From Puebla city, we were so ready to get away from busy cities and towns and get back into the nature. Continuing south, we found an oasis called “Jardin Botanica de Zapotitlan Salinas” and stayed there for two days. One of the best 5 dollars we’ve ever spent!
It was a clean beautiful and massive protected area with huge variety of Cacti and there were doing a good job restoring the native plants in the area. We were also the only ones there and weather was just perfect to spend some time in between cacti which we’ve truly missed after Baja.
From there we had a long day of driving, mostly on empty highways through the mountains toward Oaxaca city. We’ve heard so much about the area and we were looking forward to explore the area. At the same time, we had a long list of things to do in the next big city so we had some jobs to be done. We chose a nice campsite owned by a German couple just outside the city in a small village up in the hills and after going through the city to get to the spot, we knew that was a great choice to stay away from the city. We were lucky again with our camp spot and had few peaceful days there. Being overlander themselves, they provided a peaceful and comfortable place with amenities that overlanders appreciate. On the first night, we heard about the market happening the next day in a small town called Tlacolula and a lot of locals come from the surrounding mountains to sell their goods. That was our kind of place so we planned for a visit. The next morning after a short public bus ride from our village, we arrived in Tlacolula and from the town entrance, we could feel the energy of the market day
These markets normally start at the central mercado building in town and expands to all the main streets and small alleys around it in all the directions. The whole city changes on a market day and absolutely everything is on sale! From fresh produce to alive chickens and ducks to statues of Jesus, shoes and clothing, definitely hats and above all a lot of good food to eat and a great choice of snacks to choose from.
After spending a lot of time walking around streets, we entered the main market to check that one too.
Inside the central mercado, everything is more organized. There’s meat section, flower section, a lot of eating area and restaurant section, bread section and anything that you might need, you’ll find it there. We normally try not to buy too much because we have to carry it for the rest of the day but we needed some grocery so we were shopping as we were walking through different sections.
One of the most interesting section was the barbeque section where you could select your choice of meat and vegetables from many stalls on both side and they grill it for you on the charcoal grills right in the middle of the covered area.
This area is covered in smoke and a great aroma and as soon as you enter, seller shout at you to buy meat from their stall.
It took me some time to convince Amir to try some. He is right, these meats are sitting outside for the whole day without refrigeration and it is risky to try them but we had to take the risk!! After choosing our favorite stall carefully which is always based on the personality of the seller, we had to pick our selection of meat and vegetables. We picked two pieces of meat which are paper thin in Mexico, some green chillies and spring onions, then we moved to the smoke packed grill area and finally got our food ready. And when you think you found a kind of cozy corner to have your food, we got an army of cute looking dogs staring at us and of course the meat. So we had to give away almost half of it to the dogs. Amir was happy because by giving away half of the meat, he could have a second stop for lunch at the Taco place that looked very good 🙂
After having our second lunch which was our favourite food so far in Mexico, called Arabic Taco and had our hands full of grocery shopping, we took the local bus back to our camp.
For the next day, we had a long list of things to do in Oaxaca city but the first one was some medical checks. I need to put a seperate post for our experience dealing with medical situations throughout the trip but for now just to say it was great in Mexico. We had to spend almost half a day to do all the tests that we wanted to and we booked them all just two days ago.
From there, we headed to city for the first time to look around and enjoy Oaxaca. The first stop was the central plaza and the main market at Oaxaca which there were both really nice but I would say that we were really happy that we’ve spent the day before in Tlacolula market. It was more authentic and definitely cheaper than the Oaxaca market.
Initially we thought that we will visit Oaxaca for few times during our stay but after having half a day in the city, we decided to leave the next morning. Oaxaca is truly beautiful and I think, few days are required to give it justice but on the other hand it was packed with tourists and the traffic in the city was pretty back to communicate back and forth to our camp spot and I think after more than two month in Mexico we got spoiled with a lot of beautiful authentic and untouched small towns so we decided to move on and explore and discover more authentic charming spots in the area.
The next day, we left our lovely camp spot and after having the second round of our favourite Taco in Tlacolula on our way out, we headed to a supposedly beautiful spot with an hour drive from Oaxaca which we could potentially camp there for the night.
The drive was beautiful with lots of Agave plantation and a lot of small Mezcal production facilities with lots of strange choices of Mezcal. To be honest, most of the Mezcals they had on offer were mixed with other things for flavour like chocolate and Coffee and it was hard to believe that they were using pure Mezcals after trying enough Mezcals in Mexico to kind of have the expertise in the Mezcal area 😉
Following along the way to our destination called “Hierve El Agua”, we’ve been stopped few times for money to access the pass with different communities just because the destination was popular with tourists and it made us wonder how different a culture can get when huge amount of tourists arrive in an area. The whole local culture will be gone at least for us as a visitors. We had great experience with locals almost everywhere in the world and as soon as a place get touristy, you look just like a dollar sign to them with almost no human connection just a financial transaction and it is so annoying so we always try to stay away from the feeling and the locations bring this feeling with them!
Anyway we arrived later in the afternoon, hoping that there won’t be many tourists around and we can camp in peace overnight.
The area wasn’t crowded and all the tourists were gone before the sunset and we had a great night sleep in the mountain with the great view.
From there and the next morning, we had a brief visit to another small town called Mitla and continued heading south and east toward our final stop on this leg of our Mexican trip, Chiapas.
The situation wasn’t great in Chiapas at the time of our visit and there were lots of problems in different borders with Guatemala too so I was spending a lot of my research time on where to visit in Chiapas and which border to choose for crossing into Guatemala so we could plan a safe passage throughout the Chiapas and into the Guatemala and in the meantime see the real Chiapas that we heard so much about its culture and natural beauty. But this is the story for the next time. I hope that you enjoyed this leg of our trip.
I’m aiming to finish the last part of our Mexican adventure this week too, fingers crossed. Till then enjoy life and take care.
