) and know the location (country, state, province, habitat). 

Paying attention to all of those things really helps you notice and appreciate both where you are and what you're seeing -- including the interesting and amazing individual birds who are going about their days eating, singing, flying, hopping, mating, hiding.

I'm an intermediate birder: I know and have seen most of the birds that spend time in and around my home over the course of a year.  More advanced birders visit the same locations day after day, season after season, year after year.  They develop an intimate knowledge of a particular place, its bird life, and how those things change over time. I've met people who know how rufous hummingbird populations in Vancouver have changed over time, or know which week you can expect to see shorebirds, and who keep lists of the birds that they see every year in a particular location.  

Finding a familiar bird is gratifying and fun.  Finding a "new" bird is exciting: you're seeing something novel, you're developing your skills and knowledge. You're learning about a new place. 

The most rewarding part of our trip was definitely the birdwatching.  We've spotted so many birds that we'd never seen before! It made visiting places we've been before, like Oaxaca, new.  It took us places where we wouldn't have gone otherwise and showed us things that we wouldn't otherwise have known -- like the early-morning running culture in Parque Macuiltépec in Xalapa:

Note the runner ahead of Harvey (6:15 am)

 or the damage from Hurricane Agatha in Oaxaca state.

A relatively minor road undercut.  We were driven over other corners where the undercut approached 50%. Note the dirt pile on the edge to warn you away from driving there.

In other words, birdwatching during our vacation in Mexico took us places we wouldn't otherwise have gone, and helped us see things we wouldn't otherwise have seen.  Birding in Mexico helped us pay attention to where we were.

Roman Houses

Spanish colonial-style houses are Roman houses!  

Traditionally Roman houses featured a suite of rooms surrounding a central courtyard. The courtyard typically contained a garden and fountain. Spanish colonial houses are just the same.  

In one way this isn't surprising:  Spain was a Roman colony after all.  On the other hand, it's been more than 1500 years since the Roman empire fell.  When Oaxaca was founded, it had already been 1000 years. 

Here are a couple of photos of the house where we lived in Oaxaca. 

Our two-room suite was behind the door to the left, on the second courtyard at the back of the house.

The main courtyard

Of course, it might just be that this house design just works well for warm climates. The ancient Zapotecs appear to have independently invented the same design.  

Here are the ruins of two palaces from the ruins of Atzompa, showing residences that have rooms surrounding a central courtyard.

Transportation

There are a lot of people who don’t have cars of their own in Mexico, who still need to get to and from work, or school, or to the next town over for a doctor’s appointment or to transport a bag of carrots to market, or to visit family….all of the reasons that people need to travel.  

That means that there are lots of different ways to get around, at various levels of price and convenience.

Within a town:

• In smaller towns, or in some suburbs of larger cities, tuktuks are common.  A tuktuk is otherwise known as a moto-taxi:  a motorcycle appended to a 2-3 person cabin.  Tuktuks often help folks up hills, and rarely travel further than about 2 km.  Fares range from 10 pesos to 50 pesos, depending on the distance and the remoteness of the destination. (If the driver is unlikely to get a passenger on the way back, you may pay more).

Photo stolen from the "Mototaxis for sale" Facebook page because I wasn't clever enough to take my own picture.

Within a city:

• Public buses, running on fixed routes, just like in Canada.  Price: In Oaxaca, 8 pesos/person. (~0.60 )

• Private taxi:  variable cost, depending both on the distance travelled and the specific taxi driver.  In Oaxaca, the cost of a ride within the city that would take 20-30 minutes to walk averaged 60 pesos ($4), but could be anywhere from 45 pesos to 70 pesos ($3-$4.70). The standard rate for ride from the centro to the ruins at Monte Alban was 200 pesos ($13) when we arrived in November, and had risen to 250 pesos ($17) a few weeks later.

Between cities in the central valley of Oaxaca and to major centres in the Sierra Norte:

• Intercity bus: Some popular routes have frequent scheduled bus service. For example, a second class bus (like a Greyhound) runs between Oaxaca and Mitla every half hour or so, and costs about the same as a collectivo.  (40 pesos or $2.70)

• Bus: These buses are something between a city bus and an intercity bus in comfort.  They run on a fixed route, but not necessarily to a fixed schedule. They seem to shuttle back and forth.  Cost per person is fixed, irrespective of how far you ride.  For example, Oaxaca to Tlacalula (1 hour away) was 22 pesos/person

• Collectivos: shared taxis that run on a set route, but not at a set time.  For shorter routes the collectivos basically shuttle back and forth, leaving whenever they are fullish, and stopping to pick up additional passengers if there’s room.  For longer routes, they leave from a fixed point and leave only when full. Cost: Oaxaca to Mitla (1.5 hours away): 40 pesos per person.

• Taxi: You can engage a private taxi.  Apparently the going rate is 200 pesos an hour, although I suspect that tourists pay up to twice as much.

Between cities that are further apart:

• 1st class buses: air conditioned, cushioned seats, washrooms, and “in flight” entertainment.  On the Super First Class buses, they don’t even blare the audio into the bus at large:  you can listen on headphones if you’re interested! They run on a fixed schedule. Depending on the route and the distance, they may run anywhere from once a day to once an hour.  Seats are reserved, and you can only board at a station.

• 2nd class buses:  more run-down versions of the 1st class buses, may not have air conditioning.  We didn’t end up taking any second class buses so I’m not sure of the details.

• Vans: The most economical and fastest way to travel between Oaxaca City and the coast is by 10-15 seat multi-passenger van. Depending on the route and the operator, they run somewhere between every ½ hour and every 2 hours. They leave from a fixed station, and stop at fixed points in major centers in-between.  You can also flag them down by the side of the road.

• Collectivos: shared taxis, that are generally only available between towns that are up to about 2 hours apart.  Fare is fixed, depending on the destination, but tends to be 40 or 50 pesos per person. 

• Taxi: You can negotiate a private taxi ride between cities. Cost is whatever the market will bear.  

• Camioneta:  Haven’t taken these, but we’ve seen them on the roads.  Seem to run only in rural areas.  Basically, they’re a pickup truck.  Most commonly the pickup has standing room in the back (with a metal cage around the box that you hang on to as the truck moves), but may instead have a tarp covering and bench seats in the back, or cargo space  in the box and seating in a king cab in front.

Camioneta with cargo in back and a king cab for passengers

All of this means that if you’re a bit brave, you can head to a random destination with reasonable certainty that you’ll be able to get there and get back again with reasonable efficiency.

For example, we visited the ruins of Yagul using a combination of bus, private taxi, and collectivo.  

• We started by taking a private taxi to the place where collectivos leave for Mitla (the town about 20 minutes past our destination).   Cost: 70 pesos

• We stood around waiting for a Mitla collectivo for about 15 minutes.  When one didn’t show up, we decided to take a bus to Tlacolula, which is a few km short of our destination.  Cost: 22 pesos each.

• We waved down a taxi in Tlacolula.  The driver asked for the outrageous sum of 100 pesos ($7) for the 4 km drive because we were gringos going to a tourist site.  We sighed and paid instead of getting out of the cab in a huff.

• We spent a few hours visiting the ruins and birding, walking the 1.5 km back to the highway. 

• Oops!  We tried waving down a collectivo, but every one that passed us was full.  About 10 of them in a row! Are we going to have to walk the 2.5 km back to Tlacolula along a busy highway with no shoulder???  Whew!  Here’s one with two seats empty!  We can get a ride all the way back to Oaxaca city after all. Total wait time:  7 minutes.  Cost:  40 pesos each.

Total cost of transportation for the day:  294 pesos, or $19.60.  Total planning: zero.  Total travel time: 2.5 hours.  Total time waiting for transportation: 23 minutes  (would have been about 10 minutes less if we’d taken the earlier bus to Tlacolula instead of continuing to wait for a collectivo Mitla on our way out).

Second example:  travelling from San Jose del Pacifico to Pluma Hidalgo.  

Google maps stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the existence of the town of San Jose del Pacifico, but Cabanas La Cumbre are situated there.

These are two towns in the mountains between Oaxaca City and the Pacific Coast, about 2.5 hours apart, in a region that is far less populated than the central valleys of Oaxaca.  There are regularly scheduled vans between San Jose and Pochutla, a large town on the more major of the two routes to the coast (the 175).  We were led to believe that there was an hourly van to Pluma Hidalgo too, but when we asked in San Jose we were greeted with something between incomprehension and a wince.  As in “You want to go to Pluma Hidalgo from here?”

The driver of one of the vans headed to Pochutla suggested that we ride with him as far as La Copalita, at the crossroads where the road to Pluma Hidalgo branches off.  “Is there transportation from La Copalita to Pluma?”  answer <shrug> “it’s easier when you’re closer”.  Okay, challenge accepted.  We travel 1.5 hours down the windiest highway I’ve ever been on in my life to a cross roads in the middle of nowhere. The van drops us off with our luggage.  

Hopeful sign:  there are other people waiting.  Unhopeful sign:  when we say we’re headed to Pluma Hidalgo, they answer “you just missed it!”  Ooops.  Seeing our faces fall, one fellow says “it will be about 20 minutes  [to the next one]”.   He directs us to a bus shelter across the way, where we wait. And wait. For about 40 minutes. 

Waiting for a ride to Pluma (or Godot?)

Various camionetas headed towards nearby destinations stop and pick up passengers and cargo. No cabs or collectivos of any description pass. On the bright side, 3 vans headed to Oaxaca and 1 van to Pochutla pass on the main highway, so if worst comes to worst we can probably abort and get somewhere tonight!  Finally, a decrepit car pulls up and some passengers get out.  “This is it” says our helpful friend, who’s still waiting for his ride.

That car in the shadows is our ride away from the crossroads.

We get in the unmarked car/informal taxi, and head towards Pluma Hidalgo.  Cost: 200 pesos ($14) Again, a total ripoff by local standards, but a) we’re tourists and b) we don’t seem to have a lot of options.  Thirty minutes or so later, we arrive at our destination.  Safely, despite the driver.  And despite the shakedown when we arrive: “no, it’s 300 pesos!”  “But you said 200 pesos.”  “but you didn’t go to the hotel I suggested.”  <Harvey glowers>  “Okay, 250 pesos”.  Grimace, and pay, because it's $3.50 and we just want to be rid of him.

Cooking

 When we chose a place to stay in Oaxaca, we had several criteria:

• Close to the centre. Last time we were in Oaxaca we stayed in a suburb, and getting to and from the centre was a bit of a pain.
• A bedroom separate from the living area. Sometimes one of us has insomnia, or wants to take a nap mid-day. It's much easier to have one person awake and one asleep if you have a bedroom door.
• A decent kitchen, with a fridge bigger than a bar fridge. We're here for a month, and we wanted to be able to cook meals.

Those criteria eliminated a bunch of places, but we found a few. We picked the one that looked nicest and here we've been, living in Oaxaca, eating out for almost every meal.

What went wrong?  Technically nothing.  We eat almost every breakfast at home, and have cooked a few simple meals here, including this one.  

But this is the most elaborate meal that we've made, and we've only done it once.  

Why?

Cooking here is So Much Work.

It starts with grocery shopping.  We happen to have selected a place that doesn't have any kind of food store close by.  The closest market (La Noria) is about a 10-15 minute walk away, and is deeply uninspiring in terms of the selection of food that's available.  Mercado La Merced (15 minutes) is somewhat better, and we've bought bananas, oats, milk, and a few vegetables there.  Mercado Sanchez Pascuas is much better, and makes me hungry every time I visit.  But it's all the way across the centro, a 25 minute walk away.  It's an expedition.  Worse, it's not really possible to stock up, because veggies seem to have a really short shelf life here.  One carrot went from beautiful to shrivelled in only 3 days, when at home carrots last for weeks in the crisper.

Next, there's prep.  You have to worry about food safety, even and especially with vegetables, so the first step in cooking is to disinfect your vegetables.  The normal way that Mexicans do this is with a product called Microdyn.  

Microdyn is an iodine solution that you can use to purify water or to disinfect vegetables.  

Eight drops in a litre of water, and then soak for 15 minutes.  

After that's done, prep the ingredients.  Unfortunately, in common with most furnished rental places, the knives are crappy.  We also have a tiny cutting board, and only 3 plates, 3 small bowls, two non-stick pots, and a very small non-stick frying pan.  Simply juggling ingredients while you're doing prep is a bit of a challenge, particularly because you want to make an effort to keep the prepped food 'clean', and you can't clean a dish with tap water and then reuse it during the prep process because the tap water isn't clean.

Cooking. Our two burner stove is the slowest stove I've every used. It takes forever to heat up, has only 3 heat settings, and reacts very slowly to changes.  

It took me almost 2 hours to cook the small pot of beans we used to make the supper pictured above.  What's worse, that was two hours that I spent moving the pot off and on the burner every 5 minutes because I couldn't figure out how to make the burner 'simmer'.

Finally, food!  Yum!  You eat.  

Then you need to do dishes, preferably immediately.  There are regularly small ants in the kitchen.  We haven't seen any cockroaches, but this is the tropics and it wouldn't be at all surprising if they were around. In fact, if you aren't careful with dirty dishes and food scraps, I'm positive that they'll make an appearance. 

Step 1: boil water.  Yup, there's hot water for the shower, but not for the kitchen sink.  You need to heat water on the stove to do dishes, and don't forget you have only 2 pots so you might have to clean one of them before you can use it to heat water for the rest of the dishes.

Step 2: do dishes.  

Step 3: do a forensic-level cleaning of all surfaces, the sink, and the strainer to eliminate any tiny food scraps that might feed bugs.

Step 4: take any food-related garbage out to the bins or put it in the fridge, which we use as a secure "food storage box" against bugs.

Step 5: rest while looking at Google reviews of nearby restaurants.

Yeah, it's not impossible to cook.  But it feels like a significant effort, especially on days when you're mostly focused on Doing Stuff, because after all, the reason you're here in the first place is to Do Stuff.

COVID-19 in Mexico

We are travelling in the "after times".  Mexico lifted all COVID restrictions for travellers in June 2022, and while there are "cubrebocas son obligitorios" (masks are compulsory) signs in many places, the signs are either out-of-date or are just disregarded by many.  

That being said, a lot of locals are still wearing masks on the streets and stores -- more than in Canada.  In parts of town frequented mostly by locals, at times more than half of people are wearing masks walking down the (usually crowded) streets.  In confined quarters, the percentage is even higher.  Every single person in our shared taxi to Capulapam wore a mask for the two hour ride....and wore it correctly.  Most shopkeepers, waiters/waitresses, and cab drivers routinely wear masks too.

Things are very different in any crowd made up of tourists.  In the central square of the city, fewer than 10% of people wear masks.  At the ruins of Monte Alban, we were almost the only masked people on site. 

Enforcement of COVID measures is spotty.  Mostly there is none:  simply signs about spacing and masks and arrows on the floor that are ignored now.  But there are holdouts.  When we visited the craft market in the village of Santa Maria Atzompa, we had to put hand santizer on our hands, step on a mat soaked in disinfectant, and suffer being sprayed all over with disinfectant before we could enter!  Masks were definitely obligatorio too.  This morning everyone in the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca Santo Domingo was wearing a mask, so I suspect we would have been obliged to put one on if we weren't already wearing.  It's also not uncommon to be offered a handful of disinfectant when you enter a museum or store. 

There are other lingering COVID effects too. Major tourist sites are still offering only "COVID" opening hours:  Monte Alban opens at 10am, instead of 8am. The city museum at the ex-Monastery de Santo Domingo is only open Tuesday-Saturday. The ruins at Mitla are only open Wednesday to Sunday.  In theory the number of people admitted is limited to 100 at a time too, but that rule is supposedly also in effect at Monte Alban and was being ignored when we were there last week.

Worse, too many places are either permanently or temporarily COVID-closed. The community museum in Santa Maria Atzompa is "temporarily closed", with no sign of reopening.  Even worse, so is the Museo de Arte Prehistorico Rufino Tamayo, one of the premier museums in the city (and perhaps the country).  If they simply ran out of money, what's going to happen to the artefacts?  The museum contains the personal collection of the late artist Rufino Tamayo, who selected pieces based solely on their artistic merit.  It's an astonishing collection of archeological treasures that includes items from every region of Mexico. But the doors were locked during opening hours, and nobody seems to know what's going on.

Another lesser loss is the Amate Bookstore, an excellent bilingual bookstore that had been around for more than 20 years.  It catered both to tourists and to ex-pats with a carefully curated selection of books about Mexico.  I'd been looking forward to visiting, and had been planning to use it to stock up on books for the rest of our trip. I was kind of crushed when I discovered that it was a COVID casualty. 

But over all, there are flocks of tourists, streets and markets are crowded, tour buses patrol the city.  You'd never know that we all spent much of the last 3 years at home, waiting for vaccines, waiting out wave after wave of COVID.  In 10 year's time, I wonder if we'll notice COVID era signs in the background of photos and marvel? Or if they'll mostly be cropped out of photos and out of memories?  Certainly when I tried to find a few photos to illustrate this blog entry I discovered that I hadn't taken any photos that included COVID signs, and very few pictures of other people at all, let alone pictures of people wearing masks.  

------------------update-------------------

We tried visiting the Museo Rufino Tamayo again yesterday, and found these signs plastered over the doors.  There is definitely something going on, and local protest about the continuing closure.

Birdwatching, Part 2

 We finally got out birding with someone who knows local birds!  On Tuesday November 29th had a full day's birding with Edgar Del Valle, a professional birding guide whom we found via a poster at the Oaxaca Lending Library.

Edgar makes part of his living from birds: in addition to guiding, he's a bird bander.  He's one of a small group who sets up nets weekly at Monte Alban and at the Oaxaca Botanical Garden.  He's even been to Canada, to the Long Point Bird Observatory in Ontario, as part of a banding exchange program! His day job used to be teaching university-level English at a private university.  Now he only does that part time.

We saw upwards of 70 different species of birds with Edgar, at least 20 of them for the very first time.  

Bullock's oriole

Curve-billed thrasher

It was a great day, and Edgar helped us learn how to identify Cassin's kingbirds, which had been puzzling us.

After our day with Edgar, we headed up into the mountains to Capulapam.  Harvey did some asking around at Hoofing it in Oaxaca, and found a birding guide based in Capulapam who was willing to take us out for a day.  We visited and enjoyed Capulapam in 2012, and were happy to return.  

Capulapam is a "Pueblo Magico", which is a designation that the Mexican government gives to beautiful villages that have a focus on tourism.  Capulapam had this designation in 2012, and continues to live up to that standard today.  The town itself is pretty, both in its setting and in its construction.

The town has friendly people, nice restaurants, eco-cabins only a 1 km walk from the centre of town, and well-organized activities available.  Our hostess, Eunice, told us that 90% of the tourists are Mexican.  There was a group of about 10 from Guadalajara in town doing all of the sights while we were there.

Our birding guide Leonel Bautista helped us find about 50 different species of bird, including a Mountain Trogon! We've wanted to see a trogon of any description since about 1995, when we aspired to find a quetzal.  No picture of the trogon, of course, but here's us birding in the rain with Leonel.

We saw a variety of fabulous birds that day, like the red warbler, red-faced warbler, and the extremely cute tufted flycatcher. To top off our visit after our official day of birding was done we spotted a bat falcon from the deck of the hotel where we were staying.

Safety

 No, this is not a post about crime.  This is a post about everyday life in Mexico.  

Mexico has democratically-elected governments at the municipal, state, and federal levels just like we do in Canada.  Those governments govern cities, build roads, pass laws, and draw up regulations.  I have no idea what those laws or regulations are like, or what enforcement exists, or how effective that enforcement is. But I do know that in Mexico, your safety is really your own responsibility -- or it might be entirely out of your hands.

I don't have a lot of great pictures to illustrate this, because after three weeks in Mexico I already take a lot of things for granted.  It can also feel pretty intrusive to take pictures sometimes.

But here are some examples of what I mean.

The Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa has a wonderful collection, housed in a stunning building. The artefacts are displayed in a long, low corridor that leads down a gentle hill, with exhibits both in the main corridor and in galleries off to the side.   Here's a photo taken looking uphill.  

You can't really tell from that picture, but there are many small levels, each separated from the next by a few steps.  

However, this is what the stairs and edge-of-level look like when you're looking directly down. There is virtually zero contrast.

It's lovely that the architect didn't have to compromise his artistic vision in the interests of public safety.  But as a visitor, you need to pay attention and watch your step. I sprained my ankle on level ground this past summer.  I'm sure I could break something unexpectedly falling two feet.

Speaking of falls, the photo below is of a pretty ordinary sidewalk. Anywhere that it's hilly, it's common for there to be unmarked drops of 1-2 meters from the sidewalk's edge to the street. You need to watch where you're walking and not get distracted.

But 1-2 meters is not the limit for unmarked drops. The photo below is of a public walkway on the top of the dam for the reservoir at Presa Piedra Azul near Teotitlan.  The pylons on the left behind Edgar mark the edge of the walkway.  No, there isn't a railing of any kind between the pylons. The drop to the left is maybe 15-20 m.

Of course, safety issues aren't limited to falls.

We took a collectivo to get to the town of Capulapam, which is about 2 hours from Oaxaca in the Sierra Norte Mountains.  Collectivos are shared taxis that run on predefined routes, but not on a predefined schedule.  They leave whenever the taxi is full.  

I  surreptitiously took this shot from inside on our drive. Harvey had a seatbelt in the front seat, but there were none in the back. 

Even a front seatbelt is not guaranteed, because it's common for the driver to place a cushion between the driver's seat and the front passenger seat to fit in an extra passenger.  You have to hope that the driver doesn't need to stop quickly, and of course keep your fingers crossed that there won't be an accident.

The young woman in the centre front kept falling asleep, with her head bobbing forward and back.  It looked really uncomfortable.  

Speaking of which, the road between Oaxaca City and Capulapam is paved, and in excellent condition.  But it's the kind of windy, two lane, no-shoulder highway that we don't build in Canada anymore. 

There's an unbroken yellow line the entire length of the highway, and there's rarely more of a view ahead than shown in this picture.  That doesn't stop drivers from driving on the wrong side of the road if the surface is better there, or from passing to get by big slow trucks.

But drivers help one another out by signalling with their lights or hands if it's clear for the person trying to pass, and our excellent (and safe) collectivo driver refrained from trying to pass on any truly blind corners.

Car seats? In a taxi or collectivo, kids are just held on their parent's laps.

On a completely different topic: food safety.   Less than one week into our trip I was already desperate for vegetables.  At home the majority of what I eat is fruit and vegetables, but vegetables don't show up very much in restaurant meals here. 

So I decided that we should try a place in Xalapa called Big Ramen.  Big Ramen sells exotic Korean import packaged ramen but also make their own noodles and serve soup. Xalapa's a university town and this place was inexpensive and had cheeky student-friendly memes on the walls.  It looked great.  Vegetables, noodles, tasty broth.  Yeah! 

Except my soup was barely lukewarm.  Ugh. This might have been where I picked up whatever knocked me out for 4 days or so.  Or maybe it was the alfalfa sprouts in the sandwich I had in the Denny's-equivalent at the Mall.  Or the delicious salad from the fancy Italian place. :-(

Buying your own food and preparing it yourself isn't necessarily the answer.  Or at least, becoming a vegetarian first would probably be wise. At the markets raw chicken is displayed in out in the open at room temperature, and while the stall proprietors make an attempt to keep the flies off, it's hard for them to be 100% successful.  I have less problem with the room temperature eggs -- those aren't going to go off quickly, and the fact that the eggs we've gotten are mostly fertilized just means that the eggs are from genuinely free-run chickens.

All of this being said, nothing really bad has happened to us in Mexico.  We feel safe on the streets and going about our everyday lives. We haven't seen any bad accidents happening to others either.  

Does that mean that we go a little overboard about safety in Canada?  How much difference do improved safety standards in Canada make anyway? 

Out of curiosity I just checked life expectancy. For a man, Mexican life expectancy is ~75 years. In Canada it's ~81 years.  Significant, but not THAT much different.  Or maybe I'm being a little blase about those 6 years. :-)

In general, when it comes to safety I fluctuate between being bemused about the standards here, feeling a certain devil-may-care pleasure in the freedom, and being just a bit uncomfortable.  :-)

So what *have* we been up to?

 You might have noticed that there was a 5 day gap between my first post in Oaxaca and my second.  I also didn't post much on Facebook during that time? What have we been doing since we arrived?  

Mostly tiring ourselves out.  :-)

On Tuesday November 22nd we went for a hike with Hoofing it in Oaxaca, a group of ex-pats who organize 2-4 walks every week in tourist season. The trip was to the Mitla caves, which contain rock paintings and other evidence of occupation dating back 7-10,000 years.  The caves contain some of the earliest known evidence for the cultivation of corn (or more accurately, its precursor, teocinte).  For context, ancient Middle Eastern civilizations date back perhaps 6,000 years.

This cave was a tool workshop. These are stone tools in various stages of completion.

On Wednesday it was time to go birding.  We ended up at a city park, Parque Las Canteras.

We had pretty good success: we spotted three new species, including the spectacular Black-vented and Hooded Orioles.  On the way home we stopped at La Merced market for groceries and spent the afternoon doing some planning for the rest of our time in Oaxaca. 

On Thursday it was time to go to Monte Alban.  The ruins of Monte Alban are some of the most spectacular in Mexico, as well as being some of the oldest.  The ancient Zapotecs levelled a hilltop at the point where the three valleys of Oaxaca meet, and built themselves an impressive city starting in about 500 BC.   For the geeky amongst you, the Zapotecs studied astronomy and taught it to other ancient peoples of the Americas. 

But we were there primarily for the birding!  We walked up the ecological path to Monte Alban (~4km, ~300m elevation gain) early in the morning.  Among other birds, we spotted our first ladder-backed woodpecker.  

We did a short tour of the ruins too, but it was hot by then and we were kind of tired, so we didn't give them our full attention.  We'll have to visit again another time.

An unrestored pyramid.

Friday was for housekeeping....kind of literally.  The cleaners were coming in so we had to absent ourselves.  We returned to Las Canteras for some birding, then headed over to the local Chedraui supermarket to buy staples.  After that we headed to the centro for lunch (a lovely Pozole soup), and spent the afternoon in the shade on the roof deck of the Oaxaca Lending Library. We wrapped up the day by cooking our first complete meal in our tiny kitchen.  

That may not sound like a whole lot of activity for the week, but there was a lot of walking around in 28C heat involved.  As evidence, I offer up my FitBit statistics:

Tuesday: 11,422 steps

Wednesday: 13,091 steps

Thursday: 16,318 steps

Friday: 19,726 steps

For context, I was averaging about 8,000 a day in Vancouver, none of it in the sun!