17,000 steps
An early morning
tour this morning so no breakfast provided by our little apartment,
we had picked up some things at the bakery so we are good to go.
Our 8:00 AM
departure left about 20 minutes late, little did we know this would
go on for the rest of the day. 2 more stops from centro where we
started and we are a full van of 20 people.
Our first stop is
in El Tule, where the widest tree in the world is located. It is a
water cyprus tree that is 42 meters around. A spectacular old tree.
It cost 20 pesos each to enter a gate to see the tree closer, it is
on a church property.
Next off we go to
visit a weaving factory that is in a small town that consists of
weavers. Such beautiful work. This community has its own language
Zapotec, you wonder if this beautiful art form and language will
continue for much longer. We were shown the process from cleaning
the sheeps wool, spinning it, dyeing it with all natural ingredients
and finally the weaving. So much work. No room in the luggage so
nothing bought.
Next we are off
to Milta to see some ruins from 450AD. It is still not known exactly
how these have not been destroyed during the frequent earthquakes
when homes have been destroyed. Interesting that 70% of these ruins
are original when most all others are 70% reconstructed. You can
still climb up the palace stairs to view some rooms, but our guide
said this is changing next year and you will no longer be able to
climb in order to preserve the palace. There are tombs in the back
that you used to be able to visit, they were closed during covid and
will not be reopening. I am not sure how many visitors they will get
once the palace is closed as well. Beautiful decorations on the
buildings.
Next we moved on
to Hierve del Aqua, which are rock formations that are created by
hard mineral water cascading down for over 1000 years. They truly
look like waterfalls. There are a few pools that people can go
swimming in, but it was quite cool out so we opted to do a walk that
gave us some very nice views of the different waterfalls. There are
only 2 places in the world with this phenomenon, here and in Turkey.
We spent about 2 hours here, it was a nice visit.
Finished off our
tour at a mezcal factory where we were explained the process of
making mezcal and as well a flight to taste. The factory was a
little disappointing as when we were driving back to Oaxaca we had
seen many small factories where the donkeys were mushing the agave,
it would have been nice to see this up close.
Finished our day
at about 7:30PM back in Oaxaca. We had a buffet lunch today at one
stop so we were not overly hungry. On our street about 2 blocks away
there are lots of food vendors set up. Andre had 3 different things,
I had 2 quesadillas, a little disappointing after only having good
street food so far. Hopefully we do better tomorrow.
Back to the
apartment and we are done for the day. Tomorrow staying in town, we
need a bit of a rest day.
At the Tule tree
 |
| The church next to the widest tree in the world |
 |
| The city hall |
At the Zapotec weaving store |
| Lunch buffet, ok but not great |
At the
Hierve del Aqua
 |
| We hiked up to get the views |
 |
| One of the 2 pools you could swim in |
 |
| About 50 shops selling drinks at the entrance |
 |
| Not a great picture, while driving and it was getting dark. Love the mountains with the clouds |
At the Mezcal artisan factory
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| The agave plant flowering, it's ready to be harvested |
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| Lots of agave plants was seen while driving |
We did street food for supper,
