I celebrated the warmest birthday of my life on Sunday. For our first weekend off of school, we decided to travel to Benito Juarez, a small pueblo literally on top of a 9000 foot mountain. What a difference four thousand feet make! Large, shady, verdant trees. Pines forests and wildflowers. Hummingbirds and massive spikey plants with thirty to forty foot towering flowerstalks that look like Century Plants except bigger.
We arrived by way of an adventurous colectivo driver, who pushed his keyless old beater up the windy, gravel road up and up and up. The cabbie was so excited with the views that he ran us pretty nearly off the mountain on a few occasions. We climbed from the desert of the dry-season valley floor to the lush montane forests of the dry-season peaks. When we finally arrived, every villager greeted us, ¡buenos tardes, buenos tardes, buenos tardes!
We used a zipline, we hiked up to El Mirador, or watchtower, with unbelieveable views of the endless green-blue mountains, and we even went horseback riding to a waterfall. The horses looked suspiciously like mules, and each was led by a local guide. Safety did not seem to be a big concern, and I guess they knew our rides weren´t the kind to make for a wild gallop. Las Tres, my horse, the only one with a name, was particularly moody and needed quite the pulling to get her up the steeper hills. I couldn´t blame her, although I could blame my friends for calling my "gordo".
There are six communities, los mancomunados, that support themselves by subsistence agriculture and ecotourism. I would have loved to spend a whole week exploring the area, but we had classes to return to in the big city of Oaxaca.
That same night, after a very bumpy two hour ride at the very back of the local bus, we had a fiesta for my birthday. We invited a few spanish school friends, and we drank cerveza and tequila, ate pastel, and even took turns at a piñata. I felt quite loved and quite mexican.
