Landing in Oaxaca

Monte Alban with Oaxaca in the background

The guy next to me on the plane into Oaxaca was very friendly and gave me travel advice - visit Monte Alban, the church of some saint (turned out to be Santo Domingo, of course), the tree at Tule, and drink some mezcal, but not too much.

Well, I have been on the ground less than two hours, and I have already had some mezcal - but just one shot. Not too much.

I didn't study about Oaxaca before I came here. I wanted it to be a blank slate and not have preconceptions.

When I went to Kauai, I knew all about it beforehand from a guidebook and felt compelled to do everything they talked about in the guidebook. I couldn't relax because I had all this stuff on my agenda.

So this time I decided to do the opposite and not learn anything. When the guy told me about Monte Alban, I didn't have any idea what he was talking about. I figured it was just some mountain "Monte" being one word I could translate. I didn't know it was one of the biggest, most significant archeological sites in Latin America.

The airport is small, like Santa Barbara, with just one gate.

Getting off the plane, I felt suddenly like such an international traveler - the hot sticky air hit me, the totally foreign smell, the tropical plants and trees, walking across the tarmac like some adventuresome journalist, not like some schlub from Thousand Oaks who has never been further than Chicago...

The airport has one baggage claim for domestic and one for international. I waited and waited at the domestic, since I had come from Mexico DF I thought my luggage would be domestic. Just as I was about to have a heart attack thinking my luggage was lost, it came to the International claim area.

Customs in Oaxaca is funny. You fill our a form and they stick it into a machine. There is a big stoplight with a button on the bottom like at a street corner crossing. They make you push the button and then a stoplight with either a green word "PASE" lights up and you are free to go, or the red "REVISTA" comes on with a buzzer. I was sweating it a bit, not that I had any contraband - I just always feel guilty in the face of authority.

I got the green light, but the lady in front of me got the red light and the buzzer, so her bags got inspected.