As much as we liked Oaxaca, there was one member of our party who was not a fan: Milo. Oaxaca de Juárez turned out to be one of the least dog-friendly cities we visited. Although the hotels seemed dog-friendly enough (we only looked at two, and both seemed fine with him), the city itself wasn’t great for dogs. There were no real parks that he could run around on off-leash, very little grass, and just not a lot of dogs on leash. Even though the city is hot, there also weren’t a lot of places where we could sit and have a meal with him at our side, apart from a handful of select tables on the Zócalo. In most large Mexican cities, we see a ton of people with dogs, and veterinarians or pet-supply stores on every block. In Oaxaca, not so much .
So after something like eight nights in the city, I wanted to see some trees. We started with a stop in Santa María del Tule (or just “El Tule”) to see what a tree that is reputed to be the largest in the world. Coming from the land of the Redwoods, I expected to see something clearly visible from the highway. But the famous ahuehuete tree in El Tule is a type of cypress that is not particularly tall but wide. It is like a wall of tree.
Juan was hoping that Milo could, um, mark the largest tree in the world, but it was fenced off from potential leaking dogs. After lunch in the market, we drove up into the Pueblos Mancomunados. These are some small towns in the mountains that charge 50 pesos to enter, and another 40 to camp. Again, we found ourself on a nice road that eventually deteriorated. We decided on the town of Llano Grande, some 3100 meters up.
After setting up camp, we tried to buy some ice at one of the two miscellanea in town. There was no ice. And that night, we found out way. It was freezing. We could have made ice ourselves by just filling a plastic bag full of water. We stayed for two nights and enjoyed lots of great hiking. Nothing, by the way, makes you feel as old and infirm as hiking through the mountains with a one-year-old Tibetan Terrier/Border Collie mix.
Once we had enough of the cold, we drove through the town of Mitla, which was rather disappointing, on our way to Hierve El Agua, a spot with natural infinity pools and a petrified waterfall that is the region’s natural wonder. Arriving late in the day on a Saturday, the place was packed.
Milo loves the mountains and the woods, but he was absolutely insane for Hierve El Agua. He ran around watching the water bubble out of the ground and gave us heart attacks by bounding straight for the ledges and coming to a dead stop at the cliff edges. But the real treat was camping that night in absolutely perfect weather (after days of intense heat and nights of intense cold). You could walk around in a tee-shirt long after the sun had set. And in the morning, we had the grounds all to ourselves.
Milo was so in love with the place that he even jumped into one of the pools. The pools are really cold, but man…what a view. We could probably have stayed in Hierve El Agua chilling out for a few nights, but we were low on supplies and even I was aching for Internet.
To close, on our trek back to Chiapas, we stopped in the town of Tehuantepec. We’d passed through here before but stopped in neighboring Juchitan, where we probably stayed in our worst hotel ever, although the town’s square was really nice and filled with birds. But this time around, we stopped in Tehuantepec. It’s smaller and something about it is completely strange. It’s sort of dilapidated but completely charming. There were groups of boys playing competing brass instruments just off the square yesterday. And everyone rides around in these standing cabs that make them all look like tiny captains in overlanding ships.
More photos from Oaxaca on limpire.com.
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