Mexico continued - The highlands and a beach

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San Cristóbal de las Casas

Ok soon you are going to hate me if I say this but… San Cristobal is an amazingly beautiful colonial city. Cobblestone streets, huge cathedral, not one but two placas, pedestrian only streets and loads of beautiful buildings. And it's freezing. The city is in the mountains at 2200m and the temperatures range between 5 and 20 degrees. Quite a change from the 30+ degrees that we enjoyed so far (in Mexican winter!). We are completely not prepared for temperatures that cold and at night we wear every single piece of warm gear we own.
The journey to the town wasn't that pleasant either. We were promised a 5 hour bus journey which in the end took 11 hours as the bus took the looooong route and was also delayed by a road protest.
Either way we had a great time here the town atmosphere was buzzing as it was a few days before Xmas. We chose a trendy hotel smack in the centre of the old town and spent most of the days walking around town enjoying the blue skies and the milder temperatures. When dusk falls (or before) we settled into one of the many Chocolaterias and devoured a hot chocolate made from nothing else than chocolate beans, sugar and Almonds.
The town is also well known for its merchandise sold by indigenous women who mostly live in slum like suburbs around town. On sale is everything that keeps you warm. Ponchos, blankets, hats, beanies, scarves, socks and gloves made from wool… you name it they have it. Apart from that you can buy t-shirts, paintings and any kind of trinkets you can think of. Dillon extended his key ring collection that he started back in Russia and which consists now of at least 12 pieces that hang off his backpack.
All this is sold either straight on the street, in 2 or 3 permanent outdoor markets or on the plaza in front of the cathedral, where everyone seems to gather at sundown. Our bags were bulging by the time we left.

San Cristobal also has great restaurants and a very cosy mezcaleria which is just the place to down one or two mezcals to warm us up. Mezcal is the big brother and basically the same as Tequila. Tequila is a trademark name and can only come from one specific province in Mexico. Interestingly most people here drink the Mezcal with Oranges dipped into chilly salt spiced with maguey (agave) worm (yum…?).
To warm up a bit we did a tour which descended down the mountain to warmer weather and the scenic Cañón del Sumidero which is a massive canyon through which a river flows. Tourists are ferried up and down the river in speedboats. The canyon is very impressive, long, very narrow and if you believe our tour guide the walls are up to 1000m high and they look it. It all looks very Mexican with loads of cacti growing on the banks and clinging onto the steep walls.

Puerto Escondido

After the cold and high altitude we decide it's time to change it all and go to the beach. After a “lovely” 12 hour overnight bus trip we arrived in Puerto Escondido where we checked into our airbnb flat directly on the beach. No kidding we only had to walk 20 metres and through a small bar and we were on the beach. Just what the doctor ordered.
As it was Christmas it was pretty busy but there weren't any hotels close to us so not that many people used “our” beach. 90% of the tourists are Mexicans so there was always a lot going on in the far corner of the beach with people having picknics, frollicking in the waves and generally having a good time. The other end of the beach and past some large rock formations was where the more up market hotels and beach bars were, very enjoyable for sunset drinks.
Puerto Escondido is famous for surfing and has big shore breakers which doesn't make it is great for swimming but luckily we were a bit away from where the biggest waves crashed. We spent a few hours in the water getting pushed around and in some hotel pools as it was hot hot hot here.

It was finally Christmas eve. We had decorated our room as well as we could with the one christmas light chain, a reindeer figure and the pinata christmas tree that we brought from San Cristobal. The lights even played carols so we got into the Christmas spirit. Dillon to his astonishment found that the German Sankt Nikolaus came already on the 24th and left him one gift with more to come from Aussie Santa in the morning. We enjoyed a delicious BBQ spit roast turkey meal complete with roast veggies and cranberry sauce as we sat at our table at the next door beach bar on the sand. Unfortunately the night wasn't a gift itself as Dillon fell sick not long after going to bed. We spend most of the night watching over him as he had to vomit over 5 times. He got better late on xmas day.
He awoke to see that Santa had been but went back to bed and fell asleep without opening his pressies. He eventually woke and opened his gifts and stated “gee Santa is clever to find me here”. Unsurprisingly we spend Christmas day in our flat recovering and sleeping.

One gift that he didn't ask Santa for was the biggest and most expensive of all. Dillon really has been a little gem of a travel companion on this adventure, following us everywhere with very minimal fuss, taking in all the “adult” sights, hanging out with mainly adults travellers without other kids for company. We have been super delighted at how he has fared and really enjoyed experiencing the sights via his 4 year old observations. As a treat for him we gave him an “experience” gift for Christmas….a trip to DisneyWorld in Orlando. We booked flights a week before we head back to Australia and will spend a week there. Man I wish my parents would have been so generous.

The rest of our time in Escondido consisted of swimming, cooking, drinking coconuts, a few pina coladas over a few sunsets and adorning our bodies with henna tattoos.

Oaxaca

Good things come to an end so we left Escondido to head for Oaxaca to spend New Years.
Yes you guessed it Oaxaca is a very nice colonial city….( Each one of these has captured our hearts ESP. Oaxaca and San Cristobal.
The city has the usual Placa which in Oaxaca's instance is traffic free which means it's even livelier than usual. Apart from that there are pedestrian streets, loads of churches and markets but more of that later.
We did a tour out of town to admire Mexico's biggest tree the El Árbol del Tule which has a trunk girth of 58 m, a weaving factory, some more pre spanish ruins and a waterfall. The best was saved for last and we visited a Mezcal distillery. I was never to sure how they make it and we got a thorough explanation. It goes like this. Let the Agave grow from anywhere between 5 and 30 years (yes 30!), cut the leaves off and just use the “trunk”, make a really big fire and heat up big stones, place the agave trunk on the hot stones and cover, leave for a day or two, grind the now soft agave until its pulp, put in a large vat, ferment for a few days, distill the slightly alcoholic brew a couple of times and viola you have Mezcal. Circa 25 kg of agave are needed per litre of Mezcal. 40% alcohol! Cheers.
Luck will have it that a Mezcal festival (yes that exists) was on in town. Needless to say that I dragged everyone to the park where it is held. Lo and behold it wasn't just a Mezcal festival there was also a fairground in the same park. Dillon was very excited by the many bouncy castles, ferris wheels, trampolines, dodge em cars (he is a wild driver) and other fairground attractions. We came back here basically every night we stayed to practice for Disney World.
In the end I finally made it to the Mezcal festival where there were 20+ stands selling different Mezcal. If you just look at the sales person you were offered a free sample taster. It was all very civilized though and they had some great bands playing on a huge stage as well.

We thought we do something special for New Year's eve and we booked ourselves into a Mexican/Oaxacan cooking class in the home of a local chef. We went shopping in the local market to collect ingredients including grasshoppers and chocolate for our sauces. We learned how to do Tacos, Tomales (chicken in banana leaves) Guacamole and most importantly how to do Mole from scratch. Mole is something that has a special place in the heart of many Mexicans and especially Oaxacans. It is a very heavily spiced sauce which comes in different colors and flavours. Most if not all are made with dried chillies and anything from Chocolate to Almonds. Very tasty and nearly a meal in itself. An American/Argentinian family was in the class and their son was a month younger than Dillon so he had a great day with his playmate.

While we are on the subject of Chocolate. Oaxaca is famous for Chocolate which is mainly used for drinking or for the mole. There are many shops selling and more importantly making chocolate. If you want you can get your own chocolate mix done in the shop. Select your chocolate beans, amount of sugar, amount of cinnamon, amount of Almonds and watch them all being ground together in front of you. The result tastes as amazing as it is to watch the chocolate being made. Needless to say we stocked up (with quantities that may concern Aussie customs) and had hot chocolate at any opportunity. You will never go back to Milo once you tried this.

As it was NYE we tried but we did not really make it to midnight as Dillon does not last that long. The Oaxaca zocalo was definitely one of the most atmospheric amongst many town squares we'd been in, people out every night just enjoying the town, families, kids, street vendors, performing clowns, musicians. NYE was a lot of fun here and before we went to bed we bought some ginormous sparklers (huge), traditional coloured eggshells filled with confetti or flour which you throw at each other and snow foam in a spray can to spray each other with, certainly the three of us got into the spirit. So much that we had to buy another can of foam and more sparklers. I could also not resist and bought some homemade bangers which definitely were very loud.

Getting away from it all - Santa Catarina Lachatao

We had to figure out what to do with the few days we had before departing to Florida and that's when we heard about the Sierra Norte region. This region just north of Oaxaca is known for its small pretty mountain towns with great accommodation and activities. That's how we come to stay in Lachatao which is a pretty little town high in the mountains at 2200m where only 200 people live. The whole trip is organized by the community run Ecotourism initiative. The village got together and set up the initiative, build 5 amazingly charming stone huts overlooking the valley, founded a community restaurant and different locals have been trained as tour guides. We settled into our cosy hut (more 4 star than shack) complete with open fireplace, hammock on the verandah overlooking the town. No rest for the wicked through as the first guided tour was waiting for us. We visited a gold mine. Gold was mined here for hundreds of years, was the reason for the town's existence and the local mountain is supposed to be criss crossed my mine shafts. The mine we visited wasn't that old though and was only shut down 20 years ago as the environmental impact was too great for the locals. We were then handed over to the resident archaeologist/painter/sculptor. He led us to the site of the local Zapotec temples/ruins. The ruins themselves are not great at all but the tour we did was fantastic. Oscar our guide knew how to bring it all to life and we ended up hugging a tree, walking up a mountain not daring to look up as this would anger the gods, just to be presented with an amazing view when we were allowed to look again. That all followed with a bit of meditation on top of the mountain, under a tree where a slight breeze just rustled the leaves and a fire lighting ceremony in an ancient stone circle. This alerted the inner fireman in Dillon and we were asked many times if we are allowed and if we should call the fire brigade. All in all a great start.

We spend the first night rugged up in bed, falling asleep as we watched our log fire across from the foot of our bed and listening to it crackle. It didn't last all night and we woke up cold early morning quite cold.

The next day we wandered down the hill and across the tiny town to the only restaurant where the local mother/son team was responsible for cooking. We ate here breakfast, lunch and dinner for 4 days and only saw two other couples dining here in the four days. We had very scrumptious hot chocolate with any meal and in the morning we had everything from delicious omelettes, eggs with tomato salsa sauce and fried tortilla pieces in spicy tomato sauce and enjoyed plenty of spicy chicken mole. The food in Mexico is really great.
In front of the restaurant was the town museum, grand old church which is way too big for the town, a grassy forecourt complete with an old iron horse cart and basket ball court.

The next day we did another tour this time to an old gold processing Hacienda. The hacienda was in use for a couple of hundred years and processed the gold bearing stone that was mined in the area. It was only destroyed in the Mexican revolution to cut off the gold supplies to Spain.
The Hacienda was set into a narrow valley and must have been an impressive sight when it was operating. We explored the ruins which included a huge 8 -10 meter tall water wheel house and aqueducts for an hour or so.

We settled into the routine and did not do much for the afternoon or night apart from visiting the restaurant. Quite relaxing.



The next day we were off on our equestrian friends and spend 3 hours riding through the countryside. As we are in the mountains that means along ridges, up and down hills on a small path that was used during the Zapotec times. The highlight was riding through a valley where each and every tree was “dripping” heavily with Spanish moss. This majestic scenery continued down the trail for about one kilometre.

That afternoon we went for a drive to a nearby town. We had lunch at a trout restaurant where we had some inspired food. Mine was a trout in foil with what must have been a block of cheese, rice, ham!, carrots and some other vegetables. Hm….
Way better was the zipline which they had running across the valley. For $2 you can't say no and the family geared up. Dillon like it so much he did it 3 times. We have created an adrenaline junky…

Unfortunately it was then time to say goodbye. We had grown rather fond of our little town and we're quite sad to leave.

We went back to Oaxaca for two nights. As usual we visited the local fairground where Dillon yet again played to his heart's content.
Kellie went shopping and we had to buy a whole new bag for her haul…

To be continued….

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Photos

Now thats stretchy cheese
A speciality here

Thats how you make chocolate
Fresh beans, sugar, cinnamon and almonds

Spanish moss galore
Went on for an kilometre

Ziplining
Dillon enjoyed it so much he did it 3 times

Mobile baked banana stand
Wood fired