Onward to Oaxaca

The outskirts of Oaxaca were more impoverished than anything we had yet seen in Mexico and made us unprepared for the stunning beauty of the central city itself.  The valley, at 5000 ft., has a comfortable, warm climate.  The buildings are of a graceful and often colorful Spanish colonial style; many streets were pedestrian only, making walking about a pleasure.  The city is known for its cultural, artistic and culinary heritage.  It also is near several of Mexico’s better-known archeological sites, including Monte Alban, which we visited.  There were a lot of tourists in Oaxaca, but to our surprise, Eurogringos, as Bill calls them, predominated. 

Milo acquired a thorn on the top of his front paw.  He licked at it for several days and it began to redden.  Then, after an evening session at a neighborhood Internet café in Oaxaca, we noticed pus coming out of it, a sure sign of infection.  Seeing a veterinary sign next door, we took Milo in.  Like most veterinary establishments we passed, this one was housed in a small concrete storefront that sold a few pet accessories, food, and some rabbits and gerbils.  The vet went right to work on Milo, giving him a sedative and Novocain in his paw, then making about a half-inch incision to remove anything left of the thorn.  She cleaned and put an antibiotic on the wound, stitched it and gave him an antibiotic injection.  She did not wear gloves, had no facility for washing her hands, and Milo’s perch was an old wooden table in a room sparsely furnished with a small cabinet containing medications and instruments.  It was a far cry from the spacious stainless and Formica environment of U.S. vets, but at $20, the price was much cheaper.  While the crude setup made us a little nervous, we reminded ourselves that he still received better medical care than most people in the world receive.  I had to strain to understand everything the vet explained to us, but after asking her to repeat a couple of things, caught on.  My Spanish had definitely improved, which was good, because we encountered few Mexicans who spoke English very well. 

The Route North

After Oaxaca, we drove north several hours to Puebla (7100 feet), a large city with a nice a colonial center.  We ate at a sidewalk restaurant at the Zocalo (town square) that had surprisingly good food and lousy service.  The meal, indeed our visit, was nearly ruined by the rock group in the square entertaining the Sunday crowds, a group that should call themselves the Hearing Busters.  But, the people watching from our sidewalk perch was interesting.  A very pregnant Indian woman, carry an infant slung in her shawl, tried to walk by but her two-year old was tantruming on the sidewalk immediately in front of us.  The child then noticed Roscoe at my feet, which caused her to coo and giggle, and she began walking normally.  The mother flashed a weary smile in return.  After that, a smartly dressed mother and daughter stopped to admire Milo, whom the Mexican cognoscenti refer to as a “French” Poodle.  Oui, oui, we reply, most assuredly Gallic.  Frog Dog?  Freedom Poodle?

We camped Cholula, near Puebla, a town that   boasts 365 churches and 50,000 inhabitants.  In the towns and cities we have visited, we are amazed to find extremely large, centuries-old churches and basilicas within blocks one another. They are often done in a Spanish baroque style known as Churrigueresque, but some are neo-Gothic.  Cholula takes this density to a new level.  The main cathedral is built on top of what would have been Mexico’s largest pyramid.  It sits rather spectacularly high on a hill overlooking the valley.  We did not look at all 365 churches, but the ones we saw were certainly big guys and centuries old.  We also had good views of the highest mountain in Mexico, Popocatepetl (about 17,000 feet), which was belching steam out of its top and had undergone a small eruption only days earlier.  

Although we had intended to avoid Mexico City with its reputed driving horrors, we found that just as all roads led to Rome, all toll-roads lead to, around and through Mexico City, and although we became lost a few times, driving in the capitol wasn’t all that bad.  We were nearly gridlocked on a four-lane for about 20 minutes because of an overturned gas truck.  A number of emergency response vehicles had arrived at the site and traffic was being efficiently funneled past the wreckage.  The interesting thing about this is that when the emergency vehicles were dispatched, someone also dispatched ice-cream vendors who fanned through the stalled traffic hawking very welcome ice-cream sandwiches. 

We opted for a side trip to the big pyramids at Teotíhuacan, which are largest and best preserved in the Americas.  They were indeed an impressive sight, and I huffed and puffed my way to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun for a wonderful panorama.  The heyday of the city, which was laid out on a long boulevard wide enough to accommodate a modern expressway, was about 300 to 600 A.D. when it had an estimated population of 200,000, although construction began several centuries B.C.  The city went into a long decline after 600 A.D., ending up basically as a squatters’ site by the time the Spaniards arrived.  We gave a man near the car park a few pesos to keep his eye on the van, and we gave Milo and Roscoe, tied to a nearby tree, a couple of treats for keeping their eye on our guard.  The arrangement worked out well.

After finally making it out of Mexico City, we dined and strolled about in a pleasant nearby convent town called Tepotzotlán.