The Call of the Road

It's no secret for those of you who know Rebecca and I that we like to go for drives simply for the joy of it. We like taking roads we have never been on, and may never use again. I feel like this has always helped us to see aspects of the cultures were are living with that otherwise we might have missed.

Yesterday, we headed south and then east on a loop that I had been pondering for a while. Simply put, the drive was increadible. Most of the loop was through very rural and very poor Mexico, a far cry from the modern city of Oaxaca that we live in. Most people that know us also know that we love the country. We are not city folk, we are country bumkins. Therefore drives like this through the country are really special.

Now that the rains have been falling in a consistent basis, farmers were out in force yesterday tilling their lands. Most of them were actually preparing their land for planting, with a family member like the wife or children dropping seeds in by hand right behind the plow. It looked like this farmer already put his corn seed in a few weeks earlier. Needless to say, we had never seen so many ox drawn plows in our lives. It was very surreal. (BTW, we only saw two small tractors)

The one thing that has amazed me in all the places I have seen in Mexico is the presence of the Catholic Church. Wether I am flying over the remote mountains, or driving through very rural country side, it seems like EVERY pueblo has it's own cathedral, most of which are very ornate and large.