Waking Up in Oaxaca

Oaxaca is a city that believes in getting up early.

After catching the night bus out of Mexico City and traveling for 9 hours through the night, my friend and I arrive in Oaxaca before the sun, near 4:30 in the morning. Everything is quiet and still. I'm exhausted from sleeping in an upright position and after visiting Mexico City for supplies, my backpack is quite literally full of rocks. I drag my feet as we leave the bus terminal, having no idea where we are heading but wishing more than anything that our destination is a warm and soft bed.

Not so much luck. We arrive at a plaza that looks so similar to all the plazas in Mexico. There are plants and park benches, as well as a rather worn down looking gazebo in the center. At 4:30 in the morning, I find it hard to be impressed by anything Mexican and want more than anything to sleep. We sit, pull out some bread and avocado left over from the bus ride dinner, and begin to wait for the day.

I start off sitting on a wet park bench before I realize I have my sleeping pad. So I move to the ground and sit on my sleeping pad. Five minutes later I am curled up under a plastic bag, stretched out on my sleeping pad and dozing in the middle of a Mexican plaza like a homeless person with absolutely no shame or care for digneity. When you find yourself in a culture or country in which you have nothing in common, it is amazing the different things that become acceptable. I stay that way for an hour.

Finally, the sun starts to hint at arrival. By this time, nearing 5:30am, there are buses and taxi´s picking up and dropping people off at the plaza. I am told by my friend that the people have been gathering for about 30 mins and every one of them has stopped to look at the weird, homeless gringa sleeping on the ground. Laughing, we pack up our bags and head for the city center for my first hot chocolate of my trip. It is cold in Oaxaca, closer to the mountains with a sky hinting at rain.

As we walk, a church bell starts to ring. How quaint, I think, wondering how wonderful it would be to wake up to a church bell ringning in the distance. The single chime gives several tolls before the church tower errupts into the chaos of what sounds like one-hundred bells ringing together. After what seems like more than enough time to wake the whole city, the bells stop ringing and a stillness settles back over the town and the city. It is now 6:00am.

But, Oaxaca knows its people, and somewhere within city limits there is a person begrudgingly pulling a pillow or blanket over their head to ignore the approaching morning. To spite the person and their pillow, Oaxaca turns on the last and most random of its morning alarms. A marching band appears from the front of a church, drum cadance running down the nearly empty streets. Although the band lacks the tight formation and hideous uniforms of my high school marching band days, as they meander down the street they have everything down to the drum major. The drum cadance signals a song and the whole band begins to play- tubas, trumpets, clarinets, and saxophones. Only slightly after 6:00 in the morning, the citizens of Oaxaca wake up to the marching band rendition of yet another beloved mariachi song.