After a day or so at Marina Chiapas, we decided to take a trip inland to Oaxaca (pronounced Wahacka). We left on the 10pm bus and slept all the way to Oaxaca, it was an 8 hour journey. We travelled with Fran and Jean-Guy on Gosling. Once we arrived we headed for the Hotel we had booked and dropped off our bags and then breakfast. Now that we have eaten it was time to walk around town and get our bearings and then in the afternoon we went to visit "Monte Alban" ruins. We first toured the small museum and then paid our entry fee, while heading towards the gate, a young fellow came up and offered his services as a tour guide, we all looked and one another and decided we would pay the 300 pesos which ended up being a great decision. He spoke very good English and explained the history of the ruins as he walked us through them. We were tired at the end of this and has a siesta in the afternoon. The next day we had booked a full day tour which took us to see a tree which had a huge trunk called "Tule Tree", then onto a rug making place. We have been looking for a rug for the boat for quite a while but have not found the right one so far, we lucked out and found the perfect rug for our boat at this place, it is a wool rug and we were able to talk to the people who made it which was brilliant! Now the driver tells us it is time for the "Mescal" tasting, which is Tequilla for all intensive purposes but they cannot call it that in this part of Mexico. The tour guide gave us the full tour from beginning to end of how they made Mescal and at the end told us we could have up to 30 tastings.....hmmmm, could be a problem for the rest of the tour??!! We really like the Almond flavoured one and the Passion Fruit one. The tour guide did a little ceremony when Ken bought the Almond one, he poured some in a bamboo drinking glass and said some words and then Ken drank it. Next stop were some more ruins in a place called "Mitla", the tour guide gave us a great tour of this place and provided us with lots of history, this one has a lot of inlaid stone design, amazing. It was now around 2pm and time for lunch, we stopped at a restaurant that had a buffet style lunch for 120 pesos each, some of the people on our tour tried the grasshoppers but it was not for Ken or Carole. The finally of this tour was a trip up the mountains to the "Petrified" falls, they are actually calcified from all of the minerals, but was a fantastic time we had, we paddled in the pools and took lots of pictures. The falls are not to be missed. We arrived back at the hotel very tired after a great day.
Friday was our last day in Oaxaca and that night we would catch a bus and again sleep all the way back to Huatulco. During the day we headed over to see the Museum of Culture, from the Museum we had a great view of the Botanical Gardens so we did not need to visit them, one more item off our list. The rest of the day we walked around town, had lunch and drinks and just enjoyed ourselves.