Day 65 & 66: Monday night at Nueva Babel

We decide to stay in Oaxaca through Monday so we can see this guitar player. Andrea assures me he is so full of life and happiness I will not regret the experience. We have a habit of saying we're leaving "tomorrow" and three days later we are still saying, "we are leaving tomorrow." And so now, three days later...we are leaving for San Cristobal tomorrow, to arrive on friday morning.

But the guitar player...Leo, his eyes shine with so much vibrance you think you are looking into the beauty of the sun, he laughs...all the time and his whole body laughs with him and it makes the whole room fill with happiness. "Every sound that isn't Leo's laugh is an empty sound," my traveling companion blurts out one night at dinner. So I obviously don't regret the experience or the rest of the night.

We stay up until 8am dancing and laughing: Leo, Andrea, Leo's friends, and Misty (a beautiful woman from Seattle who has a soul so full of energy and excitement I glow just to be in her presence). It's too late or early to return to our couchsurfing house (a 60yr old women who works 2 jobs and has a nephew we never see, who never opens the door for us. The fence to the house is too high to climb and jump, we've tried). So Andrea and I sleep on a friend of Leos' couch, I guess that's what couch surfing is all about.

We spend the morning curled up under numerous blankets, talking over tea and toast with Paco's mom, or maybe his aunt. We spend the afternoon at a sushi place. Leo plays guitar there sometimes, so we get the sushi free of charge. I sit soaking up the sun, eating sushi, and drinking beer, while Paco plays the flute, Leo laughs, and Andrea and I bask in our happiness.