Goodbye Oaxaca Roadtrip: Day 2
Guiengola Archeological Zone

Yeah, we're in Tehuantepec to see Guingola, one of the few remaining, Open To The Public ruins in the state we have yet to see (the other's Tilantongo, and I'm not sure that one is open). Because of the time change, we were up and ready to go at 7am, but nobody else was, and as we wanted breakfast and needed water, we walked around plaintively, looking for anything open until a pair of street tree trimmers took pity on us and directed us to Restaurant Scaru, which they assured us was open. It was, so we sat down and ordered.

Now, inside this restaurant the walls are covered with brightly painted murals of Istmeño life, some standard, some kinda bizarre. Pictures soon. Breakfast turned out to be a bit pricey and just okay, but it was food and we knew we'd need full tummies before hiking up to Guiengola. We gave Vivani food and water, and knotted up a few empty cookie wrappers (her favorite toy, along with her palm frond hat, which we brought with us), and set off.

The ruins aren't too far outside town, and our guidebook says that you pick up a guide at the Comedor Gema, at the turnoff from Hwy 190. Well, on our last abortive attempt, the folks at Comedor Gema said, no, there's a muchacho up there already, go ahead. This time the comedor wasn't even open, so we drove past and down the dirt road. The directions in our book are awfully vague, but we figured, how hard can it be? And the road this time was nice and dry. When the road forked a sign indicated the proper direction -- pretty damn rare in Oaxaca, signage -- and we hadn't gone very far up the fork when a guy popped up from the brush at the side of the road. Our guide! Can you imagine that for your job? Sit in the shade at the side of the road (after walking there from where the bus drops you off on the highway) waiting for tourists to show up. Or more likely, not. He said the road was no good for cars, though it looked okay to me, so we parked and set off up the road, up the hill. His name was Feliciano Gonzalez, he spoke Spanish and Zapotec, so we used our crummy Spanish. G did pretty well too, quizzing Feliciano about the site's history, local stories, and the like. And Feliciano was more than willing to spill, including telling us about a series of dreams he had, where he imagined himself in Guiengola when it was a living city, meeting Cosiojeza (Cosiopi's dad) and having the king tell him that he needed to be here to be a guide and guard the site. We were all definitely on the same page.

Because of the breeze, and because it's November and the trees still green, what could have been a brutal 3km walk up the hill in the tropical sun turned out to be very nice. Pretty vegetation, vistas, and soon the start of walls indicating houses. Then we were on top of the hill, standing in the middle of Guiengola, looking at the plazas and pyramids and trying not to be blown over by the breeze, which was now a respectable wind. It did stagger us a few times, that's how strong it was.

Feliciano took us up the pyramids, showed us traces of the original painted decoration, an adobe brick with a child's footprint, a cave wall with paintings, the rich people's residence, houses, tombs, a large round tina (a bath), everywhere. He told G he couldn't take us to several interesting features because it was too dangerous. This was after he led us into a cave -- the hill on which Guiengola sits is limestone, and it's riddled with caves -- without a flashlight, and with several side caves that seemed awfully big and awfully deep in the feeble light coming from my keychain flashlight. I mean, the kind that you could fall in and seriously kill youself in. Hey! It's Mexico.

Pictures a'coming, folks. It was a pretty damn cool day; we were there from 9:30a to about 2:30p.

Now, we hunt for garnachas.