Oh no our favourite breakfast place Boulenc is closed on Sundays so we had to find an alternative down the street. It was a very interesting post-modern interpretation of a croque monsieur – it was a cold cheese and ham sandwich which had not seen a grill with warm mushrooms on top. Interesting but I was too hungry to complain. Tea also seemed a confusing idea – I eventually got a cup of hot water with lots of bits in it.

We then went to Yagul ruins to get our 10th UNESCO. Or rather the caves and ruins combined are a UNESCO as they were the prehistoric birthplace of the domestication of plants in North America.

The Zapotec ruins are on the hill above looking down to the caves. It’s a very long walk up from the main road.

The site isn’t too extensive, but it does contain the second largest ball court in meso-america after the one at Chichen Itza.

It also has an area known as the palace of 6 plazas, as cunningly its built around 6 plazas. Its relatively unusual for a Zapotec site and actually feels more Roman in layout. It’s a maze of corridors leading to small rooms which then lead to yet another plaza. To get anywhere I think you had to go through many peoples bedrooms.

Otherwise the site plays host to a lot of cacti and not too many visitors. We were the only ones there until a coach load arrived and we promptly moved on.

We took a very long detour to walk to the Yagul caves. I had previously researched it was easier to get there from the road rather than the ruins but we decided to go for a walk through the spiky undergrowth in the middle of the mid-day sun. What was that saying about mad dogs and Englishmen? At least we had some good views.

Along the way I found many rocks to climb

I even found my own cave

While the seed evidence in the caves are what give the site its UNESCO designation, there are also some paintings on the rock walls nearby. You can see them from the road, but they are the only real indication you’ve found the site.

After all that walking I fancied something to eat so we got a taxi to Tlacolula and went around the large Sunday market there to find barbacoa. The market was really interesting, outside it takes over about 6 blocks of the town, while inside you find all the food being cooked.

Barbacoa is a traditional dish, essentially its goat cooked in a pit in the ground for a very long time. Its actually really tasty, though quite fatty, definitely choose the “spicy” option.

To find the areas serving barbacoa just keep an eye out for the goats heads on the wall behind.

After lunch we went to Santa Maria del Tule to look at a tree. Now wait it is a very impressive tree, in fact it’s the widest tree in the world although there is some debate about how you measure “largest”. It certainly isn’t as tall as the Californian redwoods for example, but it is very wide. Though no one is sure if they should measure the circumference as a best fit circle, or by wrapping the tape measure into every nook and cranny.

The park in the centre of El Tule was well looked after with flower beds and colourfully painted buildings.

After all that hard work visiting so many places I deserved a treat. So we had ice cream at the square the walking tour guide recommended on our first day in Oaxaca. Dave tried some interesting combinations including tuna and zapote negro. Zapote negro turned out to be black persimmon while tuna is actually the sweet fruit of the prickly pear cactus. I played it safe with pinacolada and mango ice cream.

That evening we went out to a highly rated tlayuda restaurant El Negro but it was terrible. The marimba players were so loud you couldn’t hear each other or place your order without shouting and the tlayuda’s weren’t great. For some reason the meat was on the outside, not with the filling and the cheese was so stringy it was hard to eat. When they started doing traditional dances in front of us we decided to leave and take the rest of our food as takeout.

We opted for a quick breakfast and took a mushroom pannini as take out from our favourite breakfast place. We ate next to the Santo Domingo monastary and watched a lot of school kids prepare for a parade with costumes and musical instruments.

As the botanical garden mostly represents the local climate, there isn’t a lot of shade, so free sun hats are available to borrow.

The monastery had been in use by the military as a barracks, store and parade ground, but was eventually returned to the city. Several ideas were put forward for what to do with the area, including convention centres and multi-storey car parking. In the end though, thanks to the efforts of local artists, it was agreed to setup the botanical garden to reflect the diversity of Oaxacan culture. The garden was established by transplanting adult plants and opened in 1998.

The garden is divided into thematic areas, the first we visited was based around agriculture. Here we saw squash plants, which were the first domesticated plant in Oaxaca (seed evidence indicates 10,000 years ago). We also saw chilli peppers, which are a great source of vitamins in the local diet and maize, as well as the wild ancestor for maize.

The layout of the garden is inspired by the Mitla archeological site, with paths taking zig-zag routes and the overall layout and design based around right angles. Around the entire garden all the paths are cobbled, but rather than have mortar between the stones, they are held in place with a stake. This allows water to drain through the path directly into the soil.

A lot of thought has gone into the design of the garden and making it sustainable. Gargoyles spit rain water from the roof on to these areas of stones which then drains into underground containers to be stored for later use. Electrical power is generated from solar power and the site produces far more than it needs.

The garden also undertakes active research projects, the greenhouse here has apparently won architectural awards. Its split into two with each half growing the same plants, but researchers can modify the climate in the two different halves to see how plants fare.

We saw some Ceiba trees, these were a sacred tree for Mixtec. The legend says that the first royal couple came from a Ceiba tree. The gods threw an arrow at the tree and one half became man and other woman. Otherwise they do a good job of fixing nitrogen in the soil and because they don’t loose their leaves during the dry season they are an important source of shade.

Copal trees are also in the garden – they have a reddish appearance and the bark permanently peels. Copal was also used by meso-american cultures for incense to burn in ceremonies.

Chandelier cactus can grow to quite a size if they survive parasites or damage for long enough.

Agave plants are everywhere in Chiapas. They are actually farmed as they are used as the basis for Mezcal spirits and for Pulque – an alcoholic drink that all the locals swear cures pretty much everything. Pulque is a white milky drink with a sour taste and is usually drunk once a day for the health benefits. The Agave plant itself is very resilient but will bloom once in its lifetime and then die 

One of the really impressive plants we saw was a Cycad. These are almost totally unchanged since the Jurassic era. They are now a protected species, as cattle ranchers had been systematically eradicating them because they are poisonous and were killing their cows.

The barrel cactus (locally called visnaga) is another endangered plant. Traditionally it was used to make a type of candy to give to children on Three Kings Day (Jan 6th). However this tradition became a craze and production ramped up. The issue is that barrel cacti grow so slowly its impossible to replenish. The cactus in the photo here is estimated to be over 400 years old. If left alone they can grow as old as 1000 years.

The garden contains a huge diversity of cacti of all types, as the local biosphere contains the greatest diversity of them worldwide.

Towards the end of the tour we even saw a Frangipani tree, a hybrid with white & yellow flowers

After our tour around the garden we wandered the town a little and eventually had dinner at a nearby place recommended for its burgers. I loved the potato wedges!

After that unfortunately Dave was ill and had to have an early night while I planned our next few days.

Today we completed our 9th UNESCO by going around Monte Alban (Oaxaca and Monte Alban combine as one UNESCO listing). Unfortunately there were no signs whatsoever to be found at Monte Alban. Either it was a conspiracy by the guides to make you take up their services or they were all being restored from sun damage. Luckily we learnt a lot about the site from the Mexico City anthropology museum.

Monte Alban is actually the second largest mesoamerican ceremonial site, with only Teotihuacan being larger and is thought to have been the Zapotec captial city. At its largest there were approximately 35,000 people living around this ceremonial centre and it was active from 500BC to 800AD.

It was largely built by the Zapotecs and it is believed they carried all the stone up from elsewhere in the valley. They also transported all the water and other supplies for day to day life as there are no springs on the hill. However the oldest carvings at the site are actually Olmec and nobody knows how they got there as it was not thought the Olmec civilisation reached here.

The site is astronomically aligned, with an observatory building perfectly oriented to the bright star Capella. The observatory also had carvings of upside-down heads which indicated regions or kingdoms which the Zapotecs had conquered.

The oldest room discovered beneath one temple is known as the room of the dancers, as carvings show men in contorted poses. In the 19th century there were interpreted to be dancers, but this is now discredited and the accepted theory is that they show tortured/mutilated captives/sacrifices.

The site museum contained many of the early Olmec carvings and other artefacts. Most of the elaborate finds from the tomb are in the museum in Oaxaca though, not here. Archaeologists discovered many skulls which showed not just the typical deformation practices, but also trepanning and dental modification. The consistency, circularity and precision of the trepanning holes drilled in the skulls is quite astonishing for a culture which did not develop metallic tools. Teeth were also found with modifications to their shape and with holes drilled to mount jade studs.

Once we got back to Oaxaca we decided to try the local specialty, Tlayuda. Tlayuda is a “Oaxacan Pizza” a tortilla is fried with various fillings on top of it, until the tortilla is crispy. They can be served open like a pizza, or closed like a calzone. We tried one with spiced pork and it was great along with a Mezcal based cocktail. While you can buy Mezcal elsewhere in Mexico and abroad, local Mezcal is made and sold without licences so can only be found in Oaxaca state.

After our Tlayuda the only way to finish off the day was to have more brownies and enjoy our terrace.

We went back to the amazing cafe for breakfast and I was feeling very hipster with my avocado on sourdough toast.

We then went on a walking tour around the historic centre of Oaxaca and we started outside the cathedral. The construction started in 1535 and the seat of the dioces moved there in 1640. It has been damaged and repaired several times due to earthquakes, so the building we see today was actually last finished in 1733. The facade is made from a local Oaxacan green cantera stone which you can see in many places around Oaxaca.

The tour took us from the cathedral to the central park and the government buildings. The buildings are associated with Benito Juarez who was born in Oaxaca state and is of Zapotec ancestry. Although born poor he became the first indigenous president for Mexico and lead the liberal movement through the civil “War of Reform” and the French invasion from 1858 to his peaceful death in office in 1872.

The band stand in the centre of the park was commissioned by Porfirio Diaz, who was Mexico’s dictator for several decades (1876-1911) and had a love of French culture and architecture.

We also visited the Santo Domingo de Guzman church with its very very baroque and bling gold interior. Construction by the Dominicans started in 1575 but the church and accompanying monastery wasn’t fully complete until 200 years later. The monastery was active from 1608 until the revolutionary wars in 1857 when it became a military barracks, it returned to use as a church in 1938 and was then restored.

We tried some local cocoa/maize based drinks and saw the auditorio Guelaguetza in the distance where a local festival is held. We then passed by the remains of an aqueduct which used to bring water to the city, constructed in the 1700’s it was finally replaced by steel pipes in the 1940’s.

The tour finished near the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad where the nearby plaza is occupied by many artesanal ice cream stands. I think we will go back and visit this again soon.

Afterwards we went round the museum in the old Santo Domingo monastery – it was made a museum in 1972 and eventually fully restored in 1999. I especially liked the exhibit on what was found at the Monte Alban Zapotec site – particularly the Tomb 7 burial from the classic period which is one of the richest to have been found.

The most iconic find was a human covered in mosaic. The skull has been decorated with a turquoise mosaic, as turquoise was valued more highly than gold as a sacred colour of the gods. The top of the skull has been removed so it can be used in ceremonies to collect sacrificial blood possibly.

The exhibit also had a lot of high value jewellery, demonstrating that the Zapotecs worked or traded for luxury items. Finely carved sea shells, polished jade and thin worked gold were all used.

The museum covers local history up until Mexican Independence, including the hispanic conquest. One interesting fact we learnt was that the Catholic’s tended not to emphasise the sacrifice of Christ in their conversion of the locals or in their imagery. They were trying to convert the locals from their gods and the idea of human sacrifice was one they were trying to suppress not encourage.

From the museum you can also look over the botanical gardens which have been established in the old monastery grounds – more on these tomorrow!

We then set out to try Mole at Los Pacos where they have a sample plate of the seven different types of mole.

• Negro: onion, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, cumin, dried chiles, pumpkin and sesame seeds, herbs like hoja santo and cilantro, and lots of dark chocolate.
• Rojo – similar to Negro, but with less chocolate and added dried red chiles and raisins.
• Coloradito – between rojo and negro, but sweetened with mashed plantain.
• Amarillo – similar base to negro, but no chocolate.
• Verde – tomatillos, jalapenos and cilantro.
• Chichilo – based on a beef stock with the spices added but no chocolate
• Manchamantel – red chorizo, tomatoes, ancho chiles, pineapple and plantain.

My favourite was the classic Mole Negro, which wasn’t too surprising as it has chocolate in it. It has to be done well though otherwise the chocolate gains a burnt flavour and all is ruined. Fortunately this example was perfect!

We headed back to our apartment and terrace to enjoy the night views over the city after that.

The night bus was not my favourite and I barely got any sleep, look how wide awake I am at 3am compared with Dave. 

We went from San Cristobal at 2,200m (7,200ft) to the isthmus pass at 220m (735ft). The isthmus is known as the Chivela pass and was used by the spaniards to ship goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans because its only 200 miles across at its narrowest point. Its use as a trading route only declined with the opening of the Panama canal. Then we were back to 1,555m (5,100ft) at Oaxaca. We arrived at Oaxaca at around 10am and walked across town with our heavy bags in middle of day. At least we got to pass these colourful jaguars.

When we arrived at our accommodation we were told we could have a free upgrade to an apartment with a terrace. I leapt at the chance and it was great to have so much extra space inside.

Interestingly the complex of apartments even had a loom which was used by an older gentleman.

We went out for a late lunch and we were very close to an amazing place which I think we will keep going back to called Boulenc. Oaxaca is very famous for its mushrooms, as it has over 2500 endemic species, with at least 50 which are edible. We had foccacia bread with mushrooms and it was ever so delicious.

Afterwards we got our bearings and walked around the central historical area and the Santo Domingo monastery. I also had an awesome chocolate brownie we had picked up from Boulenc earlier.

After having such a poor nights sleep on the bus I needed an early night!

Today we went to see the El Chiflon waterfalls. This involved a collectivo to Comitán and then another to the falls. Both sides of the river have separate parks and we chose the right hand side as having better reviews. It was a hot walk under very little shade to the waterfalls and we had tuk-tuks honking us to offer us lifts but we persevered onward.

The Chiflon waterfalls are a cascade of five separate falls on the San Vincente river which drop 120m in total. The five falls from bottom to top are: Sigh Waterfalls, Angel Wing Waterfalls, Bridal Veil Waterfalls, Rainbow Waterfalls and Quinceañera Waterfalls.

We hiked all the way up to the top, only pausing to take photos of all the very many falls. The last segment was very steep and slippery from all the water in the air from the Quinceañera waterfall. The largest waterfall Bridal Veil is the third one up, falling 70m.

After a cheap pack up lunch we were ready to go zip lining. Unfortunately the GoPro got too hot and refused to video the second zip wire which was disappointing.

We went back and had a great meal at Maya Pakal which included soup, main, cake and a super strong margarita as a deal.

We then packed for our overnight bus to Oaxaca. Definitely a busy day!

We drove through clouds on our way to Sumidero Canyon today. It’s ever so surreal to realise we are so high up; San Cristobal is 2200m above sea level. That’s probably why it’s been so cold!

First we were serenaded by marimba players while we got kitted out with life jackets for the boat trip. I now officially detest marimba players because they have no volume control and the low notes are very blurred. Not my favourite. But once we were on the boat everything was great. 

Sumidero Canyon began forming around the same time as the Grand Canyon in the USA (35 million years ago). At Sumidero the Grijalva river has eroded its way down so currently the canyon reaches a depth of up to 1000m and is 13km long.

We saw a lot of wildlife on our way through the canyons including crocodiles, spider monkeys and an island of birds. The spider monkey even posed for us and hung out on a branch right by the boat. I suspect it’s been trained with food to do this since it showed no fear of the many cameras being shoved in its face.

We went all the way through the canyon to a lake created by the Chicoasen hydro electric dam. Although it is a national park, sadly the canyon is downstream from some large cities which results in a lot of debris and pollution which has to be captured. 

After the boat trip we took the bus to the viewpoints above the canyon. We spent a bit more on an organised tour because we wouldn’t have the viewpoints otherwise. I think the photos were worth it!

By this point it was getting a bit late in the day and I was feeling peckish. We stopped off at the town Chiapa De Corzo and ate a dish of pork in broth which we werent quite sure of the name of. I also had horchata so I was loving it. Sadly we only had a quick 30mins here so we just toured the Central Park and got tempted by the clothes but didn’t end up buying anything. It takes me more time to get my wallet out than 30mins!

We tried a local place for food that evening, a group of Mayan teenagers started it up to share traditional food. Sadly the chef tested out a new recipe for salsa verde on us which was inedible. So after being very un-british and complaining about it (because we know salsa verde should be delicious) we ended up with empanadas instead.

Today was a day of cold and rain which is never very fun. 

We tried a cooking class at a non profit called steps which teaches people how the indigenous mayans cook and gives funding for education back to these communities. First we had a lesson in how to make fire which used up a whole box of matches and most of the liquid in a lighter and half the cooking oil. It really did not want to light and get hot enough to spread to the coals. The teacher kept on smothering the flames with coals too quickly before the fire was hot enough to spread to them.

We put a pot on the coals with peppers, tomatoes, onions and chilli to blacken for the salsa.

We learnt how you have to soak the maize first and rub it to get the husks off. We then used a grain mill to mill the maize into a coarse flour which we added water to and rolled into equal size balls. There were two methods to make these into tortillas 1) roll and press with your hands into a circle of equal thickness which I preferred or 2) use the press machine but don’t press too heavily or it’s too thin to pick up and place on the hot plate. The hot plate was covered in calcium oxide as a “non-stick” coating. 

On the hot plate once the tortillas were cooked we added Oaxaca cheese to melt on them to make quesadillas. Then we moved on to the salsa as they finished cooking.

With the salsa we blended all the ingredients together with a little water using a mortar and pestle. Then ate it with our cooked quesadillas. It was lovely except when you had too much chilli seeds from the salsa!

We learnt that in Chiapas the nearby Coca Cola plant has deeper wells than the local communities so it takes the majority of ground water in the area leaving the indigenous communities less water and they either have to pay for bottled water or use contaminated water. Also Coca Cola is cheaper than bottled water which is creating a diabetes epidemic. The charity that orgnaises the cooking class is educating the local communities about the danger of diabetes and providing education for children.

We finished the class just before the heavens opened and a torrent of rain fell down. This was lucky since we were cooking in an open courtyard because we were using a real fire like the indigenous people would have done.

We dived into the nearest shelter which turned out to be a hotel with a restaurant. The hot chocolate wasn’t great but at least it was dry! I wasn’t feeling their menu so we went to Anafritos Chipanecos which had traditional Chiapas cuisine. We ended up pointing at the pot with the chicken instead of the pot with the fatty unknown meat and it was very tasty. I even got desert!

With the rain over we walked around the textile market again but with it being a Sunday a lot was shut. Sunday’s are important for families to be together so a lot of things are either at their busiest with families or closed.

After our late lunch all we fancied for tea was churros and hot chocolate. My kinda food!

We took a collectivo to Ocosingo down a long windy road with many switchbacks and speed bumps. It got incredibly stuffy with no aircon or windows open and with all the sudden start stops I was feeling pretty ill. At Ocosingo we walked through the town and busy market to catch another collectivo to the Tonina Ruins.

Tonina spent much of its time at war with Palenque, and expanded its territory against others as well, becoming the dominant city in the west. The site is built upon a raised platform of about 6 hectares, while the main temple is 71m high from this plaza. This is one of the tallest pyramids in Mexico and it certainly took a long time to climb up to the top!

Archaeologically it is notable for its well preserved stucco decorations. These decorations generally depict the ruthless way they killed or defeated their enemies. The most impressive stucco is 16x4m and shows a death god carrying the head of Palenque’s ruler in one hand – so nice people.

It was certainly a work out going up all those stairs! But the view was worth it. Luckily we had pack up sandwiches to munch on and get some energy back.

It was a long way back to San Cristobal but after two and a half hours we finally arrived. We went out to Cocoliche for food and I absolutely loved the frozen pineapple yoghurt drink and yellow curry. Even better a band started at 9pm and they had a brilliant tenor saxophone player.