Oaxaca. What kind of a name is that? And how do you even say it??  Well… it’s both a city and a state in south/central Mexico. For the uninitiated, the name’s of Aztec-Nahuatl origins and pronounced Wa-ha-ka.  It’s a pretty colonial city, with nice architecture, history and most importantly, some good coffee shops. There’s lots to do for Christmas in Oaxaca and the icing on the proverbial cake, is at around 1,500m asl it has one of those perfectly sunny-but-not-too-hot climates. Nice. It’s a top place to park-up for the festive season, check out some radishes (yes… you’ll see) and to deal with a grumpy glow-plug. It might even be an opportune spot to take delivery of a new windscreen for Cuthbert. We live in hope.

Big Tree, Little Tree

Two of the many things to do around Oaxaca involve trees at the opposite ends of the scale-spectrum. Hierve El Agua is a petrified waterfall with a natural infinity pools and, just for that little extra visual impact, there’s a small, stark skeleton of a tree perched on the edge. Quite a photogenic spot, but anyone thinking they can just turn up at any old time of the day and take pics like these will be sadly miffed.  To get these shots I had to drag myself out of bed at stupidly early o’clock. Believe me, I really don’t do this often these days. First, it’s to avoid the many other visitors that hang around for most of the day. Secondly, it’s to catch the still water before the wind gets-up and creates ripples on the surface. Oh, how I suffer for my art 😂 Anyway… worth it d’ya think?

The tree at the other end of the scale-spectrum is in the village of El Tule: the largest tree in the world. Well to be precise… the claim, I think, is the tree-trunk with the largest circumference. In any case, it’s chuffin’ big. It’s over 2000 years old. You get the scale-thing with the tree dwarfing the church next to it.

Radishing

At this time of year, Oaxaca city obviously has the traditional Christmas tree in the main square. But in the curiosity stakes of the grand scheme of Christmas traditions, the ‘Noche de Rabanos’ (Night of Radishes) really takes some beating. For one day only, the craftspeople of Oaxaca go into a frenzy of radish carving. The results, of varying quality, are shown off to the public around the town’s main plaza. 

Every 23^rd December there’s stand after stand of mini-dioramas, all fashioned out of carved radishes. Some tableaus depict the Nativity and religious characters, but the scenes are left to the creators’ imagination. By far the most bizarre in 2018 was an homage to the eminent British scientist Professor Stephen Hawking, complete with a wheelchair fashioned out of radish stalks. He even had a little tablet-screen (of radish skin, obviously!) attached to the arm of his wheelchair and tiny little spectacles (again, carved out of radish skin). Quite how the great man came to the attention of the Oaxacan radish carvers isn’t clear, but the whole event was a real treat: one of those fascinating ‘things’ that we stumble upon every now and then on our travels.

 Great Spot for Christmas in Oaxaca

There are countless cutesie villages around the Oaxaca area to wander around. We wandered around the pretty Etla Valley a bit. I also did a fascinating day tour with the organisation En Via to visit ladies taking micro-finance loans to develop their own businesses. These ladies impressed me so much I did a separate blog about them. Really one of the most interesting days I’ve spent on our travels.

After scouting around the villages in the area, doing short hikes, seeing nice churches, old ruins and all the normal sight-seeing kind of stuff (oh, yes… and the obligatory mezcal distillery too, it’s famous around here you know 😊) we settled for Christmas/New Year in the village of the ‘Big Tree’ fame. Here in El Tule is the world-renowned camp-spot of Overlanding Oasis, well… it’s at least world-renowned in the world of the PanAmerican highway traveller. Ever since we were in Patagonia three years ago, we’ve been meeting south-bound overlanders singing the praises of this camp and recommending that we stay here on our way north. As it turned out, all the recommendations were spot-on! Canadians Calvin and Leanne were great hosts for our Christmas in Oaxaca and they even arranged a cooking class for us with local ladies to learn how to make delicious, traditional Pozole. Fab place.

The Grumpy Glow-Plug

One thing we learned in Oaxaca: never underestimate a gumpy glow-plug. No matter how much fun we’re having, we still have to do run-of-the-mill repair and maintenance shit. Well… I say ‘we’…  I mean tech-man Marcus, of course. We wouldn’t get very far relying on me for maintenance and repairs.

Way back in Brasilia, Brazil in March 2017, Marcus was changing the glow-plugs in the engine as part of the routine service. Unfortunately, one of the glow-plugs had what is technically referred to as a ‘grump’ 😊 and refused to come out to play. With our non-existent Portuguese language skills, we made various unsuccessful attempts at finding a workshop with the right drill tools to extract the grumpy glow-plug. In the end, Marcus decided to just leave it in. It’d only really be a problem when we get to very cold climates of North America. In the meantime, we have an engine pre-heater to help if we happened to do any more cold-spots in South or Central America.

Skip forward almost two years and Marcus decides he can use the Xmas down-time in Oaxaca to tackle the long-outstanding grumpy glow-plug, ready for when we reach the Rockies. This time, he’s armed with a special drill-bitt designed to blitz the glow-plug out of its hole. Marcus spent the best part of 4 days disassembling bits of Cuthbert and meticulously drilling into the grumpy glow-plug. But we underestimated the determination of the grumpy guy to stay-put in Cuthbert. Marcus tried all the tricks in the book, but eventually gave in and decided to live with it (again!). The final solution will be the major operation of removing the cylinder head, but that’s for another place… someday.

The Big Crack

“And? What about that windscreen?” you tactfully remind us. Oh yes…. Arrgh!!! This story goes on… and on! Cuthbert’s windscreen has been a ‘thing’ for us and an underlying theme in our blogs for some months now. We won’t repeat the full story here, but regular reader-peeps may recall that we have a huuuge crack in Cuthbert’s windscreen and have (so far) failed miserably in our attempts to obtain a replacement. Our latest lead has been to have one sent in from Europe via the Fiat supply chain (Fiat being the same group company as Iveco).

We found a contact in Europe to arrange dispatch and, now that we have met with the Fiat dealer in Oaxaca, we have a contact in Mexico to take receipt. All is (errr… was) looking rooty-toot… we’ll have a new windscreen in Oaxaca before the end of the year. Ha ha ha ha ha…. ha. Nope. The plan hasn’t quite worked out. At least not yet. The windscreen has arrived in Mexico City and landed in a flurry of administrative complications. We could well be constructing a new definition of the word ‘frustration’ here, but if you’ll indulge our whinging a little longer, we’ll update you in the next blog.

Happy New Year!!!

Around Oaxaca at Christmas Photo Gallery