Oaxaca and Puebla, history goes through the stomach

Our time in Mexico is almost over, but before catching our flight in Mexico DF we had two more stops planned - in beautiful cities of Oaxaca and Puebla.

The ride from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca wasn't so scary after all, I guess we are becoming experts on winding roads! The only difficult part was when the Mexican family that went with us in the van, started to vomit all over, but we survived that too and Oaxaca was worth the trouble. We spent a couple of days there, wandering around its restored historical center, watching the Oaxacans at the busy zocalo (main square), and eating!

Cathedral

Shoeshine posts at zocalo

Colorful streets of Oaxaca

Many things going on in the city

Oaxaca's street art

Centro de fotografia

Check out the size of this tlayuda!

We also visited the nearby Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban, situated on a hill above Oaxaca. It was incredible how fast the surroundings changed, once we got out of rich and modern Oaxaca, the villages we passed on our way were some of the poorest we've seen in Mexico so far.

The archaeological site isn't too big but as it is still low season, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Too bad that the weather wasn't the best these days and instead of the surrounding valleys we saw mainly clouds. 

Small but interesting museum

Our next stop was the huge city of Puebla (larger than Prague or Barcelona), famous for its cathedral and its cuisine. We didn't try the mole poblano, the sweet sauce that even has its own big festival each year, but we sure did eat some awesome food again. We will definitely miss Mexico and all the great dishes we've discovered here...

Puebla's cathedral,  with the highest towers in all Mexico

And very creepy inside

Exposition in front of Templo de Santo Domingo

Puebla is famous for its tiles

Yes, it's bigger than my head

Yummy cheese al pastor

Puebla is surrounded by volcanoes. The second and third highest mountains of Mexico, Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl (both over 5000 m), are not too far away. When we visited the nearby town of Cholula, we were hoping to get a glimpse at them, but we are not very lucky with the views lately. Popocatepetl has been very active lately, so we could see the smoke at least. Hopefully the activity decreases in the next days, or we might get stuck in Mexico as some airlines cancelled their flights to DF two days ago!

You can see the ash rising up from the clouds, that's where Popo is

Cholula is home to the widest pyramid ever built (Piramide Tepanapa) but there is not much of it to see nowadays and the pyramid looks just like a regular hill, it even has a church built on top. The town itself, like Puebla, is packed with churches.

Tepenapa pyramid with Santuario de los Remedios on top

Convento de San Gabriel

Parroquia de San Pedro

Cholula's zocalo

Both Oaxaca and Puebla were pleasant destinations with a lot of local feel, tasty food and cool climate, despite being large cities they didn't seem too stressful or rushed. But now we have a real challenge ahead - Mexico City, a place we fear, a place we heard all possible scary stories about, a place that will be our last stop before flying back to LA. And before starting our return to Europe.