Hopping on a comfortable bus from the sweet town of Puebla, we settled in for the 6 hour drive to Oaxaca City (pronounced wah-HAH-kah), the capital of the Oaxaca state of Mexico.
Our Airbnb was the ‘original’ style of Airbnb, where you have a room in the house where the host family actually lives. We met our hosts, Mon and her family, and were shown our bedroom (with some Christmas cookies waiting for us on the bed – so cute!). The style of architecture here has a lot of indoor/outdoor design, and Oaxaca, being up in the mountains gets quite chilly, so we had to bundle up for bed.
It had been a long travel day, so we settled in, leaving only to attempt (unsuccessfully) to find dinner. Thankfully Oaxaca has Uber Eats so we were able to order something when we came home empty-handed.
The next couple days, we explored the town. Oaxaca City isn’t an official Pueblo Magico (magic town), like many of the other towns we’ve visited in Mexico, but it has a similar feel and charm to it.
We wandered around, taking in the beautiful sights of the historic district and beyond. The buildings are painted boldly, and there were many decorations lining the streets. We arrived only a week before Christmas, so the town square was filled with festive poinsettias, fairy lights, and nativity scene statues.
After getting the feel of Oaxaca City for a few days, we decided to do a day trip to Hierve el Agua, a petrified waterfall in the nearby town of Mitla. Waking up early and absolutely freezing our tails off (who knew Mexico could be so cold?!), we walked across the street to the bus/colectivo stop.
As we were waiting, a bunch of taxis drove by honking and shouting at us. We were thinking ‘We wouldn’t be at a bus stop if we wanted a taxi’, but then we realized the taxis were the colectivos! Rather than vans, they use taxis/cars here.
A car pulled up with two passengers already inside, calling out ‘MITLA MITLA!’, so we hopped in with them, a full house (so we thought). As we continue to drive, the lady in the front seat passenger side keeps shouting out the window ‘MITLA MITLA’. We were looking at each other like, huh? how are more people going to fit in this tiny sedan? We were barely all squeezing into the back. My one idea was that the lady calling out for people worked for the colectivo, so when someone else came she would get out.
We pulled up to a stop and they screamed ‘MITLA’ and this big dude opens the front passenger door and starts getting in, and the lady just scooched into the middle and was sandwiched in between the big burly driver and the new giant guy, sitting in the gap between their two seats. Big clown car energy hahah.
Then, the lady throws on a CD and it’s Mexican Christmas music, including Spanish version Alvin and the chipmunks Christmas songs. It was a feast for the ears.
They dropped us off at a sign that said Hierve el Agua. From there, we had to wait for another colectivo to drive us the rest of the way, about one more hour. We waited in the sun with a British couple, and some more travellers trickled in.
The driver came over to us and said that we could go now but we would have to pay more because it wasn’t completely full. We all agreed because we were tired of waiting, and there was no guarantee how much longer it would be.
We had all been baking in the sun at this point, but we rounded the corner to the colectivo and suddenly it was subarctic. We immediately had to throw our coats back on before hopping in the back of the truck.
They started driving and it was sooo icy cold. We were in a wind tunnel under the freezing cold of the truck canopy. The drive was long, dusty, and on an unpaved mountain pass road with a cliff on one side, and we were flying! We were slipping and sliding around the planks, and trying to keep as warm as possible.
Also, on the drive we realized we were really low on cash. There had been extra fees and costs on the way up that we weren’t expecting, and although we had gotten more cash in town the day before, we had forgotten it back at home. We arrived up at the top with only 70 pesos left! Not even enough for even one of us to get back down to Mitla.
We asked our driver if there were any ATMs up there at Hierve el Agua, but he said no. Through Google Translate, we told him our situation and he said that when we were ready to go, he could drive us down and we could take out cash at an ATM in Mitla. There wasn’t anything else we could do, so we decided to go explore and make the most of us being up there!
We walked down to the springs and petrified waterfalls of Hierve el Agua. It is one of only two petrified waterfalls in the world, and hilariously enough, we’d been to the other one, Pammukkale (or Cotton Castle) in Turkey back in July 2023.
Hierve el Agua is several thousand years in the making. Natural mineral springs have trickled over the side of the cliff for millennium, depositing excess minerals in the formation of a waterfall. It was a little different than Pammukkale in that the mineral deposits were more colourful rather than bright white.
It was super chilly and windy up there (don’t let us in our t-shirts fool you, we had our jackets waiting just out of sight!), but also beautiful and with hardly anyone else around.
We walked down the path to view the waterfalls from a new angle, which turned out to be a full loop you could walk. It reminded us of Bryce Canyon in Utah. It was beautiful, and a great way to spend the morning.
The whole walk took about two hours, and when we got back up to the natural pools they were completely filled with swimmers and sunbathers enjoying the (now) warm day. We were happy we had arrived early enough to beat the rush.
We headed to the colectivo stop and talked to the driver there. It wasn’t the same one, but we explained our cashless situation and he said he would bring us into town and we could pay there. We would just have to wait until the truck filled up.
As we were waiting, a guy joined us and struck up a conversation. He was an Italian named Lorenzo, and we had a lot of random coincidences with him, like he had done the same boat tour through Komodo Islands as us, he used to live in China, and I have the same birthday as him! And a lot more.
We had to wait for a full hour for the colectivo to fill up, and in that time we learned a lot about each other. He super generously offered to pay our way down the mountain, and we decided to get lunch together back in Mitla.
When we got into town, we hurried to the one ATM in town, but it was out of order. We were completely out of money in this little town still an hour from Oaxaca!
Hungry and cashless, we found a restaurant that took card. It took a long while for the food to come, so we bonded more with Lorenzo. He had a couple more weeks of travel in Mexico before heading back to Europe to continue his PhD.
After lunch, we walked back to the bus area with Lorenzo to catch a bus, but there was an almost full colectivo there so we decided to just go with that. This time Wini got to experience being sandwiched in between the driver and the other passenger (me)! It was a cozy setup, with our driver was speed racing the whole way back.
Lorenzo came by our place, so we were able to pay him back. So thankful he was able to save our bacon! I’m not sure what we would have done it we got to Mitla and weren’t able to pay the driver due to the broken ATM. We said bye, and made plans to meet up with him again.
The next day we had a relaxed morning before going out to explore the town some more. Oaxaca City didn’t seem to have a ton of street food like many of the cities in Mexico we’d just come from, so it was more of a mission to find meals. However, we were able to find a food truck with delicious barbacoa tacos which definitely would have become a regular spot for us if we were staying longer in Oaxaca.
In the evening, we went back out to the square to meet up with Lorenzo for dinner. Wini had spotted a tasty looking Argentinian restaurant on uber eats, and we decided to walk there. As we were walking, we got caught in a Christmas parade! It was so beautiful and colourful.
The restaurant, La Choripaneria, was a bit of a walk, but it was so worth it! We all got steak sandwiches that were out of this world. Wini and I even ordered extra to have on the bus for tomorrow’s travel day. After a wonderful dinner, and getting to know Lorenzo better, we headed home, planning to see Lorenzo again in Puerto Escondido in a few days.
We woke up early the next day, and made our way to the bus station to catch our 12 hour bus to the beach town of Puerto Escondido. Our Christmas present to ourselves was 6 whole nights in one place!