Oaxaca

We had an amazing trip to San Jose del Pacifico and to Oaxaca this past weekend. We ended up leaving the city at noon last Friday with our friend David - after TD had yet another unsuccessful trip to the visa office (that's another story). 

Beautiful mountains in the Mixteca - between Puebla and Oaxaca.

Under ideal conditions the drive to Oaxaca on the toll road is about 5.5 hours. Our combination of GPS shenanigans, road construction, stopping for dinner, and INSANE Friday night traffic through the center of Oaxaca, meant it took us about 9 hours to get to Oaxaca to pick up another friend Carlos, who is from the town of San Jose Del Pacifico, in the mountains south of Oaxaca on the road to the coast. Thankfully it is a beautiful drive, especially the part from Puebla into the Valley of Oaxaca.

What a large portion of our trip looked like

We left Oaxaca for SJdP at about 9 pm. The road from Oaxaca was unbelievably bad - giant potholes that could swallow your car (our pal SR lost a muffler and bent 2 rims on the same road this trip), Topes (speed bumps that would scrape the bottom of your car no matter how slow you were going, constructions with large parts unpaved with candles lit to mark where the road was.

TD and I said to each other - this is why they tell you not to drive at night in Mexico!! Thankfully we arrived at SJdP withour any trouble (TD is a super trooper when it comes to driving) and were snug in our beds before midnight.