From Mexico City to Oaxaca

After an enjoyable breakfast with our friends, we left to catch the 8:oo
a.m. bus for Oaxaca. Although the bus was second class, the seats were
comfortable, the space adequate and they played two movies, one of which
was the was The Nutty Professor with Robin Williams in Spanish. The
movies, reading and sleeping broke up the 6.5 ride.


Scene coming into Oaxaca City

We arrived in Oaxaca at approximately 2:30 p.m. Oaxaca is said to be one
of Mexico´s most beautiful and vibrant cities. A colonial city with a
lovely, tree-shaded central square, El Zocalo. Oaxaca is the heart of a
region whose highly creative populace produces the country´s finest range
of crafts and some of its most exciting contemporary art. Artists and
artisans alike are inspired by the state´s deep-rooted indigenous
traditions and by its bright southern light. Oaxaca has top-class
museums, lovely architecture, charming inns and hotels and its own
flavoursome version of Mexican cuisine.

We were looking forward to exploring Oaxaca after the Tour we had planned
in The Pueblos Mancomundos (Commonwealth of Villages). The P.M. are eight
remote Zapotec villages in the thickly forested highlands north of the
Valle De Tlacolula. For centuries, in a unique form of cooperation, the
villages have pooled the natural resources of their 290-sq-km territory,
which include extensive pine and oak forests, sharing the profits from
forestry and other enterprises. Today, seven of the villages also
cooperate in an excellent ecotourism program.

After finding a place to stay we headed off to the Expediciones Sierra
Norte office to book our Tour. After much discussion, i.e., hand
gesturing and map pointing we decided to book our trip on April 5th to
8th. In our conversation(s) we had mentioned our plan to go to
Puerto Escondido after our Tour. This would have meant that we would
have arrived in P.E. during the week before Easter, i.e., the Mexican
March Break. This would have made finding accommodations tricky not
to mention the volume of students and families enjoying the beach
there.

So we are going to Puerto Escondido before our tour.