Into the heart of Mexican art and colour

We´re in the city of Oaxaca (pronounced Wahaca), the artistic capital of Mexico, famous for its markets, crafts and interesting foods (grasshopper is on the menu and we do plan to sample).

We´ve only had a brief look around this morning as we both felt like zombies after a sleepless night travelling through the mountains from San Cristobel. Imagine 12 hours travelling up and down S-shaped winding roads at about 80km per hour and that about sums up the torture.

But Oaxaca has already lifted our mood. Its another one of those laid back, gracious colonial towns with stately buildings, in this case very grand, dotted with some fantastic old churches filled with cavernous, gold-leafed interiors. Arts and crafts are on display and for sale everywhere in town, the most common items being brightly painted wooden animals (orange jaguars, blue and pink armidallos etc), along with carpets, clothes and textiles. One type of craft you find everywhere in Mexico are skeleton figurines. There are skeleton mariachis, smiling skeleton cowboys, skeleton society ladies. They are scary and eerie but also cool. Death is celebrated here as much as life.

Yesterday, before our bus ride, we visited a church in San Cristobal del la Casas that had an interior that looked like the decorator had taken acid or more likely drunk a bottle of tequila before going to work. Bright pink and yellow balloons wrapped around the pillars, a Xmas display with more farm animals than in New Zealand, flashing lights, a zany hovering Jesus and eerie ghost music. A very trippy experience. That about sums up Mexico, it´s addicted to colour and vibrancy. You rarely see a white house here, even in the poorer suburbs houses come in shades of pinks, yellows and blues. I think it says something about the attitude of people to life regardless of personal wealth. Would you ever see a row of psychedically painted houses in Sydney, New York or London?

Some more pics of Mexican colour and life...