I joined a day tour (9.45am-8pm) from Oaxaca City to several places, including Árbol del Tule pictured above. It can be as cheap as $150. Very economic.
It is a place that the van has to pass by to go to the other sites, and the town itself seemed pretty nice.
We only went to the main square and nowhere else, since the only thing to visit was…
This tree, holding the title of the tree with the largest base in the world.
It was rather impressive, but unfortunately, it’s now slowly dying.
A very old tree, one needs to pay a little to go close to it and the church next to it. If you want to spare that tiny amount of money, you can quite obviously still take photos from afar.
We were there for only 15 minutes after a brief introduction of it.
Next stop was the mescal factory. A shopping stop. That’s why the tour was so cheap.
But actually it’s pretty good. Not only did we get to see how it’s made, we got to try tonnes of different favours, and everything was cheap!
Another shopping stop was Teotitlan. It’s interesting to see how the different colours were made but everything that’s actually made from wool was really costly.
The “main dish” is the archaeological site Mitla, which is 1500 years old.
It’s not particularly big, but what’s unique about it is the fact that it’s mostly original instead of a reconstruction.
Why? Mostly because it’s more of a political place (a palace) instead of a religious one. But the Spaniards did build a church right next to it.
The palace complex also contains two small tombs. Very short and narrow entrances. More so than the Egyptian ones.
The aforementioned church before going for a very late lunch.
The final attraction is the best one to some.
Hierve del Agua basically is a place with springs.
The pools from above didn’t seem that impressive, and maybe because it’s the dry season, there isn’t really much of a waterfall.
But the scenery around it was breath-taking, and the pools looked like infinity pools.
Some people swim in them (sunscreen not allowed), but the water is pretty cold.
The pools are very shallow so it’s really about taking photos.
There were holes like these everywhere too.
It’s actually a cliff to the left so slipping off could mean death.
jagged little earth 