Oaxaca (pronounced Wa-ha-ka) is both a state in Mexico and the capital city of the state.  We drove through some beautiful high mountain terrain to Oaxaca city.  The roads were quite good, if not all the drivers.  I have dash cam video of two cars, a semi and a pickup truck, all shoulder to shoulder trying to pass each other, going up hill and around a corner…..again, wish I had the internet power to upload the video, maybe one day.

Views on the road to Oaxaca city.

We had plans to stay in a campground about 18 km outside of Oaxaca, but first needed to drive through the city.  Oaxaca does something with it’s main highway through the city that we haven’t seen before…every so often, the two lanes heading east criss cross with the two lanes heading west, and instead of being on the right side of the meridian, you are now on the left side.  A few blocks later, the process reverses itself. kind of like a child’s roadrace set  We are not sure what the purpose was behind these special traffic patterns but one thought was that with Oaxaca being a big Mezcal producing state, maybe it is part of a sobriety test…

We arrived at the Oaxaca Campground to a warm greeting from the owners, Del and Kate.  Del and Kate love dogs and have three themselves.  Kate offered to watch Piper for us if we wanted to take the bus into Oaxaca the next day.   She said we could take our time, go out for dinner if we wanted, and she would make sure Piper had an enjoyable day.  We decided to take her up on her offer.

We walked through the streets of Oaxaca with no real plan.  We made our way to the main plaza and then up and down a few pedestrian only streets.  Oaxaca is beautiful, but our travel style seems to have changed.  Instead of looking in our travel guide and locating all the attractions that the city had to offer and deciding which we had time to visit, we free formed it to see where we might end up. We enjoyed getting a broader feel of the city, shops and people without being focused on specific locations.

Cathedral in Oaxaca.

One of the attractions of Oaxaca is the food.  We sat on a roof top and had appetizers, visited another roof top for a taste of Mescal, then found a great little restaurant called La Biznaga after the two previous selections turned out to be closed that day. We had a great culinary experience in an open air courtyard, easily one of the best meals we have had in a restaurant so far on this trip. Soup/salad starters, main course with a drink, for about 700 pesos including tip (less than $50 CAD).

Derek’s first foodie shot of his Dorado filet with local vegetables.

We took the bus, 5 pesos each, back to the campsite, relying on locals to let us know when to get off as it was now quite dark and we couldn’t make out any of the landmarks we had made note of in the daylight.  We were greeted at our camper by a happy Piper, and this note:

Piper is leaving a trail of broken hearts all across Mexico.

The next morning we packed up and headed through Oaxaca city once more to visit Monte Alban.  Monte Alban sits atop an artificially levelled hill, about 1,300 feet above the surrounding valley.  It was founded around 500 BC and was abandoned sometime around about 750 AD.

View of the valley below.

Looking down the site from the top of one of the smaller pyramids.

We really enjoyed Monte Alban, in large part due to the great location on the top of the hill.  After wandering around the site for a few hours, we headed to our next stop, once again driving through the city of Oaxaca.  We were in traffic next to a pickup truck with some goats in the back, which really got Piper’s attention.  At one point the driver said something to us in Spanish, and after a second attempt at communication, we got what he was saying….he was asking if we would like to trade one goat for Piper, and then he gave a huge laugh.

Piper REALLY wanted to play with these goats.