The Tule Tree & Mitla

We took a day trip from Oaxaca to visit some pretty small towns and more ruins. The first stop of the day was to see a giant Tule tree which is 2000 years old! 42 meters tall and 14 meters in diameter.
Here she is. Omar is in the picture too. I think the tree looks bigger in person.

From the town with the Tule Tree we drove to Mitla which has Zapotec and Mixtec ruins. This site was settled by the Zapotec in 600 B.C. and became a Mixtec settlement in the late 10th century. The church in this picture was built by the Spanish on top of some of the old plazas with stones removed from the Mixtec buildings.

The largest building on the site (which was rather small).

Geometric designs, which you can see in the picture here, decorated many of the buildings on the site.

As we were driving out of town we happened upon this parade, a celebration of the many different cultural groups that live in and around Mitla (we think).

Our last stop of the day was at a mezcal distillery. Mezcal is a cousin of tequila, made with a different species of agave, called maguey. The maguey fields lined the highway for miles.