The harsh reality of our 'vacation' in Aus and ultra-lux 5 days of all-inclusive living in Huatulco coming to an end hit us like a ton of bricks as we boarded the ADO bus for the 8 hour trip up the mountains to Oaxaca.

Everyone talks about how curvy and windy the road is and thus how terrible a ride it is; so, we armed ourselves with Dramamine, a few snacks and then settled into our seats expecting the worse. In reality, it wasn't all that bad...

Yes, the road is demonically windy and the ride definitely long enough to suck, but they cranked movies (en español, of course) the entire time and they had the A/C on full blast (I became blue in the lips and began to display symptoms of Stage 1 Hypothermia by hour 4) and eventually we found ourselves, with bleary eyes, negotiating a taxi to the hotel in Oaxaca we'd emailed for a reservation, but had not heard back from. Luckily, Hotel Antonio did have one room left and, even though it was a touch more then we were looking to spend, we went with it as the prospect of wandering town with packs on just to save a few bucks was unattractive at that point, to say the least.

The rest of the afternoon and evening we spent wandering aimlessly, minds in a fog...the combo of the bus ride and still being in recovery mode from the wedding week left us badly in need of a good night of sleep, so, before long we headed for a spot we saw advertising vegetarian mexican food and got dinner and then hit the hay.

The waiter at the restaurant was interesting. He walked up, took one look at us and said "Where are you from? San Francisco? Sydney?".

"Uhh, well...why.... yes, both actually."

Turns out he lived in SF for a decade working in several restaurants in the Mission and a few in our old hood: the Lower Haight. The funny part was that two or three times he asked us not to tell anyone in SF that we saw him there in Oaxaca. Sounds like he's on the lamb for real...but seriously, who the hell are we gonna tell that we met a dude named Augustino in the vegetarian restaurant in Oaxaca (on Avenida Independencia)?

A good night of sleep had us up and at 'em and ready to take on Oaxaca in the one and only day we had there. We started off the morning by running a few errands including moving to a cheap hostel, getting some badly needed laundry done, and finding a US plug converter so we could finally plug in the iPad (the latter being much more difficult then one would think).

Later we hit the markets, saw a parade for International Book Day complete with fireworks (more like canons), cruised the Zócalo (main plaza) went into the Cathedral, checked out Santo Domingo church, watched chocolate being made by hand then sampled it, thoroughly took in the Museum of Contemporary Art, and enjoyed an evening stroll back through the Zócalo where we saw about a thousand protestors sleeping in tents and on cardboard- 'Occupy Oaxaca' style. (That last bit was foreshadowing.)

It would be remiss to talk about our day in Oaxaca without mentioning our food experiences. The serendipitous discovery of the day (year?) has to be the Torta truck we found. Just as we were starting to get hungry and began to peruse restaurant menus, we saw it glistening in the distance like a beacon of Awesomeness.

I'm going to note it's name and exact coordinates just on the off chance anyone finds themselves in Oaxaca and in need of THE best f-ing torta. Hint: if you are there, then you do.

It's called La Hormiga and it's located on the SE corner of Jardín Conzatti which is 3 blocks North of the Santo Domingo complex.

I've had some tortas in my life, but this transcends my previous conception of the word 'torta'. For a mere 20 Pesos ($1.75) you will receive a fresh bread roll stacked with black bean spread, avocado, pickled carrots and jalapeños, tomato and then filled with hot off the grill, freshly made Oaxacan cheese and a meat (or in G's case Pineapple) filling of your choice. Top that puppy with a few spoon fulls of their fresh chipotle salsa = Heaven on a plate.

...........Yup.........

I'm gonna claim it: top 2 street food experiences of the trip. (Can't forget my peeps at the Luang Prabang buffet in Laos!)

Dinner that night was really good too, but it can't hold a candle to the Torta experience so I won't waste any more words on it then to say: a plate of carne asada with peppers and onions and a stack of hand made, fresh corn tortillas plus all the extras you could wish for at a legit Mexican taqueria. Not a bad day out by any means, but definitely Scottie Pippen to La Hormiga's Michael Jordan.

We finished off the day with a steep walk up to a sweet vista point on the hill overlooking the city where we could see the lights of Oaxaca twinkle under a clear, moonless night. We damn near covered it all except the Oaxacan Cultural Museum which was on our list, but is closed on Mondays. All up I think we walked about 10 miles. (Actually I know for a fact it was 10.12 miles over 20,587 steps as, for the first time, we used the pedometer my Mom gave us in Indo. (Yup, I said it. I have (and use) a pedometer, so what of it?!?)

After the walk up to the vista point we retired to our home for the night: Hostel Alcalá. We had secured a 'semi-private' room which in actuality was a 10 bed dorm with 8 foot walls that formed 5 separate itty-bitty, teeny-tiny windowless cells. It's actually almost worse then an real 10 bed dorm in that the 'semi privacy', while allowing you to change clothes without having to retreat to a bathroom, provides a false sense of "sound privacy" as well. What I'm saying is that people are more courteous with their loud voices and bodily functions when the fear of a accusatory dirty look is a stark reality.

Still, that's not even the good part of the Alcalá experience. No, that took place a few hours later, at precisely 12:30am when the construction crew showed up to begin work on the bank directly, and I mean, 30 feet from our heads, across the street. To make matters worse their assignment for the night was to rip out the air-conditioning ducts off the roof which meant that the continuous banging of metal was made even more excruciating by the distinct shrieks of sheet-metal bending, tearing and then scraping down the side of the building as the workers lowered it with a rope.

"Oh HEEELLLLL, no!!"

It was the only thing my half asleep brain could muster when I peered out the windows, which, for the record couldn't keep a draft out, let alone noise like this. I went out to the lobby to get the owner and asked him to come have a look. He looked as surprised as me and embarrassed to boot, but, to his credit, he marched directly outside to confront the foreman of the project. I watched from the window cause, well; it's Mexico, you never know how this confrontation could end......

By about 1:30am the cops had come and put a stop to it and the owner came in to apologize again. To make up for the inconvenience he was prepared to upgrade our included continental breakfast to now include 2 eggs, prepared to our liking. Fantastic; 2 scrambled eggs: well worth an hour of Deep R.E.M. sleep any day.

Needless to say we were a bit tired at 7am when the alarm went off, but still we dutifully pulled ourselves from bed and donned our workout gear. We had a 6 hour bus ride to Mexico City on the cards for 10am and so were hoping to get in a little exercise for the day. We ran up to the vista point we'd been to the night before and, although it was painful, we were rewarded by being at the top, gasping for breath, as the sun crested the mountains and splashed sun down onto a sleepy Oaxaca.

We got back, showered, packed and got down to the restaurant in time to enjoy the s#it out of those 2 eggs before hopping into a cab to get to the ADO bus terminal in plenty of time to catch our 10am bus.

You are supposed to be there 30 minutes ahead of time to check your bags, but at 9:30 they refused our bags. "Dos minutos, por favor."

About 5 minutes later the head dude of the bus company came to address the gathering crowd of people who were trying to check bags for the 10am to Mexico City- Tapo station. He informed us that there were road- blocks set up by protesters (the people we'd seen the night before in the Zócalo protesting for Indiginous Rights) and that all roads East including those to Mexico City (and to the airport, for that matter) were closed until further notice. Further, he had no idea when they would be cleared. However, with a touch of optimism, he assured us we were talking hours, not days. (!!)

Welcome to Latin America.

After a few minutes of moping in the terminal and chatting with the other travelers that were supposed to be on the bus (notably a couple of middle aged Aussie ladies who had flights back to Sydney from Mexico City the next morning) we decided to make the proverbial lemonade and changed our ticket to the 2:00pm bus and we headed off to hit the Cultural Museum we'd not been able to go to the previous day.

The museum is housed in the old, but beautifully restored, Santo Domingo monastery and covers in great detail the story of Oaxacan culture and history from the first civilizations until the present day. We spent about 2 hours taking the audio tour and getting our learn on. Well worth the visit.

As luck would have it, the walk back from the museum to the bus station passes by Jardín Conzatti (at least when I'm navigating it does) which, if you've been paying attention is where one could find La Hormiga Torta truck if one were so inclined.

And, best believe we were inclined.

Round 2: as good if not better then round 1. Boom, Lemonade is made.

We got back to the bus station at about 1:30pm and the situation had not changed except that the airport had been re-opened and our Aussie friends were starting to get a bit more nervous.

We sat down to wait it out. Finally, the first Aussie lady goes over to investigate purchasing a plane ticket. At 2:45 she buys her ticket and sends her friend over to do the same. At 2:48 the announcement comes over the loud-speaker: the roads are open.

Game on. The was a bit of chaos as everyone started to jockey for position and the first buses started to fill. Aussie lady #2 had managed to cancel the transaction, but Aussie lady #1 was informed by the smug salesman that her 5 minute old plane ticket was non-refundable. Zing!

The last we saw of them they were trying to get their money back for the bus tickets and were going to just fly. Meanwhile, G and I were hurried onto a nearly empty bus which made a hasty departure at approximately 3:15pm.

Aside from the fact that we'd now be arriving in Mexico City after 9pm (meaning it would be dark), we were actually in the black on the deal.

We'd sustained zero financial loss, we were 2 hours of cultural enrichment smarter and 1 awesome Torta fatter, and now we were on our way to Mexico City.

I call that a win any day of the week!