The landscape changed from farmland to mountains and the fauna changed from pineapples to pine trees, this reminded me of home and it even smelt like our mountains. You know, that pine tree and fresh mountain air smell that greets you when you are on your favourite hiking or mountain bike trail.
This also turned out to be another great road, twisting and turning all the way into Oaxaca. We putted along most of time not exceeding much more than 50kph, just taking in the scenery and enjoying the day now that the weather had cleared up and it was a beautiful 28C. We pulled into the bustle of Oaxaca with it’s cobblestone streets and somehow managed to get to where we wanted to be despite not having a proper map. This seems to happen allot to us. We found a nice hotel a few blocks from the Zocalo (central park and market area), there is probably a great Grandpa Simpson story why it is called that because it seems like a funny name for “downtown”.
The city was well worth the side trip, it reminded us a lot of Antigua Guatemala without the volcanos. Nice architecture, great food, friendly people, nice weather, and a very peaceful energy. We of course found the fruit market and a bakery for our breakfast supplies, then spent the evening walking around town taking pictures and people watching. The central park was filled with vendors and performers of all ages.
There are also numerous restaurants and just enough North American influence to make it comfortable. The city is rich with history as it was founded by the Spanish in 1521 and their influence is still present in the elaborate churches.
The Catholics have quite a business going here, these are some of the largest and most opulent churches we have seen in all of Central America. The next day we walked the parts of the city core that we thought would be worthwhile, that included a nice little uphill climb to the observatory. Unfortunately, it was under renovation so we could not check it out thoroughly. We did however find another park with waterpark for the children to play in, one little fella was having such a good time everyone in the park was watching him.
The road from Oaxaca was well marked and we made pretty good time through the mountainous area. Once again the landscape changed from the more familiar pinetrees to a more desert like shrubbery and dry grass.
Some of the local housing.
Tehuacan was meant to be an overnight stop but once we spent the afternoon walking around we decided we would take an extra day to see what else we could find in this little city. The Lonely Planet guide only said that it was a sleepy little agricultural town or something to the like. We found this to be inaccurate to say the least. The market area was very busy, and the central park also had a bandstand much like Oaxaca, although we did not see any bands. Flanking one side of the park was the municipal building that was decorated with elaborate murals that tell the story of the different areas of each Department within state.
We also had two more firsts, the town provided us with the first time we seen a whole street full of flower shops, and thus the first time that a market street had a very pleasant aroma. I think our hotel was on the busiest street in town, so it was again necessary to sleep with ear plugs or have a restless night listening to cars honking and music blasting. We really enjoyed this sleepy little town.
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