Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Summer 2007 Car Trip - 16

While in Oaxaca, we had parked the car on the side street next to our hotel. I noticed that every night a hot dog vendor would set up right in front of my car. At the time I thought that it was nice. He was protecting my car from grafitti or what not. When we actually started loading stuff into it the morning we left, I was appalled. I had not given a thought to all of the grease that was being generated and then blown back on my car. It was a greasy, sticky mess.

We got some buckets of water from the hotel and a rag and at least washed the windows. A total washing would have to wait for awhile.

We made our way out of Oaxaca and onto MX 190. We first had to go north and skirt the bottom of edge of Puebla before dropping back down into the city of Taxco. That's the way it is in Mexico. You sometimes need to go miles and miles out of your way because there is no direct highway link between major cities. We had planned to be on the road most of the day today.

The scenery, as usual, was fantastic. We travelled from the vallies of Oaxaca ever upwards into the Sierra del Sur mountain range. We would be crossing over the northern tip of them but mountains are mountains!

As we were driving along, I spotted this familiar billboard far ahead. One only sees it in central Mexico and a bit along the Gulf Coast. I never saw it in northern Mexico or the Pacific Coast.





It's an ad for Magno Osborne Brandy. An easily recognizable logo if there ever was one!

The range of mountains that we were passing through were much more gentle than most mountains. Perhaps because we were on the northern fringes where they first start to rise up. At any rate, they were not that bad to drive through. At times the grandeur was so great that I could hardly keep my eyes on the road.





These "fence post" cactus were growing everywhere. They looked like giant toothpicks stuck into the hillsides.



We crossed over several bridges over valleys. But none so spectacular as......











this one! It was really high and a beautiful piece of construction. There was a pull over area at the other side and, needing a break anyway, we pulled over to get a closer look.



Don't tell me Mexicans can't build roads. This was as fine a piece of construction as I have seen anywhere. It was simply awesome in its' scale.
A couple hours or more down the road, we decided to pull over again. There was a nice overlook and a few bushes which made convenient urinals! While enjoying the view, I spotted movement on one of the neighboring hills. If you closely, in the middle of the mountain trail, you can see a guy being followed by two donkeys as they descend the slippery, rock strewn trail.

From there to just below where we were standing took them about 20 minutes. It would have taken me hours, if I walked it at all!


Believe it or not, his house was just to the right of this picture.



More travel shots as we made our way to Taxco.



One thing that impressed me during this entire trip was the evidence everywhere of Mexico's attempts to keep the air we breath clean. I saw sites like this over and over and over and.....

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