One last post from Tule and Oaxaca City covering our final week here. We ended up staying at El Rancho for an entire month, so there ended up being a lot to cover. In the end, it wasn’t a bad place to ride out the rest of rainy season, celebrate some milestones, and ring in the dry season.
Nothing but blue skies in the forecast.
And no more long and nasty trudges through mud bogs to get in and out of the RV park—just beautiful, dry and dusty roads. I’m particularly excited about that one.
Our Mexico-USA RV Journey 2024-25
Oaxaca is a renowned region for its coffee production, and Oaxaca de Juarez (Oaxaca City) is ground zero for sampling the area’s best. We made sure to stock up before leaving town.
With everything finally drying out, it’s high time for a good ol’ fashioned hike to a mirador. There’s one we’ve been eying high above town, but it requires ascending a few stairs to access.
Cerro del Fortín has a network of dirt roads and footpaths. It’s not exactly a hikers paradise, but as close as it gets in and around town.
As we ascend, we’re treated to a different perspective on a city we’ve gotten to know pretty well over the past three weeks. It makes us realize how much we have yet to explore. Always got to save something for next time.
Sure, Cerro del Fortín is great exercise. But the main reason people do this hike is for the views of Monte Albán across the valley. It was fun to see the hilltop pyramid ruins and entire ridge from a bit farther away than our visit there last Thursday.
After a nice, long hike, the kids were excited to discover this playground waiting for them near the bottom.
The city is already gearing up for Day of the Dead, the biggest festival of the year in Oaxaca City. There was a time when we thought there’d be no way we’d ever miss an opportunity to be in Oaxaca City during Dia de Muertos.
But with family arriving on the coast in early November and all of us more than ready to get back to the beach after being stationary for a month, it’s just not in the cards this time around.
But we didn’t miss Oktoberfest in Oaxaca!
I was a bit skeptical when we stumbled upon this poster last week. But I do have to say El Olivo Gastrobar throws one heck of an Oktoberfest celebration—especially given that we’re deep in the Mexican highlands and nowhere near Munich.
I honestly didn’t think anyone would be there. Oh how wrong I was. The place was packed. Seems that everyone indeed got the memo and was really getting into the spirit of things—patrons and staff, alike.
In true Oktoberfest style, the beers were big (though only half a true Maßkrug). Not to worry, the restaurant at one point suddenly dispensed to all adults a complimentary pint of Märzen. At that point, Lori and I agreed, it was time to break out the Pokemon videos for the boys. Looks like we might be here for a while.
With a handful of days left, a new rig pulled in with a new family from Brazil. The boys became fast friends with their 11-year-old boy. If there’s one thing that’s made it hard to leave here, it’s the steady stream of amigos to play with. But they never stay for long, and we know that soon we’ll need to mosey on as well.
The big day has finally arrived in Tule: It’s El Dia del Árbol (The Day of the Tree). The tree in question is the world-famous Árbol del Tule.
This tree has the “stoutest” tree trunk in the world, with a diameter of between 30 and 45-feet (depending on how it’s measured). It’s believed to be 1,200 to 3,000 years old!
Lots of singing and dancing throughout the day in honor of the king of trees.
One final trip into the city before we head out.
Tule’s not the only town celebrating today. Rain or shine, it seems something’s always going on in Oaxaca City whenever we make it into town.
After being pinned down in the RV on too many rainy days, it suddenly dawned on me how little Oaxacan mole we’ve had nearly a month into our time in Oaxaca.
We were holding out for a fabled Oaxacan mole sampler that many restaurants apparently used to do, but that hadn’t yet panned out for us yet.
Oaxaca is known as the Land of Seven Moles—so many more than the standard chocolate variety, which is actually from Puebla (Mole Poblano). Of the seven, we’ve so far only tried Mole Verde and Mole Rojo (along with Poblano), but still have Amarillo, Chichilo, Estofado, Colorado, Negro, Manchamantel, and Verde…so a sampler is definitely in order.
There was one last place to try: El Escapulario. Turns out, they no longer offered a sampler, so we got the two kinds that looked the most interesting to us (Colorado and Negro), and called it good.
Negro was good, but the tenderness of the meat in the Colorado won out.
Lori ran into Mezcalerita to see about the price of a bottle of our favorite mezcal of theirs (the Tepextate). No surprise, it was more than we’re willing to spend, which means we’ll just have to enjoy the one bottle of country hooch we got on our trip out to Tlacolula.
As we made our way back to the buses to Tule, we ran into—you guessed it—another crazy local celebration. This one had men flinging homemade wooden contraptions spewing sparks and fire around stilted dancers dressed in long, flowy sheets. Would could possibly go wrong with that?
If you’ve ever wondered where stilted people sit…
We capped our time off in Tule with one last hike from town into the countryside.
One of the fun things about Mexico is you can take a walk out of town past farms and fields and suddenly find yourself in another full-fledged town, complete with a town hall and church around a charming little plaza. This one even had a clock tower to climb. You’d never know it from a quick glance at the map.
Back out of town and up the hill to a reservoir.
The reservoir was larger and more picturesque than we expected. But the sand fleas on the shore were absolutely vicious. We lingered just enough for a quick snack and continued on.
The next reservoir had a pleasant wooded parking area with a snack shack that looks like it might be functional on the weekends [maybe]. We sat a spell before heading back down the hill.
Along the way, we were passed by a dozen of these men on bikes leading burros loaded with wood. They were hoofing it at a pretty good clip.
Halloween is just around the corner. The fact that Mexicans actually celebrate Halloween [a day before Dia de Muertos] still confounds me after all this time.
