Hiking in the Sierra Norte Oaxaca

After a brisk walk down to the 2nd class bus station on the south side of town, we finally installed ourselves on a bus to Cuajilomaoyas. Ludwig seemed to have as his personal credo "knowledge is power" and was reluctant to share relevant details such as our destination,only that he knew where we were going. As his accent in English was difficult to understand and his accent in Spanish a lot worse, this made for great frustration. A youngster of 20 on a gap year trip before university, he was apparently following in his father's footsteps, emulating a trip that he had done in his youth. Without me, he would not go hiking on his own and without him I wouldn't have contemplated going in the first place. We were thus joined at the hip so to speak. I found his opinionated intensity and need to talk a lot difficult, (although I might have been similar when I was his age) and was wondering whether I would survive the 2 days without wringing his neck..... His heart was in the right place though, even though he was gauche and we both lived to tell the tale.

Althought he distance was relatively short, something like only 56km away from Oaxaca, the bus ride was 2 hours, the 2nd half of the journey on spectular winding country roads taking us into the mountains to an altitude of 3200m.

The village of Cuajilomoyas has no mere than 1200 inhabitants and is perched almost on the crest of a mountain. The tree line in this part of the world exist at about 4000m, so even at this altitude, we were surrounded by pine forests. We had a bite of breakfast, which turned out to be quite pricey by Mexican standards, we were the cash cows who had come to be milked.. so we soon learned to order the basics or pay with good grace. It was here that we encountered our guide, who walked with us for the first 8km or so, where he handed over to a guide from the next village who walked us the next 8km to his village. The guiding was done in a kind of relay between villages and our fees went to the municipality. From what I understood, there is a kind of compulsory communityservice in these villages, where one has to give 2 years service, but it can be done a year at a time, and one such service is to be a guide. The revenue from our tour which was tiny went to the local municipality, which also provided cabins and had plugged into the ecotourisn zeitgeist emphasising separating rubbish, conservation etc, although it seemed as though there was no facilty or abilty to recycle anything much except to reuse water bottles. It looked as though the separated garbage was dumped in one tip...

The comedor in Cuajilomoyas. The orange juice freshly squeezed with a lot of huffing and puffing, the meat (res) which was home to many flies inedible, the eggs ok and the bread expensive and stale. The tortillas were ok.

We set off on our walk a long a beautiful vehicle track through the pine forest with the occasional paddoc with grazing horses or donkeys. Along the way we saw a number of plants which had interesting medicinal propertiesLirio, parasite with yellow flowers (seen hanging off the upward curving branch on the left of the trunk) that eventually kills pine trees

Used to help new mothers to lactate if they are unable. Not sure if they made an infusion of the petals or the leaves - lechugilla
This leaf used to counter obesity (how?) - hierba de sapo
Chewing this leaf counteracts altitude sickness - saus
The Mirador at the 8km point, looking across to Latuvi village where we were to spend the night.
The view from the MiradorBromeliad, or "air" plant, this is not a parasite but feeds on deposited nutrients. Flowers are different colours depending on the altitude ranging from crimson to yellow to white
Orchid on a tree stump
The view of fertile valley below Latuvi
The fertile valley below... the labour came from other households in the village and was unpaid except for the provision of food, on the understanding that help would be forthcoming in return when needed. The 3 villages boasted zero crime, because they forbid traffic after 10pm until 6am. It's a cooperative way of life that's dying as more drft into the towns in search of money. Latuvi's population was about 600, sown from over 1000 a couple of years ago.
The wonderful hammocks and cabaña at Latuvi
Going to school on the "camino real" the old footpath linking the villages to Oaxaca
Cabeza de bruja, the thorns are barbed and extremely painful and difficult to remove
Natural arch on "camino real"
A break before crossing the river
Owl's eggs laid by the path. We saw the owl in a nearby tree. Unbelievable that she laid them in such an exposed place, a great meal for a passing rat or snake
The view from Amatlan to Ixtlan, where we caught a hair raising ride back in a collectivo taxi. I thought I was in good shape in the front seat with a seat belt until they crammed a pregnant lady in the front with me, so I wound up sitting on the gearshift, no seatbelt and we were hurtling around bends ominously marked with crosses, at a good multiple of the speedlimit