5. the High Forest above Oaxaca (by Amy)

One day, Craig and I took a ´tour´to the highland village of Cuajimoloyas. We went mountain biking, which took us by surprise once we started because we had forgotten that we were up at 10,000 feet (Oaxaca City is at 5,000 feet). Anyway I liked this day. For much of the day we were on high logging roads and a few trails, in a high forest of pines, a few red firs, a few oak-like trees, lots of birds and butterflies to hear when you were quiet. The air quality is lovely and much of the time it is moist so a lot of the trees are festooned with grey epiphytes and mosses and lichens. Overnight it gets quite cold there and even in the day if breezy. Craig got to see a lot of neat craggy rocks with canyon like clefts in them, I got to spend some time in the forest by myself for a while because I could not master my fear of heights enough to scramble up a wooden ladder-like structure then around a cliff using handholds.


The highlight was a very way too expensive but interesting traditional steam bath, a temezcal, that was hosted by 81 year old Dona Manuelita, the town´s traditional healer and midwife, and her daughter Soledad. This was in a steam bath built adjacent to a leaky mountain cabin with a tin roof, filled with single beds and in the corner were large canvas bags filled to overbrimming with black potatoes. To get into the steam bath you had to wriggle, naked, under some blankets, into a 3 foot tall room where 2 or 3 could lie stretched out while the woman doing the temezcal could swat you, in total darkness, with herbs while she ladeled herb-filled water onto the stones of the fire that had been heating all day. It was steamy, hot, and a bit smoky. Could not tell if the interested fragrance was all woodsmoke, or part woodsmoke and part magic herbs. After emerging from the steam you were each wrapped in a sheet and told to lie down. Then you were told you had to go straight to the van and go home and not go out for the rest of the evening in case you were affected badly by the cold. In the town when we left it was 8 degrees celcius, but as we went down the long windy road back to Oaxaca, it slowly warmed up to 21 degrees celcius, about 72 degrees, according to the car thermometer.

If going to Cuajimoloyas: we took a guide for transport, for $30 US each. A young lady from Germany took the second class bus, for 25 pesos or $2.50. Guess what we think we should have done! Once there you need to pay a local town fee of about $5 and an fee for guides and $10 each for bikes and who knows what else. But it was fun. We´d recommend setting it up with someone else than our guides though. Maybe Tierrraventura, which we used a few years ago, run by Claudia and Yves from Switzerland. They do an overnight trek where they drop you at one village and pick you up at another.