It's Sunday, and you know what that means: roadtrip!
We decided San Jose Mogote was a worthy destination, as it's an important Pre-classic site, and less than 10 miles from Moderate Shangri-la. So we grabbed the guidebook, the road atlas, and our book on Mexican archeology and zoomed off.
Now, our guidebook, while sometimes overly florid or just plain out-of-date, is usually pretty accurate with directions. But this time we just could not find San Jose Mogote: no roadsigns, no tell-tale ruins, no village of San Jose even. And of course it's not listed in the road atlas. We ended up cruising through suburban Oax-town on a combination of paved and dirt roads before being thwarted in our search by some rough patches of road requiring high-clearance 4WD. Or burro. Without either, we changed plans and headed south to Lambityeco, another set of ruins we haven't yet seen.
There's not a whole lot at Lambityeco, so it only took us about 20 minutes to explore, if climbing a small pyramid and circumnavigating the off-limits tomb complex can be called explore. As it made for a short day of sight-seeing we stopped in San Jeronimo Tlacochahuaya -- you see why sometimes my brain hurts -- to see their supposedly lovely 16th-century church. Only we stopped by during siesta time, and it was closed. On a Sunday!
We did, however, manage to find a really good chicken place over on the Atoyac frontage road, near the turn for Atzompa. So it wasn't a waste. The plan now is to go to the tourist office in town and ask them how the heck to get to San Jose Mogote, via car or bus, not by burro. Tuesday, I think, I'll try it again.
We decided San Jose Mogote was a worthy destination, as it's an important Pre-classic site, and less than 10 miles from Moderate Shangri-la. So we grabbed the guidebook, the road atlas, and our book on Mexican archeology and zoomed off.
Now, our guidebook, while sometimes overly florid or just plain out-of-date, is usually pretty accurate with directions. But this time we just could not find San Jose Mogote: no roadsigns, no tell-tale ruins, no village of San Jose even. And of course it's not listed in the road atlas. We ended up cruising through suburban Oax-town on a combination of paved and dirt roads before being thwarted in our search by some rough patches of road requiring high-clearance 4WD. Or burro. Without either, we changed plans and headed south to Lambityeco, another set of ruins we haven't yet seen.
There's not a whole lot at Lambityeco, so it only took us about 20 minutes to explore, if climbing a small pyramid and circumnavigating the off-limits tomb complex can be called explore. As it made for a short day of sight-seeing we stopped in San Jeronimo Tlacochahuaya -- you see why sometimes my brain hurts -- to see their supposedly lovely 16th-century church. Only we stopped by during siesta time, and it was closed. On a Sunday!
We did, however, manage to find a really good chicken place over on the Atoyac frontage road, near the turn for Atzompa. So it wasn't a waste. The plan now is to go to the tourist office in town and ask them how the heck to get to San Jose Mogote, via car or bus, not by burro. Tuesday, I think, I'll try it again.
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