Oxaca (Part 2)

During the last days I have been exploring Oaxaca and its surroundings a bit further. On Saturday I have been in the Botanical garden. 🌵 It is a bit different from the botanical gardens that I knew so far. On a huge area it exhibites currently approximately 1.000 indigenous plants 🌱 from Oaxaca. All these plants have been gathered from their original region and have been brought to / replanted in the botanical garden. It is planned to increase the number of species exhibited in the garden to 13.000 🌳🌲🌴🌵
During evening and night time I frequently went with the other travelers from the hostel to one of the many a fairs that were close by. Currently during Christmas time, there are a lot of fairs and parades in Oaxaca. One night, a parade was even marching around and playing very loudly 🎺 during the entire night and kept everyone in the city awake. 😵‍💫Apparently this is accepted here.
On another day Andrew (from Australia but living in the US), Zelda (from China but living in the UK), Matt (from England) and I went on a self-organised tour to Tiotitlan de Valle. Andrew wanted to buy a typical rug and we others simply enjoyed the adventurous journey to the village.😊
Afterwards we made our way to Hierve el Agua. The journey to this place was as interesting as it could be: all four of us went with one Tuk-Tuk 🛺 to a crossing to change to a bus. Including the driver this makes 5 people on the Tuk-Tuk. The others had to squeeze in in the back and the driver and me were in the front. I sat on the edge of the front seat and pushed with my arm against the roof so that I would not fall out of the Tuk-Tuk. Luckily the ride was only about 10 minutes long. Then we took the overcrowded public bus 🚎 to Mitla and had a quick late lunch before we hopped on the loading area of a pickup 🛻 (which was a collectivo / shuttle). The driver drove like crazy and we had to hold on to the pickup where we could so that we don’t fall out in one of the sharp corners of the serpentines going up the mountain. ⛰️
Hierve el Agua is a system of petrified waterfalls, formed by calcium carbonate and is truly a mind boggling place. The waterfalls are of natural origin and were formed thousands of years ago by the runoff of water with a high mineral content. It really looks like the waterfalls are frozen in time. 🕰️ In addition to the waterfalls there were a few liquid but ice cold ponds. I went in only with my feet but the others were brave enough to take a full dip. 🥶
The remaining days I used the time to relax a little bit and to walk around the city of Oaxaca. This night I will take the night bus to Puerto Escondido 🌴 in the south on the pacific coast. It will only be a short trip as I decided to come back to Oaxaca for Christmas. 🎅Read more