Cold again. I don't like staying in bed until 10am just to stay warm, waiting for the outside temp to rise. Now I'm ready to move on just to be warmer.  

Don't get me wrong: I really like Oaxaca. There's a lot to see, and loads of restaurants. You could spend a week here, run yourself totally ragged, and see most of what there is to see. But usually you don't remember much doing it that way. You could take two weeks, in a slightly relaxed pace, but still on the go from morning 'til night, and add a little depth to your knowledge, thus making it more memorable. Or you could stay for a while, like maybe a lifetime, and just enjoy everything this city has to offer. Definitely it's on my list of possible places to stay when I decide to settle down. The traffic, especially downtown, is still a problem; I could probably learn to ignore it, by reading or otherwise occupying my time (I don't intend to ever drive again: I'd rather sit back and let someone else deal with that; and seeing as I'm not wealthy enough to have a chauffeur, it's buses for me.)  

Once you get used to Oaxaca, getting around isn't so bad, the city doesn't seem so big. The people have been really great to me.  

So I went out to get money and Avodart, and to get my bus ticket. When I got to the bus station, I went up to the counter and asked for a ticket to Tapachula. There are two long haul buses  that go there, both overnighters, one at 7:30pm, one at 9:30pm. Both were full. I was fully prepared to leave today: bags all packed, and mentally already moving on. So I went and sat down to rethink my plan. There are only two routes going south to Guatemala: through Tapachula or through Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the former being a little quicker and cheaper. I had intended on going to Tuxtla next, but it's even higher up in the mountains, thus colder, but I can always get there from Guatemala. Nevertheless, I checked that route: full, for the next two days; same for Tapa. So I bought a ticket for Tapa for the 31st: yes I'm going to spend New Year's Eve on a bus.  

I left the bus depot, but as I got into the sunlight I reached for my sunglasses (usually hanging on my shirt) but no sunglasses. I thought maybe I had laid them down at the ticket counter or maybe when I sat down to rethink my plan. I retraced my steps, but no sunglasses. Someone probably snatched them up, as they were Nikes. So I lost a nice and very expensive pair of sunglasses, and I have to stay here two more days when I was already stoked on leaving, and I'll be spending New Year's Eve on a bus instead of at a hostel with a bunch of other people. So yah I'm a little bummed out right now.  

So, now I have two more days to work on my itinerary. As I'm working on that, I checked the weather there: it's no warmer there than here. Checked out some more places: same problem. The warm places are out of the way, and there aren't enough of them: seems most of the places I want to go to are at higher elevations. So I kept checking, going south. Turns out the only warm places are all the way down to Panama. Panama City is always hot and humid, even this time of year, and it'll only get worse; better off there in January than in June.  

So now the plan is to get a bus ticket to Panama City ($220 plus $250 for rooms and food for 6 days - plane $800) and work my way north from there, heading into cooler temperatures as the months go by and get warmer.  

There probably are regional buses that would hop from town to town to get me going south today, but that's way too much hassle, and would need at least one overnight stay, and when I got to Guatemala I would find out that it's cold there too.  

So I get two more days to research and replan.