Sunday 1st November - (but who would know?!)

The place is buzzing - nothing like Sunday back home! Seized by the headache from hell that was actually making me feel sick and half blind, I was suitably zombified for the día del muertos - so headed out for breakfast (ahh, more pancakes and dead-head bread..mmm...), and sat next to a couple of construction workers who were happily tucking into a plate of enchiladas by all accounts. It must take years of training to reach this level of intestinal discipline...

I packed my things and wondered down to the centro historico - past a maze of beautiful, terraced, low rise coloured colonial buildings, (most of which were actually modern hotels and bars..) through a lush park full of touristas, fountains, street vendors and marigolds (and that pink flower..often seen in hot countries...dammit..) and zigzagged my way to the Santo Domingo cathedral square, even more animated than yesterday, and got a full daylight view of the impressive tapetes, multiple offerings to the dead and overflowing cafes.

It was around 10.45am by now, so time for 'almeuerzo' - the mid-morning snack to keep those hungry Mexicans going till lunchtime. (I'd had this notion explained to me several times, but somewhow, the multiple meal syndrome just kept escaping me. 'Breakfast' (desayuno) was the first meal of the day - typically desribed as 'light' and comprised of sweet bread or a patisserie, and coffee. Given that lunch -or 'la comida' doesn't waft it's tablecloth til about 3pm, they naturally get hungry around 11pm, so their elevenses (almeurzo) are a fairly substantial affair, with meat, 'enchiladas', 'tortillas' piled high with stuff, 'tortas', (Mexican sandwiches...that put Marks and Spencers to shame..), eggs, black coffee, fruit juice and 'atole' (a thick maize-based hot chocolate-like drink). Just to keep you going....

From the Zocalo, it was just a short walk past a man with a van selling scrapey-ice lollies (see Panama blog..) and improbably brightly coloured jellies in upside-down plastic glasses sometimes with bits of fruit (I suspect..) in to the Mercado del Juaréz - though once there, it took me a while to figure out how to get in. There were street vendors armed with sugar skulls and chocolate coffins blocking every passageway, and pán del muertos the size of, well, me, piled up high.

Not ones to pass up an opportunity to celebrate death, Mexican stallholders also had a quaint way of stacking the bread on long stretchers, over which they would cast a white sheet -consequently looking not dissimilar to a cadavre of a lately moved on earthling. Tasty...

The market was a veritable labyrinth of odours, noise and colours, from baskets of chillies of all colours and sizes (OK, mostly a variation on red..), baskets of powders, bowls of 'mole' paste and boxes of dried mole, bottles of 'Mezcal' with or without little worm at the bottom (Mezcal is an agave-plant liquor, fairly similar to Tequila - though don't tell the purists I said that..) , bags of quesillo and little woven baskets of 'queso de canasta', beautifully wrapped 'tamales', vintage market stall bags with 'la Catarina' skeleton and Frida Kahlo, potions, lotions, belts, sombreros, cowboy hats and boots, traditional dress and Halloween fancy dress, burning incense and smoking sausages and long strips of meat (some of which were so long and thin, they must have unrolled an entire cow from head to tail..)

At the food bars, entire families jostled for space around the pile of tortillas and plates of salad, limes and chillies onto which were being dished steaming hot meat, sauce, salsa and God knows what else.

Exhausted by the sheer fun of it all, I tried to find my way out of this part of town towards the mercado del slightly más rustico, but ended up in some possibly dodgy areas of town where ladies not unlike those we put on the front of our 'AIDS epidemic update' booklets, stood in very little garb on their doorsteps beckoning the cowboys to stop in for some...well, I don't like to think.

It was at this point I realised how cunning Hansel had been to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind him, because the old town was a maze of similar looking streets, and it took me HOURS to find my way back to the little park by my hotel. At one point, convinced I was on the right track (yes, I definitely recognise that tree up there...definitely..), I found myself at what I thought must be a visiting funfair. Ha! EL DIA DEL MUERTOS strikes again!

This lively, noisy, strongly aromatic place with food, music and flower stalls was no other than the biggest cemetery (pantéon) in town! Huge swathes of people thronged through the street, and as I peeked through the cemetry gates, I saw the most cinematic, heaven-like scene of lightness and flowers, and colours and joy! It suddenly became clear to me, this manifestation of an old Indian tradition to consider life as just a passageway. Offerings of food would be left for the departed, to last them on the journey to the next life. In stricter Catholic families, prayers would be sent back and forwards among the family for whole month of November.

Of couse, this was all very well and nice, but it was getting late and my piernas were beginning to feel a bit numb, and since that wasn't the tree I thought I had recognised after all, I retraced my steps and finally found my way back to the hotel for a well earned rest. Of about half an hour. Before Jose Antonio turned up looking fresh and full of the joys of November. Sigh...

We had been invited to lunch that afternoon by JA's friends - an incredible locals-only typical Oaxacan restaurant in Zaachilla. I say incredible - it all turned slightly sour when a bowl of chapulines was plumped in front of me...grasshoppers. To eat. My table pals wasted no time in filling their tortillas with the crunchy red littles beasts, as I looked on in horror and gulped down some coke to calm my nerves.

"What's the weirdest thing you eat in your country Rebekah?" Um...(I would say supernoodles, but I'm not sure they'd get it..) fried mars bar? Tete de veau? Frogs legs? Snails? Finally, I guess we're not all that different...

After the trauma of grasshoppers, I opted for the mole negro - a thick, oozing black sauce made of over 30 ing

redients (cinammon, dried bread, tomatoes, onio

n, chillies, plantain, chocolate and 23 other things..). It was, delicious. One down, six other mole's to try.

Why oh why though did I try to finish it? No sooner was my plate removed, that a brandy snap type thing was plopped down in front of me, filled with sliced coconut and cream. A nice finish.

To try and wash away some of this greed that was soiling my insides, I agreed to coffee, and to taste a cafe del ollo (which I pronounced 'de oyo' to the delight of everyone present - though none of whom were willing to tell me what I'd said..) This is a particularly sugary, cinammon-flavoured coffee. A perfectly reasonable end to a perfectly unreasonable repas I think. What do you think?

My stomach now having assumed cartoon-like proportions, I waddled my way over to the car, and we headed off to prepare for the evening's fancy dress competition.

Several hours later, as the time approached for us to go out and party, I gutlessly withdrew, feeling neither able to stay up past 10pm, ingest another centimetre of anything or speak in any language known to man. A better choice for all concerned I told myself. Shame on you. But I did get a good night's rest. And Notting Hill is such a lovely film...