Finally we got out of the movie set. Everywhere looks so real now. Mexico City was nice as well, but when I look back, what I remember most is the fact that it was “huge.” Puebla was magnificent. Yet it seemed too gridded, too hygienic. I don’t know how to put it, but it can be said visiting the city and watching it from Google Earth doesn’t make much difference.

Now we are in Oaxaca, pronounced O-a-haka. Here looks magnificent, too. I don’t know what adjective I will use for our next stop.

We got out of Puebla drawing small circles, thanks to our imbecile GPS Juan Carlos. And thanks to the Mexican government that pretend these crooked two way roads are major highways,  we poured our money to tollgates. But apart from this, the journey was magnificent. We travelled winding through the cactus forests and arrived in Oaxaca.

In here, the first thing we did was to act accordingly with the information that Oaxaca is the producer of best Mezcal in the world, and we started buying Mezcal. It is a beverage made from the same cactus as tequila but processed differently. If you ask my opinion, it is straight tequila. I am talking according to the book. We drank it from cognac glasses. But we asked our sympathetic (sympathy is something very easy to find inhere) waiter in the “Turkish” style Café Alex how to use the lemons that came with the beverage. Thankfully, what he showed was the exact way we drank in Turkey. I felt embarrassed about distrustfully denouncing our tequila customs in my previous journal.

For good and all, we didn’t have any problem with deciding what to do in the evening. :)  We climbed up to our magnificent terrace right away and opened a bottle of rakı. Without showing any sign of laziness, my friends went down all the stairs back and ate the Tacos they bought from a seller in the street.

Early in the morning, we hit the road for Monte Alban, one of the main reasons for our coming to Oaxaca. We intended to skip the breakfast to save some time. But the cute buffet we saw in our way ordered us to stop and eat, and so we obeyed it.

The breakfast that the buffet lady served looked horrible but tasted very right. We ate it and drank daisy juice, and then had a look at the local bazaar before we finally got to Monte Alban.

Just as we arrived in Monte Alban, the inviting look of a cactus caught our attention. You should never ignore a cactus because it’s a very stimulating plant. And it doesn’t look like those beaded “things” we put on our TV sets back at home. We thought it was time that we carried out one of the two clichés we knew about Mexicans, and we sat down under a cactus, opening a bottle of rakı.

While the Mexicans looked curious of what we were doing with that white beverage, nobody wanted to share a glass of rakı with us. I was pretty surprised at this. These warm people of the Earth love to put anise in every meal and drink, but they didn’t want to taste our darling rakı. And we didn’t insist.

Monte Alban is a gorgeous stack of stones. Walking through them isn’t the best fun in the world but it’s quite nice to drink rakı and sleep beneath them, and to watch them from a distance. And that’s what we did.

And there we had the chance to carry out the second Mexican cliché: the tray-like Mexican hats. Until then, we hadn’t understood the wisdom of these hats and how Mexicans could feel comfortable with those things. It turned out it had a lot to do with napping. Nur, cautious as usual, had her hat with her, unlike us. She looked so pleased that we passed it on to each other and took naps in turns.

Napping with those hats on suddenly makes you feel like you are in a hotel, really. That wide umbrella so lightly covers you with its fringes that you isolate yourself from the outer world. The few meter squares you cover become your territory.

And so it seems the old lad next to us watched us for a time, got tired of it, and yawned.

Attention: Our photos are not mise-en-scènes. We were in deep sleep at the moment and proud of our sudden adaptation to the rituals.

We have a lot to learn from Mexicans when it comes to bon vivantism.

Monte Alban (White Mountain), the Zapotecan capital, was built a long time ago, in  500 BC approximately . Don’t mind me when I say “a long time” of course - these buildings are like young kids if you compare with the Egyptian pyramids.

These friends invented the oldest calendar around. For a moment we tried to understand the time by looking at the sundials. But I prefer the Casio on my arm in every way of course.

I said “Nibiru” to a few Mexicans I bumped into, but didn’t get any satisfactory responds. According to my premature survey, Nibiru is not an issue in here. Nur and Fikret didn’t find my survey scientific enough, though.

After we left Monte Alban, we walked around sightseeing for a long time. It was a lot of fun, except that our feet got really tired. It was full of bugs. I mean the sales booths. Grasshoppers are like snacks for these friends. They grow around wheat and corn. Dear Nur attempted to eat one but then decided to pretend eating it. They also tried to drag me into an argument about whether if it was acceptable for a vegetarian like me to eat bugs or not. I kept away.

Then we all posed in front of a wall painting of Emiliano Zapata, whom we all love.

Compared with my two friends, I should accept looking more like a lumpen rather than a revolutionary, since a revolutionary with slippers and a “drunk monkey” t-shirt is unlikely. I could come to my senses only after I shed a few lumpen tears while visiting some churches. Nur quite loved the gauze dresses with thin laces on peddler booths. Fikret and I used the moment to scout the local talents among the street painters, and felt contended to like the ones we discovered.

Then I took my second nap of the day in the garden of a church, while Fikret and Nur entered in and did some stuff like lighting candles.

Zocalo is the name given here – and everywhere in Mexico – to Taksim Square-like parts of the town. There was a balloon craze in Zocalo. Everywhere was filled with ugly balloons of various sizes. But next to the beauty of Zocalo, those balloons can be ignored and excused.

One more thing… There is music here, in every street. And they are all very talented musicians. You think you could happily pay 50 liras (app. 30 dollars) as an entry fee in İstanbul to watch them, but here they are, playing for 1 peso (8 cents).

They told me not to write, but I will, anyway. Our flighty friend Nur broke Fikret’s iPhone. Sorry, she broke Fikret’s dear iPhone. But Fikret didn’t break her head. Because Nur got so angry with herself that there wasn’t anything left for Fikret to do.

Well, guess what we are doing now… Yes.