Return to Oaxaca: Mitla and Hierve El Agua

I returned to Oaxaca for a quick trip this weekend, but was able to do a little more exploring outside of the city. The trip coincided with a large demonstration about the privatization of oil in Mexico so the zocalo (main square) was filled with people camping out or sleeping on cardboard. Protestors had also taken over several of the tollbooths on the way down (free tolls) as well as surrounded the PEMEX facility just outside of the city.

Some random Oaxaca picts…..

Just went you think you’re seen everything to do with food in Mexico, you come across something new. In an offshoot of the Oaxacan food market where you find the normal food stalls is a really smoky and hot corridor (not very inviting when it’s already hot outside). There are a lot of stalls of people selling different cuts of meat and the way it works is that you walk around with a basket, pick your amount and type of meat, and then they cook it on a little grill for you. You can also order chilies and onions, which they will also grill for you, and then along with some tortillas, you find a seat and rip apart the veggies and meat with your hands. Would definitely recommend this for anyone going to Oaxaca, just make sure to grab a table that is not too close to the numerous grills.

pict: corridor ceiling

Saturday I went to a small town called Mitla, home to some ruins and the jumping off point for Hierve El Agua (boil the water). Hierve El Agua is a site located about 13 km outside of Mitla up another windy, dirt road that is where this odd set of formations is located. The water is not geothermal or hot, but appears to “boil” out of the ground, hence the name. Because the water has a very high calcium carbonate concentration, as it evaporates, over many years, it has left behind formations that look like waterfalls, but are actually calcium carbonate deposits. This is basically the same process that creates stalagmites in caves (like at the Grutas last weekend). The site was also used for very early irrigation and still has some of the original terraces used to direct the water (about 2,500 years ago).

There are also 2 pools where you can swim (and amazingly no one was there on Saturday) and because of the high calcium carbonate concentration, the water has a really turquoise color.

The next stop was the town and ruins of Mitla. While the ruins aren’t that far from the bus stop (probably a 3 km walk), it is much more fun to pay the 5 pesos and get to ride in one of the 3 wheeled taxis.

The ruins at Mitla had some really intricate designs constructed into them and several tombs that you can descend into. One section of the ruins now has a church built on top of it, but part of the rest of the ruins surround it.

Tepoztlán, Cuernavaca, Taxco, and las Grutas de Cacahuamilpa

I visted places in two new states this weekend, Morelos and Guerrero. Saturday morning I first went to Tepoztlán via Cuernavaca. Tepoztlán is a small town in the middle of some oddly shaped rock formations. It is considered to be the birthplace of the náhuatl language (still widely spoken among some indigenous people) and Quetzalcoatl (extremely important Aztec god). The pyramid of Teoztécatl is located on the summit of the Cerro (hill) del Tepozteco that rises up above the town. Many also consider it to be the center of mysticism in Mexico, and that, along with its close proximity to Mexico City, leads to an interesting mix of people from hippies to tourists (Mexican and foreign) to indigenous people. The temple, up about 1200ft of stone steps, is perched on top of the hill and has amazing views of the valley and the strange rock formations that make up the surrounding hills.

Back in town, there is an old convent with well preserved murals. The archway for the entrance to the ground of the convent and church is made entirely out of seeds and is redesigned every year by local artists.

From Tepoztlán, I backtracked to Cuernavaca, with just enough time between buses to see a couple of the major churches in town.

From there, it was about a 1.5hr bus ride to Taxco. Taxco is an old silver mining town and the heart of silver in Mexico. I have spent a lot of time on buses in Mexico, and for the most part felt safe on all those trips, however, the bus ride from Cuernavaca to Taxco was a little different. Since you are climbing into the mountains, the roads are winding with large drop offs. Our bus driver took these curves faster than I ever though possible without flipping over. Everything was flying out of the overhead bins and honestly I think the bus was on 2 wheels on several occasions, but we arrived in the end. Taxco is a small town with narrow cobblestone streets that twist through town and up and down the hills. The already chaotic streets (think no sidewalks, very narrow, and lots of blind turns) were every more so as a movie was being filmed in town that night and trucks and equipment were having major issues navigating to the center of town.

Sunday morning, after a little more time wandering around in Taxco, I caught a bus to the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa, the largest caves in Mexico, located in a karst area about 50 km from Taxco. Some of the caverns within the caves are over 70 meters tall. The area that is accessible to the public is a 2km (one direction) pathway that leads through several huge caverns and countless gigantic stalactite and stalagmite formations though there are said to be over 70km of passages in the caves.

From Cactus to Rainforest

I left the house on Thursday morning to go down to the Tehuacan offices to continue working on the watershed management proposal with all intentions of returning on Friday night or Saturday. However, it would be late on Tuesday before I would finally get home. While down in Tehuacan, we ended up scheduling meetings with an NGO in Xalapa (capitol of the state of Veracruz) for Monday and Tuesday with an EDT of 5AM on Monday, so I ended up just staying the weekend, good thing I threw in a few extra clothes at the last min.

The offices for the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Reserve are in Tehuacan. This reserve extends from the state of Puebla into northern Oaxaca and is a mix of desert and forested regions. On Saturday, I went to Zapotitlan where one of the volunteers for the reserve lives. Unlike protected areas in the US, Reservas de la Biosfera in Mexico have people and town within their borders, Zapotitlan is one of these towns. We first went to the town’s botanic gardens and then from there headed out the back of the garden, down to a dry river bed (we’re still in the dry season) which we followed for a while, and finally up a hill to see some basaltic prisms. The landscape in Zapo is spectacular with as far as you can see covered with tall straight cactus. The reserve has an amazing diversity of cactus and a lot of endemic species. Later we came back down the hill and followed the dry river bed all the way to town. The sun and heat were pretty intense on Saturday and being in a dry river bed with cracked, baked, ground does not help cool down at all. It was about all we could do to collapse on the couch and wait for the heat to break after the hike.

Sunday was spent in Tehuacan and then Monday morning 5 of us hopped in one of the reserve trucks and headed for Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz. The drive passes Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s tallest peak and the volcano Cofre de Perote. The NGO offices are actually in Coatepec, a small town about 5 miles outside of Xalapa and the heart of the Veracruz coffee-growing region. Every 3^rd shop in town sells coffee and the smell of roasting coffee is everywhere.

We ended up staying in an old hacienda about 3 miles outside of town that was filled with gardens, fountains, lush tropical vegetation and flowers (and coffee plants), and tons of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes though are a little different then the normal ones and so when they bite you they leave a large red swollen lump with a red dot (basically a blood blister) in the middle. For some reason they loved me and within an hour my legs were covered to the point that I looked like I had chicken pox or some other strange illness. The hacienda was very cool since part is restored and part is left basically as ruins, complete with the old water wheel that used to help the hacienda function as a mill.

Tuesday we had another meeting in Coatepec and then went to the Institute of Ecology. We didn’t have much time there, but were able to walk around their botanic garden for a little while. Then we went to Xalapa to finish up some other trip business at the municipal palace and finally I headed to the bus station to find a bus for Puebla.

Some like it hotter

With May 1st off for Labor Day and May 5th off for 5 de Mayo, I had a nice 5 day weekend for a lot of time on buses. I left Wednesday afternoon on a 12 hour bus trip to Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosi, which turned out to be fairly informative since I passed through one of the watersheds I have been doing a lot of paperwork for and attending a lot of meetings about, however, after getting stuck on the road for 1.5 hours after a truck overturned on a curve on the side of one of the mountain, I was ready to leave the watershed. Thursday morning we went to a town called Tamasopo, about 1.5 hrs west of Ciudad Valles. This town is known for two different sets of waterfalls, one is the Cascadas (waterfalls) de Tamasopo (2km away) and the other is called Puente de Dios (God’s bridge) (3km). Normally distances aren’t that important, however, we walked about 10 km on Thursday to get to the two waterfalls, between them, and back to town. This is usually a perfectly normal distance, however, this area of Mexico is one of the hottest in the country and Thursday temps almost reached about 50ºC ( 120ºF) with about 80% humidity and walking along dirt roads provides little shade. Luckily the waterfalls are all swimable and extremely refreshing. (Side note here, it is said that it gets so hot in Valles that birds have been known to drop from the sky while flying after suffering heat induced cardiac arrest).

We went to Puente de Dios first. There is a huge pool cut into the rocks that has several waterfalls pouring into it and a river flowing through it. Just downstream of that is the puente, or bridge, formed by a huge rock structure. From the top it just looks like a rocky bridge, but if you enter it from below, you can swim up the river and swim into the cave that has formed under the natural rock bridge. The water is an unbelievable bright crystal clear blue, and above your head is a cave with really cool rock structures and birds. From there you can swim through a small opening into the bigger pool with the waterfalls. No pictures of the cave, but you can see the large pool with the waterfall from these pictures.

Next, we went to las Cascadas de Tamasopo. This place has been developed a lot more than Puente de Dios, and because of the holiday weekend, it was pretty packed with people. There are 3 large waterfalls here that flow down into the river as well as a series of small cascades and pools along the river. Again the water is crystal clear.

Friday was a slow day hanging around Valles, everything seems to move a little slower when it’s over 110º. Saturday we headed to the state of Tamaulipas to the natural reserve called El Cielo. El Cielo is actually only about 225 miles south of the border, sometimes I forget how close we really are to the US. This reserve is mainly known for its cloud forest sections located in the higher mountainous areas, however with limited time (even more limited when you don’t have a vehicle) we focused on the lower sections of the reserve and more good swimming spots. After camping Saturday night, Sunday we headed down the road in search of the Rio Florida. 10km later we came to the turn off to the river and were lucky enough to be picked up by ½ of a soccer team headed into the town nearest to the river for their Sunday soccer game. La Florida, is another gorgeous river with brilliant water and shaded by big cypress trees. The one sad thing in seeing all these beautiful rivers, is that even while you’re swimming and enjoying them and they appear to be clean, you can’t help by notice the whiffs of the sewage smell that still emanate from them.

The trip back to Mante and then finally Cuidad Valles turned out to be a little longer than initially anticipated. We made it back to the main road and the bus stop after our swim in the river. After waiting for a long time and talking to a guy who had been waiting an equally long time, it was determined that the buses for whatever reason were not running on a normal schedule, if at all, so we started walking out to the main highway to try and catch a de paso bus coming down from the border or Ciudad Victoria. Fortunately (and I say this because again it was probably over 100º, a family offered us a ride to the main highway and it ended up that they were going all the way to Mante as well, so we got a ride all the way to the bus station which was pretty amazing.

Monday, 5 de Mayo, was spent in Tampico, the southern most city in the state of Tamaulipas, on the Gulf of Mexico. Puebla is actually the place to be for 5 de Mayo (where the battle was fought), but unlike the drinking festivities that take place in the US, 5 de Mayo celebration in Mexico are mainly about the military. In Puebla there is a huge military parade down Blvd 5 de Mayo complete with marching bands, soldiers, and tanks. It appears to be quite big, but I watched it on tv from a seafood stand in Tampico. Tampico is a really cool city that is pretty much architecturally unlike any other place in Mexico. Most of the city was build during the early 1900’s and resembles New Orleans because of the French influence in the architecture and the buildings commissioned by Porfirio Díaz.

Catching a 9pm overnight bus back to Puebla, I arrived the following morning at 6:30am, just in time to catch a 7am bus down to the town of Tehuacan in the southern part of the state of Puebla where I had a meeting about a possible watershed management project in a natural reserve that is shared between the states of Puebla and Oaxaca.