We spent most of the last four days ( 10, 11, 12 & 13) in the mountains around Oaxaca city—the Sierra Norte. Oaxaca and it’s surrounding towns are in a valley—the Valle Central. So we drove up, and up 
… and up. Our trip ended at the town of Llano Grande, with an elevation of 3200 meters (10 500 feet). My used-to-be-a-climber dad says that 3200 meters is quite high, at that elevation people can get altitude sickness and need to acclimatize. People can start feeling altitude sickness usually around 2200 meters (8000 feet), luckily, none of us suffered from that this time, besides being short of breath. We were all, however, feeling the difference in air richness. After even the shortest walk with the slightest incline we would be breathing loudly and our heart pounding.
There are actually adaptations that occur in the human body when one spends time at high
elevation. People can develop the adaptations after being up in the mountains for only a couple weeks, and indigenous peoples who have lived in the mountains for thousands of years, like Sherpas, have even more changes. Most tourists who have spent more than a couple of weeks at high elevation have a higher red blood cell production and because red blood cells carry oxygen, the tourist’s body can receive more oxygen from the thinner air. For the indigenous groups that have lived at high elevations, the adaptation occur in generations, not weeks. Those groups have a greater lung capacity and their blood carries even more red blood cells. And I can tell you, watching our sixty year old guide charge up and down the mountain like it was nothing—I admit, I was envious.
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Llano Grande 
is part of a group of villages called the Pueblos Mancomunados. The Pueblos Mancomunados are a group of villages high in the Sierra Norte that own, share, and manage a large piece of land surrounding and enveloping all of their villages. There are nine pueblos connected by history, community, eco-tourism and economy. Actually, the villages have worked collectively for over 400 years. In the past, the villages shared produce from the fields and worked and traded together. By working collectively, they could shared the load of big labour-intensive projects like trails, roads, mining, and building.. Now they manage their area of the mountains together—the water, the wildlife, the forests, the agriculture, and the economic development opportunities. About ten years ago the Pueblos decided to stop logging and other resource development on their lands and instead to commit themselves and their land to ecotourism…this is really hard to describe. I will just tell how it is today and not how it came to be.
How I think it works is that all the money made from the Pueblos’ ecotourism goes to a central pot among all the communities. Then the leaders divide the money up to schools, healthcare, and where ever the money is needed. As much as I can understand, the people elect and choose who manages what. The rates for staying in the Cabanas, for guiding services, mountain bike rentals, and so on are all agreed on and standardized across the villages. Ruffino said that when they first started this,
no-one believed they could do it, and they started with no government help. Now indigenous people come from all over Mexico to learn how they work together and manage their lands.
These villages are all indigenous Zapotecans, and they manage their forests using a wealth of ancient “Traditional Ecological Knowledge”. Our guide in Llano Grande, Ruffino, was particularly knowledgeable about the forest. He said that before the Pueblos Mancomunados became what it is today, they didn’t take care of the forest. There was a lot of cutting of the forests, a lot of overgrazing, and everything was generally a mess. Then tourists and other visitors started visiting the Pueblos Mancomunados praising the forest and saying how special it was. That, combined with an innate cultural responsibility for their land, made the Pueblos Mancomunados start their management system. Now, our guide said, no one is allowed to cut down a healthy tree, or cut for firewood. Only the unhealthy trees are allowed to be cut down. The forestry is managed, not just done randomly. Our guide could identify all the nine species of pine in that area (plus all the others—oaks, arbutus, etc.), and pointed out plants that had medicinal properties or were used in various ways. One plant
he showed us was a willow, where we originally got aspirin from (willow is “Salix” in latin and asprin is acetylsalicylic acid—thanks Dad). Ruffino had us chew a willow leaf to taste the asprin flavour in it. Another plant, a Jade Plant, when rubbed over teeth can help teeth infections and if swallowed is good for colds. We also learned which type of berry gives the Pueblos Mancomunados a red dye. They know so much about their land that managing those ecosystems sustainably, based on their traditional knowledge, really seems like it could be a reality.
In fact, it sounds
like the forest would be better off if the Pueblos Mancomunados managed the forests totally, without no outside intervention. The Pueblos Mancomunados don’t have all the rights to their land; they need to ask permission from the government forest service to cut down diseased trees. The trees in question are infested with a bark beetle, much like our own in B.C. The only way to stop the spreading of the insect is to cut down the infested tree, strip off it’s bark, then burn the bark, and dry out the logs. But the cutting of the tree needs to be done in a short time frame before the beetles are able to fly to new trees. Ruffino said that they know where all the diseased trees are and are ready to cut them, but that the government is taking a long time to say “yes, you can cut those infested trees”. He was worried the government wouldn’t say “yes” in time, and was encouraging us to write a letter saying “hurry up” to the government.
The different pueblos get money different ways. La Neveria, the second town we went to, gets most of it’s wealth from
agriculture. They grow flowers and vegetable there that are sold in Oaxaca. Even some of the steep parts of the mountainsides had fields of corn and other plants, with striking patches of lilies popping up 
in surprising places. Their farming techniques are a remarkable mixture of those that have worked well for hundreds of years and others that borrow from modern technology. We saw tender greens growing under Remay cloth for shade and they use greenhouses to extend the growing season for flowers and vegetables so high in the mountains
We saw many well maintained fields that were so steep they were hard to walk on. These are fields so steep
they would be impossible to plow with a tractor: so people still plow with oxen! As we were driving from Llano Grande to La Neveria, and again as we were leaving La Neveria, we saw people plowing with ox teams. It was amazing! They just plodded along in straight lines, with barely a hint from the driver. A pair of oxen
were yoked to a single piece of wood that lay across their shoulders and attached to their horns. The yoke is attached to a wooden plow which is pulled behind them and guided by the farmer. Other people followed behind with buckets of seed that they sewed into the freshly turned furrows. It was beautiful to watch, but was long, slow, hard work.. I would have thought it would be hard to control the oxen, but these teams were superbly trained and seemed to work with the farmers incredibly well. The people working with the ox teams (like everyone else we met there) were very happy to stop and talk to us, explaining what they were doing, how they trained the oxen, and talk about their crop rotations.
Of course, all the Pueblos Mancomunados are set up to receive tourists. We stayed in Cabañas. They were cozy brick cabins, once the fire got going, with beautiful beds. They were more deluxe then we expected, especially since the cabanas had great views of the forest, town and surrounding mountains. Every activity in the mountains needed to be with a guide, or else we would have gotten lost. As it was, I immediately got turned around by several switchbacks and
paths that sprung up out of nowhere, which, of course, we turned down. People can go on long hikes, which we did, 
rent mountain bikes, another thing we did, go zip-lining and in some of the towns, go on trail rides. They can also spend time helping in the fields, helping to cook local food specialties, or learning about traditional medicines. Tourists pay for guides by the hour, buy food in the local comedor and stay in the cabanas, so many local people get income from tourism.
Our morning hike in Llano Grande on the 11th was about 8km, and trust me, that is a long hike when the air is thin! We were told that if we started walking at 7 o’clock we might be able to see a Trogon (a big brightly colored bird related to Quetzals and Parrots). It is really cold in the mountains, in winter, at 7:00 AM. The first half of the walk (or was it a stumble?) was down the mountain to a waterfall. It was beautiful, but very cold. And no Trogons. However, as we were descending the side of the mountain, the ground got springier, wetter and everything got very green, like rainforest green. We were entering
a cloud forest!
A Cloud Forest is a ecosystem that spends most of the year in clouds. And I mean literally in the clouds. Cloud Forest occurs at high elevations when the clouds get snagged on the tree tops. This type of forest is very damp, though a lot of moisture comes from fog drip and the ambient moisture in the air, not rain. Cloud Forests have lots of epiphytes (plants growing on other plants, such as orchids and bromeliads) growing on mostly pines oaks. Before this I had uniformly associated pines with dry and warm climates. But here, the pines were living in wet and cold conditions. Not only that, but they had bromeliads growing all over them. Bromeliads, for me, are reminiscent of a tropical rainforest, not one that is cold! But here these two unlikely species were living happily together. According to my dad, these forests are sub-tropical and this kind 
of odd mix of ecosystems occurs wherever you get high elevations in the tropics.
Our guide was very careful to explain to us that the bromeliads are “guests” on the pines, not parasites. The pines are not harmed. The Bromeliads in turn catch water from the air. Mosquitoes lay eggs in the water and so do frogs. The frogs eat the mosquitoes and their larvae. There is a miniature world in each Bromeliad.
At Llano Grande there is a great little comedor (like a restaurant) that we went to for dinners. We had packed avocadoes for lunch, and snacks for breakfast (who is hungry at 7 o’clock anyway?). The woman who did all the cooking didn’t even blink an eye when we said “no commemos carne, ni pollo” (we don’t eat meat or chicken). She made a dish especially without meat for us. It was called Tortas de Ejotes. They were like green bean pancakes with a green sauce (salsa verde) pooled over them and into the plate. They were delicious. Momma says that was because of the amount of oil and the heat at which it was fried.
The cook was very pleased when I asked for the recipe.
On the morning of the 12th we left Llano Grande and drove on to La Neveria (elevation 3200m--9000ft, population 85). Georgie was set on doing one thing that day—the zip-line run by the La Neveria community. A zip-line is also called a Tyrolean Traverse, or en Español, “La Tiroleza”. He did it, and was very pleased with himself afterwards. Daddy also went on the zipline, and I almost did, but chickened out at the last moment. After all, it was 200m long and 40 meters high across a valley! Now I wish I had done it but…well, I don’t like heights. Maybe next time.
That evening we ate at La Neveria’s Comedor. The woman running the show (her whole family seemed involved) was an old Zapotec grandmother (probably not that old, but definitely a Grandmother). She was slightly flustered by the fact that we didn’t eat meat, but recovered to make us a wonderful egg dish. It was Huevos a la Mexicana (scrambled eggs, onions, green chile and tomatoes) with puree of beans on the side. It was like black beans blended up until it had the consistency of thin yoghurt. Of course, there were fresh tortillas if we wanted them.
Georgie and I also had Mexican Hot chocolate. Mexican hot chocolate is different than your normal Canadian variety. It has cinnamon and usually some type of nut. Also, they come in small blocks, or rounds. The chocolate gets melted in hot water or milk. If it is made with milk, then a special wooden whisk is used to beat the milk and chocolate into a froth. It is wonderful! I can see why the Aztecs traded coco beans as a form of currency.
Since coming to Mexico I have been confused by the huge variety of names used for food centered around tortillas
(What is a Tlayuda anyway, and what is on it?). To compound the fact that I am learning new dishes, how people use the names differ from each region and ethnicity in Mexico. As well, the cuisine itself changes from one area to the next. A quesadilla in Veracruz only has cheese, but one in Mexico City can contain anything (i.e. meat, shrimp, and avocado with your cheese). We decided that our Zapotec cook would be able to clear up some of our confusion and had a long talk with her and her daughter about the varieties of tortilla cuisine. I will post her food definitions in a special food write-up.
On the 13th we drove back to Oaxaca city. This is what my mum has to say about our drive back and where we stopped.
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“And then we drove through one of the main weaving communities here in the valley. This
community has specialized in making textiles
since the Aztec times (for tribute), and they have returned to the use of traditional dyes and methods. Amazing artistry and a huge amount of time -- from sheering the sheep, collecting the dyes, carding and dying the wool, and then of course the countless days on the loom. Wherever we go, we try to buy things from these communities. They are doing amazing work, and of course are so much in need. We, however, don't need anything, so it’s difficult!”
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exceptions this week of “interesting nights but boring days” were Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon: Daddy and I played violin at the Center for Street Children of Oaxaca. The Center for Street Children is a program for the children of the working poor. Their clients range in age from pre-school to 27. The children are not orphans, they have a family. They may live in cardboard shacks and their parents may earn minimum wage, but the children still have a family—which makes all the difference (compared to kids in orphanages, of which there are many). The Center for Street Children takes care of kids from those families who would otherwise be roaming the streets. The center gives the children meals and puts them though school. Their website and brochures describe amazing stories of kids who are the first in their families to finish school—going to university and breaking out of the cycle of poverty and lack of education. 
try the violin, and some weren’t much bigger than the fiddle! I loved playing for the kids—their smiles were so jubilant! 
