Jubilant Adventures: In the Mountains of Oaxaca

This weekend three other American girls from the Mission and I (I think that makes us sound like the American girl dolls, don’t you?) decided to check out some mountain cabins we were told were only about half-an-hour from the Mission. We were ready to get away from the Mission for a little while and thought this sounded like a close, cheap way to have a get-away. Little did we know the adventure we were in for.

As we headed up towards the cabins, we went through a little town. Now we didn’t have a map or a specific name of where we were going, just directions from one of the house dads at the Mission and the fact that we were headed to an Ecotourism sight. As we entered the aforementioned little town we were stopped by a Transit police officer who told us that we needed to take a different route. We told him we were headed to the Ecotourism sight and really needed to head through the town because we weren’t quite sure how else to get there. He hesitated and than another officer came up and told us to continue on our way. We laughed as we drove away, convinced that they just didn’t know what to do with four white tourist girls…you can’t really turn away tourism in this part of the country. We continued on our path and a couple of miles further on our way we ran in to another police officer. This one was definitely not letting us by. Not only did he wave us over to park in an empty lot on the side of the road with some other stopped cars, but there was an obvious road block further up the road. We pulled off and two of the other girls got out to ask the police officer what was going on. Apparently we had just been driving down the route of a cross-country car race and we were going to have to wait at least half-an-hour with the other cars that were currently pulled off, until the race had passed and the road was no longer needed for the competition. We decided to park and wait, since we were pretty sure this was the road we needed. What a hoot it was to watch as racecar after racecar pulled up and parked on the side of the road while the drivers got out, stretched and prepared to take off on a more dangerous part of the route- up a Mexican mountain road.

The best we could figure was that this was some sort of timed race or multiple day race since the drivers all pulled off in their order of arrival and took some time to pull on helmets, test steering and chat. It reminded me a lot of the old Herbie movies where Herbie is in multiple-day races. Anyway, they then headed up the mountain and after a few minutes we were allowed to pass the roadblock as well and continue on to our destination.

Two things struck us as we headed up the mountain road. First of all, this race must have been a huge deal because we passed several people along the first few miles up the road that were sitting in lawn chairs with picnic lunches. The second realization we had is that although this road was paved and in quite good condition considering roads in Mexico, we would never want to race up this road. No shoulders, huge drop-offs and lots and lots of switchbacks. Not my idea of fun for racing a car. After a half-hour or so we started feeling as though we were perhaps on the wrong road because of the length of time it was taking us, but we were told by several people to just keep going, it was farther up the mountain. The farther we got up the mountain, the more and more like home it felt; more trees, more green and colder weather. At last we reached the town were thought we were looking for, complete with a sign for Ecotourism. We stopped at the tourist office, but it was closed, so after using the bathrooms at the office we continued through the small town we had discovered to see if we could come across any cabins. Right as we were getting ready to leave the town another Transit cop stopped us. Apparently the race we had already seen part of was actually going to be coming back down the hill so once again we were going to need to wait half-an-hour until the cars had passed. What about cabins? The cop didn’t know, he was just working the race, but we were told to park further up-ahead, off the road and we could ask all the guys standing there. What we found out, when we finally asked them, was that the lady running the tourist office had probably just stepped out for lunch and if we went back now we could get back before the race came through, therefore not needing to wait for the race again. What a relief!
Back at the office we were told that there were indeed cabins to stay in, in the town and the lady showed us to our room for the night.

Our little cabin.

The town we ended up in was called, San Antonio Cuajimoloyas, said to be Zapotec for Mole Curdling in Saucepans (mole being a Mexican dish, not a rodent). We still aren’t sure if we ended up in the same town that other people from the Mission have gone to, but we found the hiking to be beautiful (and definitely a work-out for the lungs and muscles hiking very inclined streets at nearly 11,000 feet above sea level), the town people to be very friendly, the night weather to remind us of winter back in the states, and the whole 24 hours we were gone to be quite an adventure.

Janelle, me, Jill and Lynnae
We think we look like sisters in this picture, and we had quite a laugh at our accidental coordination of black sweatshirts, jeans and running shoes.

Our next adventure was of course cooking our dinner. We came completely prepared, thanks to the training of my parents and Lynnae’s parents on former camping trips. The only difference being that our fire was in a fireplace in our cabin instead of an open campfire. This turned out to be fine because, frankly, it was practically freezing outside and we preferred to be inside wrapped in five different layers. The stir-fry chicken and veggies were a welcome treat, followed by s’mores! Thanks for the Hershey’s chocolate Mom and Dad!!

Jill cooking our dinner over the fire.

We slept wonderfully on our bunkbeds, covered in five to six blankets and dressed in sweats. We were glad we had thought to bring warm clothes. The next morning we opted for breakfast in town after our fire took forever to light and then we headed home, quite uneventfully considering our former days fun.