The Ruins of Monte Alban

November 8, '99

Another great bus ride! A nice toll road and a first class bus, two movies in English with a few free sodas. The change in country side was beautiful. From fertile plains to mountains and back again. This bus was better than any of the others. Only about nine other people were on the  bus so there was plenty of room to spread out. This particular line also gave you about six extra inches of leg room. Smooth sailing all the way. At the bus station I asked a friendly looking woman if she knew of an inexpensive hotel. She recommended The Casa Arnel about five blocks away. We checked into a clean room at about 7 or 8 and headed out to find some tacos. Not having much success we took a city bus to the downtown area. The European styled square, surrounded by sidewalk cafes was a good place to observe the city. We had a few beers and headed back to the room. We were in bed by 10:30.

November 9, '99

The Casa Arnel offered tours to the ruins of Monte Alban for $10 per person including transportation and an English speaking guide. We could have found a cheaper bus ride to the ruins and sought a guide there but neither of us has the energy to go on the hunt. The tour was quite informative and the guide spoke very good English. We had an hour at the end of the tour to climb to the highest point and take it all in. Its estimated that 25,000 people once lived there and it was hard trying to picture this. Only about half of the excavated site was open due to the 7.3 earthquake just last September had damaged many of the structures. I wish I had a camera to take some pictures. Back at The Casa Arnel, we checked out and headed for other accommodations closer to the center of town. We found a nondescript hotel with a clean room for about $15 close to downtown. We went back to the same sidewalk cafe and had an early dinner, then went looking around for an Internet Cafe. Neither the first not the second had an open line for me to plug into but we were able to download all of the e-mail from the past two weeks. (thank you to everyone for all the support. After the loss of the camera there was thought of abandoning the website, but it's apparent that some of you do actually check in on us and are enthused about the site. For now I will continue but I need another camera.) 71 messages took about 20 minutes to download on the cafes very slow connection. Thank god I wasn't uploading there or it would have taken all day, literally. We then did some walking around and found a hostel with a one computer connection to the internet, no network, just what I need. The gray haired man in the door spoke in perfect English and asked if we wanted to use the internet and I asked if I could use my own computer. He didn't think it would be a problem but told us that the computer would be in use for a few hours as it was every night, for students to do their home work. I returned a few hours later and made the previous update to the site. They stayed up over an hour past closing so that I could finish. (Thank You!)