The hostel of choice in Oaxaca was La Villada Inn, which just puts all other hostels to shame. Run by two extremely friendly brothers and their entire family (Dad was the maintenance man, mom was the chef de cuisine and cousins were the cleaners and cooks), it was spotless, had a large swimming pool, views to die for and my cabana was massive with a double bed and a hammock outside. All this for 15 dollars.
Oaxaca itself is beautiful, a shady Zocalo (town square) is surrounded by small streets and markets selling everything from whole chickens (alive or dead), the latest fashions (stonewashed denim), gold, silver, various unidentified fish, bags of grasshoppers or just a taco or two (grasshoppers optional).
On the second day I took a tour out to see some of the surrounding landscape, which has at least 57 different types of cactus, the tree (El Tule) with the widest trunk in the world (fact!), a petrified waterfall - Hierve el Agua (Actually I don´t know what it was scared of) with hot springs, some Mayan ruins at Mitla and a tour of a Mescal factory. For the second day in a row I was being deliberately starved and when we eventually stopped for lunch at 4pm I would have gladly had some more tripe tacos.
The Mescal (which is similar to Tequila but is made from a different Agave plant, but of course you knew this already) factory was of course the high point of the trip, as indeed there were lots of samples, which my 3 Australian cohorts and myself took liberal helpings of (a German couple were abstaining and a Swiss couple took 1 sip, say no more). I can highly recommend the "Mezcal nautral viagra", which is distilled with 14 types of herbs. I certainly woke up the next morning with a slight hangover and a smile on my face.
Some photos of Oaxaca here
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