SPELLING BEE Time

“Deal with your wins and losses alike. With tequila, lemon, and a pinch of salt.” – Saleem Sharma Traveling on, we went to see a big tree and I mean a BIG TREE! About a half hour from Oaxaca is the “Tule Tree”. It is a cypress tree that is about 2,000 years old and with a measurement of 164 feet around, it is the widest tree in the world. It was growing when the Aztecs lived here and later the Spanish people came to the area. The tree needs lots of water and changes were happening to endanger it but the people became aware of this in time and are trying to correct things so the tree can continue on.

We did an early morning trip way up the mountain (the area is over 6,000 ft above sea level) to Monte Alban which was one of the earliest cities in the area. Before the Mayan and Aztec people, the Zapotecs and Mixtecs were in the area. The Zapotecs probably started this large living and religious area with temples and pyramids about 1,000 BC. They had figured out the stars and things related to it and built many buildings to work with the seasons. They were there for hundreds of years and left for unknown reasons and the Mixtecs took over and rebuilt and added their touches to the area. They also went away as the Spanish people who came in the 1600’s found it abandoned. They will actually let you get up close and even climb some of the steps and it costs only $5.00 American to enter. There is also a very interesting museum that contains a wide range of items they have found on the site and moved to museum location.

We ate and we ate. It seemed the local people ate all day long and nobody was overweight. Probably because they did some hard work in between bites. We did a very high end evening out which cost about $60.00 per person at a 3 story walk up restaurant. The menu had to be brought up on your phone. We did a steak and seafood meal with appetizers. Two huge pieces of beef were brought out on a cart and Emma selected where to cut the meat they would cook for us. They covered the meat with a white cloth before cutting off and weighted the pieces. The shrimp came raw for us to check out also. They were 7 inches long! It truly was the best steak and shrimp I ever had. Each cut of steak came on a separate grill that sat on the table top. We also did street tacos and a huge meal with Coca Cola in bottles came to about $4.00 each.

There were lots of meals in between and I declare my best breakfast ever was the Eggs Benedict we had the first day out with chocolate chai to drink. We got to go to the attached bakery to pick out our bread to have with the chocolate. We had an ice cream shop that was attached to our Airbnb so of course we had to try. Their ice cream seems to be not as smooth as what we have in USA. How about tuna ice cream which is actually a part of a cactus? One day we thought we were going to have a “light late lunch”. It was what we would call a buffet and we had our choice of so many items it made our heads swim. There was one station that had about 10 different soups and everything was being prepared fresh. They were hand mixing the ice cream in ice containers and the dessert selection went on forever. It did NOT turn out to be a light lunch but it sure filled us to the very top.

We did have to wear face masks everywhere and every restaurant for sure had hand wash and temperature meters upon entry. A lot of places, and I think a lot of the homes, had mats and wet towels to wipe our feet on before coming in.

We had our goodbye supper at McDonald’s. I had a “Crispy Onion” sandwich which must have had a half pound of meat and was great and the Coke was wonderful. We all thought the fries were not as good as here. They did have fries with bacon and cheese topping that we thought would do well here. A truly wonderful trip was had by all. Arre and Emma – world class tour guides!