The Streets (it was supposed to be so eaaaaasy)

A couple people have asked me what it's like to walk around the city, and what the landscape is like, so I'll try to describe it and post some links to pictures.

The landscape isn't quite desert, but it's very arid. Oaxaca de Juarez is located in a large valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The soil is a dusty brown color and very rocky, and the greenery is mostly a dusty green, with scrub brush, small, often flowering trees, and cacti. When there's grass, it's usually because someone is cultivating it, like in parks or small private yards. It's thicker and stiffer than grass in the US. I'm assuming the color of the greenery deepens during the wet season.

The center of the city has a very colonial feel. Buildings are mostly only one or two stories, with the occasional 3 story. They are painted very bright colors, yellow, turquoise, pink, etc., or made from a greenish volcanic stone. And almost always covered with graffiti. The streets are paved to look like cobblestones, with squares in diagonal and perpendicular patterns. Some streets are paved with asphalt, and some are actually paved in real cobblestones (really hard to walk on in flip flops), but these are usually pedestrian only streets. Sidewalks are often extremely narrow and have huge holes and cracks in them, so it's best to look where you're going and not up at the buildings. You might fall into an open drain filled with garbage like empty pop bottles, candy wrappers, and rubble, and break your ankle.

The streets are also narrow, since the city was built before cars. This usually means that the streets are one way. Kind of like Chicago in that way. Stoplights are few and far between, only on the busiest of streets, and often they are attached to building corners rather than suspended on metal arms across the intersection. This means that they're pretty hard to spot unless you're looking for them. If there's no stoplights, then usually there's no traffic signs at all. Cars head full speed toward intersections and honk the horn when they cross through it to warn any cars coming from the right or left that they are crossing the intersection first.

Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. If you don't pay attention you'll probably get plastered by a car. There's no such thing as jaywalking; you cross the street anywhere and any time you want. But you better be careful not to get run over. Once in a blue moon, a car will stop and motion you across the street, but this is very rare and usually only happens for old women and mothers with young children.