We woke up early, 6:30, and took a bus from the second-class bus station, grungy thing, out to Mitla. From there, we took a truck out to Hierva de Agua. The driver and his friend spoke Zapotec to each other in the front seat in between the Spanish they spoke to Caroline. We drove down dirt roads through a small farming village, probably the most rural area I have ever been in my life, oxen being used to plow fields. We drove up a winding, narrow dirt road around a mountain to get to this place, rock formations at the top of a mountain that look like frozen waterfalls and a pool of water fed by a spring that you could swim in. The pool of water goes right up to the edge of this mountain and you are swimming around in foggy water of varying temperatures and there is a spectacular vista ahead of you, mountains and mountains. The Romantics used the term sublime for such an experience. The term is apt.

Afterwards, we looked at the ruins in Mitla before taking the rickety bus back in to Oaxaca, me sleeping most of the way back.

Yesterday, I went to a gay bathhouse, El Jardin, the small, sedate city surprisingly having two of them. This one was a little grungy and lacking in most of the facilities that I have to come to expect from a bathhouse - lots of small rooms off of winding, dark hallways. Instead, the place was filled with natural light, there some tile benches near the front, some lockers in back, and to the side, showers that hadn´t been cleaned in a while and a steamroom that never really got too hot and had a puddle of lukewarm water on the floor. There were also only three other people at the bathhouse and luckily one was young and cute. We took a shower together and I sucked his dick for a while. Then I sat in the steamroom and all four of us, brothers in something, jerked off together, me coming before anyone else, leaving the scene behind to shower off my jizz. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a big picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging in the locker area. The image is all over this country but it did seem particularly funny in this setting. This people of this country belong to the goddess cult, their two divinities being the Virgin of Guadalupe and Frida Kahlo, their images all over this land everywhere you look.

These two experiences, both involving bathing and water, are different and yet somehow similar. They both recharged me and made me so happy. There is something about water and its effects on me that I have yet to totally figure out.

Before I left New York, I was having sex with Diego in his bed, his bed right in front of his window. Someone threw an egg against his window, clearly one of his neighbors, as his windows faced the building pretty far behind his. This egg-thrower told his landlord about obscene sex acts and now his landlord is evicting him from what was the best apartment deal ever. I feel somehow responsible for this and hearing about this stressful situation makes me remember what a stressful place New York can be. I am going to try to forget about that stress for a couple more weeks as I travel around this land and take in crazy sights that make me feel small and also part of something so large and beautiful, this world.