The mountains are very high and most people feel the altitude here. We wanted to go for about five days but weren't sure how we'd go as we're not super fit and haven't been at altitude for quite some time, so we only booked the first two days from the Oaxacan office then winged it after that.
We left one pack at our hotel so we wouldn't have to carry unnecessary weight. Things didn't start well on our first day when our lift was an hour late picking us up but it turned out that this was the only organisational problem we had. The villagers were so switched on!
We left Oaxaca City and headed to the hills in a twin cab ute owned by the villagers. As we headed out into the country we saw these incredibly ugly brand new apartments stuck out in the middle of nowhere. I guess new housing has to be built somewhere but this was just weird.
We arrived at the first village, called Llano Grande, and were shown to our cabin. It was great! It was spacious and was tucked away in the forest above the village. We realised later that we were the only ones there!
We had a great lunch at a local comedor (simple restaurant) and were amazed at how neat and tidy the village is. We then met up with our guide who took us out for a walk for the afternoon. You don't have to use a guide but part of the reason to do it is that it provides an important source of income to the locals, particularly at this time of year when farmers are between crops. All of the guides we had were farmers. We walked through the beautiful pine forest for about three hours. We found ourselves huffing and puffing a lot as we were at about 3,000 metres.
A simple bridge over a creek.
We walked to a viewpoint where we could see for miles.
Many of the trees have moss hanging from them. John got his Mexican cowboy look happening!
We returned to our cabin and it started to get really cold. We rugged up and went in search of another comedor that we heard had a fire. We found it at the other end of the village. We had to walk through the kitchen to get to the table next to the fire and the kitchen was disgusting. Old leftover food was sitting in pots on the stove. It turned out that this was the only bad kitchen we saw on the whole walk. The rest were immaculate! The woman here cleared the kids crayons off a table neat the fire for us and lit the fire. A Christmas tree still sat next to the fire. It was decorated with moss from the forest trees. It was all a bit bizarre! We ordered our food (being careful not to choose anything that we had seen sitting in the pots in the kitchen!) and it was actually really good!
As we walked back to our cabin we were shocked at how cold it was. Luckily, part of the service with having a cabin is that they light a fire for you! A guy lit it, using nothing but a few bits of kindling to get it started. The pine they use contains a lot of sap and it lights really easily. We soon had a roaring fire that smelled wonderfully of sweet pine. We were tired and there was nothing else to do so we crawled under the many layers of blankets on our bed at 9pm and fell asleep to the gentle light and crackling noises of the open fire. It was a truly magical part of our trip!
The next morning we awoke to a frost outside. The wood on the fire had burnt out quite quickly so it was pretty cold inside as well.
We found out that it only cost a few dollars to send our large pack on to our next destination by road so we did that and headed out by foot to the next village. Our guide was good. Almost all our guides only spoke Spanish but they all tried to tell us about various plants that we saw. They pointed out plants that are made into a tea to heal stomach aches, some that are used as soap and some that are pain killers. There were many more. It's amazing how much they all know about their local plants.
One of the plants we see everywhere in Mexico is the agave. They were huge here!
Lupins were common in the forests.
Most of the places we walked were fairly remote, however we occassionally saw locals on the track. This guy was taking his sheep out to graze.
We didn't meet many people on the trail but those we did meet were genuinely interested in us. Everyone here receives a share of the profit from tourism in some way, so they are usually really pleased to see us.
We eventually walked into the village of Cuajimoloyas. We found this hard to pronounce and ended up just calling it Gaucamole! Again, it was a beautiful and very neat village. It looked a bit like a second-world version of a Swiss village.
It still had some Mexican colour though!
There were also plenty of old, ramshackle buildings.
We found a lady in a shop that spoke English (the only English speaker we met in five days - our Spanish is improving by necessity!) and she told me where I could buy a beanie. I had fun getting directed by various people to a tiny shop around the back of a house. I found I had a choice of about eight hand-knitted beanies. Perfect!
Our cabin was waaaay up on a hill above the village. This was a pain in the neck when we were already really tired from hiking at altitude but had to talk to the walks office which was back down the bottom of the village. We stayed here for two nights and we soon learned to coordinate things so we minimised our trips up and down the hill.
The advantage of being up here though was the amazing view! The cabin was almost identical to the previous one and it turns out that they are all based on the same plan. We had a comedor right in front of our cabin. Both our cabin and the comedor faced south and the comedor had large windows so it caught all that never-ending glorious Mexican sunshine. So at the end of the day, when the temperature started plummeting, it would stay warm. We spent hours hanging out in here! Also, they made the best hot chocolates here. Oaxacan hot chocolates are amazing. They're spiced with cinnamon and are lovely and hot and frothy on a freezing cold mountain morning!
We had good food everywhere, although some of it was more substantial or interesting than others. Breakfast was usually eggs or sometimes fried cheese. Often these were served with fried tortilla pieces covered with sauce and cheese. It's strange the way they have so many different meals but many of them are basically tortillas served in different ways! One of our favourites for a lighter meal at the end of the day was tlayudas, commonly called Mexican pizzas.
We had planned to walk from village to village each day but we found out about an interesting walk that looped out and back into this village which is why we stayed two nights. Our guide this day was Evencio, a guy about our age who spoke a little English. We really like him.
Some agave plants put up huge flower stalks. These stalks are about four or five metres high. Evencio told us that they eat these flowers so we tried them later that day. They are mixed with egg and fried. They were ok.
There were beautiful views on the way.
We kept seeing small mounds of dirt. They turned out to be molehills.
They have an unusual form of stiles here. They have ramps leading up on both sides of the fenceline. I would have thought a domesticated sheep would walk up these but they mustn't.
The tracks are really well maintained.
It was Evencio's turn to do the mossy moustache thing!
Our destination was Coyote Canyon, thus called because coyotes used to live there. It was only a small canyon but it was fun scrambling through it.
We finished our walk again at lunchtime and found that we were pretty bored by late afternoon. We were too tired from the walks to do anything active (we were at 3,200 metres here so we were feeling the altitude) but there wasn't much else to do. We hadn't brought books or laptops with us as we wanted to keep the weight of our pack down so we played endless games of cards. On our first night there was only a Mexican couple staying here and they were obviously keen on each other's company, not the gringos. Luckily there were a few other people staying here on our second night and we spent some time talking to an American lady who was as bored as us because her friend kept going to bed really early.
The next day we moved onto the next village and Evencio led us again.
We often heard woodpeckers in the forest. We didn't see any but Evencio pointed out this hole that they nest in.
We carried the pack this time (Evencio was really keen to carry it so he took it for part of the way for a tip) and it was a fairly steep trail a lot of the time.
The walks mostly went through pine forests but there were also patches of farming. They farm maize and potatoes here. This is a potato field - I don't know how anyone can farm land this steep!
We made it to what would be our final village - Benito Juarez. Basketball is really big in Mexico. In villages like this, where flat space is at a premium, the road runs right through the basketball court!
Again, we arrived at lunchtime and had the afternoon to fill in. We wandered around exploring the village. We got chatting to a local tuk tuk driver (the town spreads across a few kms even though there are only about 580 inhabitants so tuk tuks are a great way to get around) and he told John where he could get mezcal. We found the shop and John bought a small glass of mezcal for about 40 cents!
We sat outside the shop, soaking up the afternoon sun for ages, just watching the villge life go past. Everyone coming to the shop said hello to us and many, inculding a young boy and an old lady, took the time to talk to us.
I was amazed at the length of this old lady's hair.
Perhaps this guy was in for a romanic night?
Heading towards sunset, complete with power lines!
The comedor didn't open til 8am and we were up well before then (it happens when you're in bed at 9pm!) so we found a sunny spot in the village and stood there warming up. There were watermelons hanging over the wall we were leaning on.
We had learned at this village that there were several points of interest we could walk to, so again we didn't move on to another village. Our guide this day was Manuel. He was 75 years old and had a bit of a limp yet he outwalked us!
We were a bit frustrated by the fact that we had to climb back up to where we were yesterday. There are rules about what guides can go where and, although we were right beside some of these places yesterday, Evencio couldn't take us to them because only guides from Benito Juarez can lead people there and he was from the previous village!
Anyway, Manuel was great. First we climbed way up a hill to a rock called Piedra Larga. It was a challenging scramble to the top.
These flowers were pretty but they were attached to prickly cactii.
John made it up first.
The view from the top was superb!
Two Aussies feeling on top of the world.
The real fun began when we had to come back down. I found it quite difficult and scary! I definitely wasn't taking photos then!
Next stop was a huge swingbridge.
From the swingbridge we walked to the Mirador, a lookout tower.
The lookout tower was a lot like the fire tower on Mt Buninyong at home, only this one was a lot more challenging to climb up! It was just an iron ladder, although it had a safety barrier around it.
We may have hat-heads but we had fun!
Although there were five more villages we could have visited, we felt we had explored the area pretty well. We were also a bit sick of wasting the afternoons so we finished our walk here. We had walked for five days and felt it was enough. There were no vehicles going to Oaxaca City for another few hours so this local 'collectivo', a vehicle that operates like a bus, took us to the nearest intersection. He waited with us until another collectivo came past. It was going half way to Oaxaca so we took it.
A bit further on, an old lady flagged the vehicle down and climbed in next to me. She kept stealing glances at me and I stole glances at her! She was obviously straight off the farm. She wore a woven cloth skirt with a worn apron over the top and these were topped with a dirty red cardigan. She had a striped woven scarf around her head and she smelled faintly of smoke and urine. Her hands were a much darker brown than her face and the creases on them were almost black. She was such an interesting looking person.
At the next town we found a bus that brought us to Oaxaca. There always seems to be someone around who can help us. We had no idea whereabouts in Oaxaca the bus would stop. A young man next to us told us where to get off and we walked from there. Map apps on phones have changed the way we travel!
I'm really glad we did this walk. It was a great way to see a beautiful part of the country. The people were all lovely and the peace and tranquility was a blessing after the raucus noise of Oaxaca. It was also great to see how communities can work together to benefit everyone.
Cheers!
Heather
Heather
Oh Heather the trails and views look divine. The agarve flower surprised me. Keep enjoying and keep posting. Love Bee
ReplyDeleteThe succulents and cactii in this country are incredible Bee. There are so many really interesting types.
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