The few restaurants that made up the town along the beach at Huatulco are bordered by a national park of the same name. We were able to camp within the gates of a newly built restaurant called El Capi’s, with access to the clean, new washroom throughout the night and slow to average WIFI, all for 150 pesos per night, about $10 Canadian. The food in the restaurant was good, there were hammocks to swing in, and shady palapas if we needed to get out of the sun.
Zipolite Beach is a beach in the town of Puerto Angel of which we had heard mixed reviews. Seems you either love it or hate it. We loved it.
We left Oaxaca on a highway known as the mescal trail and drove past several fields of agave and many small shops selling Mescal made right on site. Some were still using stone wheels about 5 feet in diameter powered by a horse. The wheel is dragged around in an endless circle running over the agave to make a mash, which is then made into Mezcal. We considered stopping at one to buy some Mezcal, but the sample we had had in Oaxaca didn’t really appeal to either of us so we decided to keep driving to our destination for the night, Hierve el Agua.
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.
We hadn’t planned on visiting Cholula, but we needed to break up our drive to Oaxaca and Cholula was about halfway. It turned out to be one of our favourite stops.
Nevado de Toluca is an extinct volcano and, according to our guide book, at 15,090 feet is the fifth tallest mountain in Mexico. You can drive to near the rim of the crater, at 13,700, and then hike up and over the rim to two lakes – La Luna (the moon) and El Sol (the Sun).
With one more night before our highly anticipated stay in a condo for a few days, we decided to head to a place we had seen on iOverlander called Laguna Larga. It is a small recreational lake that allows you drive to the edge of the water to camp after 5pm, thus allowing day users of the lake more places to spread out blankets, etc.,. It sounded nice and peaceful.
Bernal is another of Mexico’s pueblos magicos. It is a small town of about 3000 people, best known for La Peña de Bernal, which is, according to some sources, the world’s third largest monolith, after Gibraltar and Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro. And Peña, for those of you who may be wondering, translates as “cliff”….nothing sexual.
We had read that you could camp in the beautiful gardens of the Flamingo Inn in Queretaro for 300 pesos per night, but when we arrived, the two spaces available for camping were taken by other overlanders that we had first met in Patzcuaro, then again in Morelia. Unsure of where we were going to spend the night, we spotted a Comfort Inn across the street with a large parking lot. We struggled with our spanish at the front desk, explaining that we would like to camp in their lot for the night, if possible. After a few minutes, the clerk began speaking english to us (yeah!), and after some back and forth discussions with his fellow staff, it was decided that we could stay there for the night, use the lobby washrooms, and there would be no charge. Bonus!
We arrived in Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacan, following iOverlander directions to a suggested camping spot for the night. As we turned onto a narrow street, the app told us our location was on the right hand side, but we looked to see a solid wall with a few doors and some windows but nothing a vehicle could fit through…this didn’t seem right.