The venue of our Thanksgiving Feast Part 1. Fresh fish and jumbo margs help to numb the pain of not devouring turkey on Turkey Day. I don´t remember where Part 2 took place.
Rumor has it that these guys´moms love poinsettas. These guys´moms would love the plaza in Oaxaca. As you can see, poinsettas grow on trees here.
Just outside Oaxaca are the Olmec and Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban. They are neat. They are also the perfect place for handstand competitions!
Chad needed study the hieroglyphs on the walls of Monte Alban´s temples for only minutes before he was able to perform this extremely accurate reenactment of the Olmec fertility dance. Impressive.
Look carefully at the sign. Chad showing complete disregard for law and order, and walking etiquette.
They were little people back then. Or Chad is a very large people now.
¨Seriously, Chad was this much bigger than that boney dude!¨
These guys towered over us all. Not sure what they´re all about, but they stood outside a great cooperative for local handicrafts. Oaxaca is a mecca for all things artisinal in Mexico.
One of the many finds in the Oaxacan markets. Watch out Jackson, shaggy hats comin´at ya this winter!
This was a while ago, but I don´t think I ever mentioned that I got a floppy hat. And it is sweet.
That´s the aptly dubbed House of Smoking Meats in the background. The sight of the Gypsy crew´s last meal together. This place is great. It is a gauntlet of vendors selling all kinds of grilled meat from pork and beef to blood sausage and chorizo. You find your favorite vendor, pick out the meat and then take a seat at some communal picknick tables where you then select the veggies you want and pick up some tortillas from a different vendor. Might sound complicated, but it´s blast, and the end result is scrumptulescence.
Our House of Smoking Meats meal. We ate it all.
¨Seriously, the skeleton guy at Monte Alban was only like this big!¨
Just kidding. This is how you say ¨push the shutter button¨ to someone who doesn´t know what a shutter button is.
Oaxaca put on a fireworks show for us every night we were in town. Very thoughtful of them. I think it´s because we´re special.
We had to say goodbye to Chad in Oaxaca. It was a sad day, but when duty calls there´s not much you can do, especially when you´re betting against something as fickle as mother nature and those damn Tehuantepeckers. So Justin and I headed back to Huatulco to rejoin Gypsy and wait out the weather until it looked like we could safely sail. We thought it would be just a couple of days later, and we even attempted to go for it, but when the captain of a 42 foot motor yacht who has apparently crossed the Gulf more than anyone told us he got 8 miles out and it was too rough, we payed attention and turned around. Then we went to the beach. Like I said, when life gives you limes...
We ended up being stuck in Huatulco for so long that we became veritable regulars at our favorite bar in town, the Tipsy Blowfish. During our first visit to the Blowfish we met one of it´s owners, Cortney (pictured here with us alongside her dad, the co-owner), and proposed to her that we would drink enough margaritas for her to give us all free t-shirts. Well by the time we left town we had achieved our goal, although mine doesn´t have sleeves. I must have slacked.
That is mezcal con gusano. Yep, mezcal with a worm. And yup, I drank it. It was chewy.
It gets hot in southern Mexico, but fortunately during the second week of our stay in Huatulco we discovered that there is such a thing as a free pool club. It´s a lot cooler than a dock. We were also there so long that we started making friends with locals, like these two lovelies, Lucy and Lupe.
But alas, time to move on. And that we did, with a new crew member. Welcome aboard Danielle! Danielle flew down to join us on a moment´s notice from Santa Barbara when she heard Justin´s cry for crew. Chad, we put it to a vote and decided that she looks better in a bikini than you do. But don´t feel bad, you´re still really good at fishing.