Retro Post: Day 12 - Oaxaca - A Sensational Sensory Overload!

Oaxaca - wow!  Everywhere you look, every corner you turn, there is some explosion of color, sound, smells, and tastes to take in.  If you are going to be stranded with a broken-down ambulance in Mexico, may it be in beautiful Oaxaca.

Here are some views of the streets of Oaxaca:

Like other cities around Mexico, Oaxaca has a wonderful colonial-style historic center with beautiful plazas and cathedrals.  But the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán is one of the most impressive:

Retro Post: Day 11: Cuernavaca to Oaxaca

After a rest day the previous day at Axel's place in Cuernavaca, just outside of Mexico City, we headed out to Puebla.  We picked up Nijiko, another new team member who joined us for the remainder of the trip.  Now we are five!

Once we arrived in Puebla, however, we decided over our gas and food stop to push all the way through to Oaxaca, and we are glad we did!

Getting through Puebla was a bit of a challenge.  At one point, a six lane freeway that we were on just abruptly ended!  It's hard to explain our shock at going along, all by ourselves on this beautiful freeway only to find out that it just...ends.  Then we had to turn around, go back, and eventually ended up doing a bit of "offroading" on gravel roads in some twists and turns until we finally found our way to the other highway that we wanted to connect to.

Once we were on it, though, the highway from Puebla to Oaxaca is very nice.  We went up and up and up through the mountains of southern Mexico and really enjoyed the views and crisp air.

We did start noticing however, that our ambulance was making some funny noises on the curves, and was starting to really vibrate at highway speeds.  Well, we all know how that ended up!

But on arrival at Oaxaca we met Axel's mom, Pilar and were introduced to her wonderful house.  We felt right at home right away.  Pilar was a wonderful host for us.

We got to try some of the local Oaxacan food - champines (insects!)

Ahhhhh, a nice place to rest....

Retro Post: Day 9 - Mexico City

On Sunday, July 13 (Day 9), we left Querétaro in the morning and headed for Mexico City.  Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world by population, and is the place where one in every five Mexicans live.  So Nick was quite excited and proud to have the opportunity to drive the ambulance through the city.

Once we arrived in Mexico City it was time for some lunch.  Axel took us all to the neighborhood of Coyoacan and the local market there.  Since it was Sunday, we had some really, really delicious tacos de barbacoa.  After that we stopped at the Café Jarocho, where they have coffee roaster right on site, for some really, really good coffee.

We don't have pictures of it, but Sunday afternoon was the World Cup Final.  We watched Germany win the game in a local place right off of the main plaza of Coyoacan.  After that, we picked up one of our new team members, Megan, who met us back in Tucson, and who now joined the team on a permanent basis.

Finally, in the evening we met up with Nick's good Couch Surfing friend, Cassio and Cassio's friend Alejandra for some great laughs, some more good food (quesadillas, and a hot cake with a design on it!), and a quick tour of the ambulance.  As you can see, Cassio loved it!