Tan Lines

Hello!
Monte and I are continuing to have an amazing time. We visited the town of Oaxaca (wah-hah-kah) and loooved it. We visited Monte Alban which was really neat. It´s a Zapotec ruins site. The place we stayed in was amazing. It overlooked the city and it had a pool. (If anyone goes to Oaxaca, let us know and we´ll give you the name.) The people were super nice there, and one spoke English which was a relief for us....the whole lack of Spanish is awkward, but it has really been fine. We do a lot of smiling and pointing. We´re learning more vocabulary words every day but it´s not enough to have a full-on conversation. We can get by, though, and we´re SLOWLY being able to communicate even more.

After Oaxaca we went to Mazunte, a tiny, tiny, fishing village on a really beautiful beach. The first thing we did when we got there was layer up in SPF 70 and jumped in the water. We didn´t stay in the sun for long but we kept applying more and more sunscreen and covering up our bodies and yet we still got burned. It turns out the beach is less fun when you´re covered from head to toe in clothing, but you´re sweating like a pig because it´s humid and frickin´ hot, and you´re hiding in the only ounce of shade that exists on the beach, but then the shade moves because the sun moves....so....Monte and I learned that we´re bad beach bums. We had originally planned to stay on the southern and western coast of Mexico for the rest of our time, but since we don´t mesh too well with Mexico´s sun, we´ve decided to move on to Chiapas.

Ah, the darn bugs. Our bed had bed-bugs and there are of course mosquitos and Monte and I have bites all over us. Monte counted 22 bites on his right hand alone...Ah well, though. They only itch, so I guess we can handle it.

Monte got a cold and then passed it on to me. It´s not too bad, just affects the energy level and your ability to breathe, but no big deal... :)

We will leave for San Cristobal at 7 tonight. We´re really excited. We will visit Palanque, an ancient Mayan ruins which will probably be the coolest out of all the ruins so far. We will have internet access there so expect more posts! I hope you are all well!