Although it falls at the same time of year (end of October, start of November), this Mexican festival is very different to Halloween – it is a two day holiday that reunites the living and dead. Families create “ofrendas” (offerings) to honour their family members that have passed. These altars are decorated with bright yellow marigold flowers, photos of the […]
Next stop? Tequila! But first we visited the Guachimontones ruins (yes, I know) which were quite different to what we had seen before. These ruins comprised three stepped circular pyramids surrounded by raised platforms on which there were once roofed wooden structures. Two had been restored and one left as was – hardly discernible. We camped next door at a […]
The La Carrera Panamericana, or ‘La Pana’, is a multi-stage, multi-day, Mexican road rally with multinational teams competing. Dave wanted to spectate and we arranged our route so that we would camp at the start of Special Stage 9, just north of Guanajuato. That left a few days beforehand and we set off from ‘Pasty Town’ (Mineral del Monte) to […]
We left Teotihuacan for the mythical town of Mineral del Monte in Mexico – the town that eats the most Cornish pasties in the world. Surely this cannot be true? We did contribute to their count, tho! But first we visit the interesting rock formations at Basaltic Prisms of Santa María Regla. We’ve never been to the Giants Causeway in […]
After our week long stay at the garage, we headed to Teotihuacan for some R&R (and to get a rather large backlog of laundry underway). What drew us to Teotihuacan? More ruins of course! This time Aztec pyramids. But, the real draw was the opportunity to float above them in a balloon. We first visited the site on foot (in […]
Two choices – the autopista or the ‘free’ and windy parallel old road. We chose the latter and enjoyed the slow trek through very beautiful countryside to Tehuacán, where we spent two nights at the Cactus Biosphere (really nice, except for the Mosquitos!), home to 80 different types of cactus. During this time, we unfortunately had more technical problems with […]
We left Oaxaca and headed towards Tehuacán. All started out well, but Big Bertha steadily lost power and progressively exhausted more and more thick black smoke. By the time we reached Tehuacán we were having trouble exceeding 40kph and climbing hills. All was definitely not well. We found a wild camp and the next day Dave started diagnosis with the […]
Ok, so hands up – who amongst you knew (or had even heard of) the Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs? For us as school kids, much as the Incas hogged the limelight in South America, so did the Aztecs in Mesoamerica and these other civilisations didn’t get a mention. So it was interesting to discover more about their culture and visit […]
We drove the roughly 500km to Oaxaca from Tuxtla Gutiérrez over two days, stopping at a hotel en route because the temperatures were very hot at sea level and it would have been uncomfortable sleeping in Big Bertha. Oaxaca is at around 1500m and much cooler. Our first stop was at Mitla, just outside Oaxaca – yes, another ancient ruin […]
We last treated Big Bertha to new tyres in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2022. We have covered 62,587km since then and we were running almost on F1 racing slicks. Our wheels have 20 inch rims, which are almost unheard of in the Americas and we use military tyres – so it’s not a case of pulling into the nearest […]