We arrived home last night aching and feeling as though we'd been in another world for two days. Which we had. Initially we wanted to experience the mountains to the north of Oaxaca. It happens that there is an indigenous ecotourism cooperative in the mountains to the north of here, six villages of Zapotecans connected by the desire to live simply in harmony with nature. It's an ecotourism business but also an example of how different are our lives in the developed world from these.
We had hoped to hike between villages. But the distance between our two chosen villages is 22 kilometres. Then we thought we'd bike it. But we saw the cross section of the mountain trail and it was hardcore mountain biking. Since we'd only been on flat Caledon trail ways and roads almost forever, that was out. So with the help of an organizer we arranged for an 8 kilometre bike ride from Benito Juarez, the first village to another with a horse and guide to carry our back packs. Sounded like a piece of cake.
But everything was an astonishment! We stuffed as much as possible into our small carry on back packs for the weekend, not having packed at all for mountains at 10 000 feet before leaving Caledon. Late Friday afternoon we arrived by car to the first village. But there had been a terrible and unusual storm, severe wind and rain that frightened the villagers, cut power and made things a challenge for us.
That night when the sun set, we were in the dark except for our headlights. The village is on a steep incline and supper served at seven after sunset. So we had to climb steep hills to the small dining room and back to our cabin in the dark. We tumbled into bed at eight shivering in six layers of clothing. Bob wore one of my brightly coloured scarves around his head. I wore gloves as the temperature dropped to zero in our unheated cabin. We stayed in bed for 11 hours until the sun came up.
Village of Benito Juarez.
Bob walking up from our cabin.
A village of 750 very spread out indigenous inhabitants, animals and hills. Nothing more. No stores or any of our comforts.
A woman lighting a fire outside to sit beside.
Benito Juarez the only indigenous leader.
All I had with me.
Leaving our cabin made of only natural materials.
Saturday a taxi delivered us to our departure village. We had hired a guide with a horse to carry our back packs and to make sure we didn't get injured or lost. As it turned out we had a 16 year old guide on bicycle and a man with one of his horses, a mare and her 15 day old colt to help us out.
With our guide Carlos Miguel
The mare and her colt.
Despite our careful planning, the trail turned out to be spectacularly unsuitable for cycling for a bunch of reasons. It was covered by branches, trees downed by the storm, rocks, tree trunks and agave at the side which narrowed the trail that already was no more than two feet wide, sometimes with steep drop offs on one side. The trail was also covered with slippery pine needles.
The trail profile didn't show the steep inclinations. The colt walked faster than we progressed and we had to push our bikes more than half of the 8 kilometres. We had a lot of laughs and many talks with the guides about life and such during our rests over the four and a half hours it took to get to the second village.
The colt lay down a lot during our many stops.
In trying to avoid a rock, I fell into a prickly Agave plant escaping though thr whole misadventure with only cuts and scrapes.
Arriving in one piece on Saturday completely tuckered but glad to be there.
To be continued. Hasta pronto.
No comments:
Post a Comment