ODO: 316,599
It was time for a rest day. Yup, we need those from time to time. We woke up to the threat of rain, a small herd of sheep, two incredibly friendly dogs, and one crotchety donkey. Our steering wheel has been falling apart for months, so today was the day KoKo sewed up our new steering wheel cover. It required lots of contortionism because we didn’t remove the steering wheel first. It rained on and off all day, which was fine with us. We napped, and made friends with some of the other people staying at the campground. We also finished our “rest of Mexico” map. At this point we have 30 days left in Mexico so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
In the morning we started our first big push, seven hours to Oaxaca. We passed through eight toll booths today. All in all, we’ve spent $1852MX ($104USD) on tolls so far at 19 booths with tolls ranging from $37mx($2USD)-220mx($13USD). It feels worth it to drive (hopefully) cartel free roads. This was a very surprising area, full of very dramatic green mountains. We were also not prepared for how big of a city Oaxaca was. We got lost trying to find pizza on our way through town. As luck would have it, we happened upon a different pizza place that was also a weaving studio! KoKo was pretty excited. Oaxaca is well known for its art and textiles, but we didn’t think we would just stumble into this kind of place. Our campground was just outside the city in the yard of a nice German couple with a great view of the city.
The next morning, a car with a large speaker on it, playing a recording that involved an angry cow, woke us up very early. Due to a work schedule change we had an unplanned free day, so we headed into the city. This involved some way-finding through the fields and dodging barking dogs to get to the taxi stop. These taxis (collectivos) were more like tiny buses in that they just pick up people until they’re full and take everyone into the city. We got out in the historic center. There was so much art everywhere KoKo didn’t know what to do with herself. And lots of little shops, art galleries and restaurants. We explored, and explored and explored and explored. There were several parades happening around the main square. We visited a large indoor market. We walked for miles. We even visited the textile museum. After a very long day, Berne found us a tasting menu restaurant, so we headed off to an amazingly delicious dinner. The taxi home was much less of an adventure as we had them take us all the way to the campground.
Weaving tour day!! We spent the day with a translator, in the home/workshop of a local family learning about how they do what they do. They walked us through their process for dying yarn, including a tour of their bug farm, where they raise cochineals (a bug you grind up to make red pigment). After that talk it was time to use the looms. We picked out our colors and wound our bobbins. Each of us was set up on a separate loom to weave our small projects. Berne turned out to be a very good weaver, the family was really impressed. After we finished our projects, our translator dropped us off in the city with a list of her personal recommendations. We decided a tamale tour was the best way to spend the rest of our evening. We walked and ate and ate and walked until it was time to go home.
We slept late the next morning, we were tired from all the walking we had been doing around the city. We emptied the truck in search of the bad noises we had been hearing, and discovered two things:
- A handle on our battery was not in place, this is where the rattling noise was coming from.
- Our spare gas tank was extremely inflated causing the strap around it to rub on the back window, this is what was making the screeching noise.
Now that all our mysteries were solved it was back into the city for a resupply. Our turn signals had been blinking really fast, so we stopped at an AutoZone for new bulbs. When we pulled the old ones we discovered they were melted. Not good, but also a problem for when we can find a junkyard that has a Toyota in it. There was still one last sight for us to see before leaving the area: The Big Tree. It was indeed a big tree. Check list complete and a plate of empanadas in hand, we left to camp at a petrified waterfall. It was a bit of an odd place, at one point in time it had been a big resort. There were remnants of a large swimming pool, and several hotels, which we camped near.
Since there was no shade, the sun burned us out of the tent very early. This worked in our favor because we got an early start on the waterfall hike. Petrified waterfalls are neat. Our hike down was through a beautiful tree tunnel with lots of shade and flowers. Our hike back up was exposed and hot, and we ran across a large (3ft) snake sunning itself on the path. After a lot of water, we hit the road off towards the Pacific coast again. We found a small hotel that let us camp on their property, which came with a ton of mosquitos.
Once again we were up early so we hit the road. On our way to check out the beach we saw our first flamingos hiding behind some trees, it was pretty exciting. We also drove on the official PanAmerican Highway for the first time since entering Mexico, MX 190. It was a VERY windy road full of gigantic pot holes. We found another waterfall that had camping, but when we got there the vibe was a little weird so we made the decision to do the hike quickly before the sun went down, and keep heading down the road. The hike turned into 800 stairs down into a canyon and then a scramble up a river, at one point Berne stepped in quicksand up to his hip. And the pay off was somewhat exaggerated. Getting back up the stairs was an adventure on its own. We decided we were much much much too dirty to sleep in the camper so we headed for an indoor shower. Probably because it’s the rainy season, but we got to drive through an insane lightning storm for about an hour. When we arrived we were so excited to find a nice steak house next door to the hotel that we headed there before showering. It was a solid end to our day.
