It's now been 4 weeks since I left Oakland.  Miles covered approximately 4250.  We are still in Oaxaca.  The plan was to leave today but Eric got food poisoning, and even though he feels much better today, it would suck for him to have another bout while trying to ride the motorcycle, as he found out yesterday.

Fortunately, the trip yesterday was just a few kilometers out to Monte Albon (White Mountain), which is an ancient Zapotec site.  The place is amazing.  Starting around 200BC (or was it 500??) they started flattening the top of this mountain, where they built their city.  The mountain is in as strategic a position as anyone could ever hope for, surrounded 360 degrees by wide, fertile valleys.  For a thousand years they worked on the side, finally abandoning it after building numerous temples around a large, flat plaza.  Unfortunately we were not allowed in most of the temples, but some of the carvings were visible outside, and there was a nice little museum that displayed a decent array of artifacts.  On the ride back down the mountain to Oaxaca, Eric suddenly shot by us and disappeared into the traffic.  What was up with that?  Dick and I spent the better part of an hour trying to get back to the hotel, there was a Revolution Day parade through town, and many of the streets were blocked off from traffic.  When we got there, Eric had not yet arrived but showed up not too long afterwards.  He said he shot by us when he suddenly started feeling nauseous and was looking for a place to pull over.  I wasn´t feeling all that great myself yesterday afternoon but think it had more to do with an afternoon coffee followed by a spicy lunch.

Oaxaca was just going off for Revolution Day.  This was probably as a fun a town in which to spend this holiday as we could ask for.  There were several parades, most focused on the Zocato area, and a symphony playing in the plaza.  Thousands of people milling about enjoying the 70 degree weather.  I can´t imagine too many places in North America that are experiencing any more favorable weather right now. 

We will probably head out tomorrow morning.  We want to check out Mitla, another Zapotec ruins site, a mineral spring at the top of a cliff, and a tree labeled as the worlds ¨largest biomass", which has a trunk 52 meters in circumfrence.  I've heard of other contenders for this largest biomass title, like an aspen stand somewhere in the MidWest, and I also recall a fungus that was all interlinked in a way that some scientists claim it to be the largest.  But this sounds like it may well be the largest individual tree of that size.  I´m not sure how far we will get after checking out these places, but the goal is to make some decent time towards getting to Palenque.  We´ve been in Mexico for over 3 weeks now, and if we don´t start covering some ground, we´ll never make it all the way to Tierra del Fuego before it gets too cold down there.

Monday November 21, 2005 - 08:52am (PST)