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Hiking Between the Mancomunadas Villages of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca
Story and photos by Tim Leffel

It’s 7:30 in the morning and I’m chilled to the bone. We sit down in a restaurant with the doors wide open, where I can see my breath when I exhale. Before coffee, before any food, a local official comes around pouring shots of mezcal. When in Rome and all that, so I take it and start sipping, using it for the purpose the locals do: to feel a warm glow that keeps the cold at bay.

I’m on an adventure trip in the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca state, about two hours north of the capital city and a few thousand feet higher. We’re hiking in the mountains between the different communities overseeing the trails and cabins, but when we’re not moving around we’re shivering and huddling by fires. The organizers did send an e-mail telling us to pack plenty of warm clothing, including hats and gloves, but by the time I got that message I was vacationing in Puerto Vallarta with a carry-on suitcase of beach clothing. I have some very nice Gore-Tex jackets and merino wool base layers at home, but they weren’t mixed in with the bathing suits and shirts meant for the tropics. Besides, there’s an inherent skepticism when an e-mail like that comes in from someone in Mexico. Heck, I live in Mexico at 2,000 meters and 11 months of the year, I don’t even need a jacket during the day.

We’re at more than 3,000 meters though and I’m learning the hard way that when you add another 50% to the altitude, that changes everything. The tour starts out in the town of Llano Grande, where we have an introductory dinner with mayors, guides, and program directors from the various communities. The mezcal bottles make the rounds and the men are wearing heavy coats. Both signs of things to come.

Community Tourism in Isolated Mountains

The towns and villages around the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca don’t have a lot of natural resources to earn money from unless they decided to pillage the forests for short-term gain. Plus their isolated position in high and rugged mountains means they’re disconnected from urban Mexico in a lot of ways. There’s no cell service in Llano Grande, nor do we get it in most of the other villages we stay in afterwards. Now and then there’s a restaurant or café with internet service through the telephone company—cable and fiber optics haven’t made it up here either. Apart from moving to Oaxaca City or even further to the USA, how do communities like this earn enough to live on, much less thrive on?

For the participants of the Pueblos Mancomunados, an intercommunity cooperation initiative, tourism that gets people into nature has become a viable solution, one that spreads around the visitors and the money they spend to benefit multiple households. Each town has local hiking guides, spacious cabins with a view to stay in, and participating restaurants serving Oaxacan food at reasonable prices.

These are not routine hikes either: throughout the trip we keep getting views of uninterrupted nature, of craggy mountains covered by thick forests, with no buildings in sight. The company Expediciones Sierra Norte has a website in English and brings foreign visitors to this special area on tours, connecting with the Pueblos Mancomunados in ways that will keep the communities thriving.

Morning at the Mirador

The start of the first morning is rough, but turns out to be vale la pena (worth the pain), the goal for any climb that requires getting up before 5 a.m. We’re doing it to catch the sunrise at Mirador Calavera, a spot a few hundred meters higher than where many of us had fitful sleeps after coming from sea level. It’s a magical place though, above the clouds covering the forest below us and a green blanket of nature in the other direction that goes from black to light green as the sun keeps trying to poke through the multi-colored morning.

Most of us are shivering and trying to find a spot where the cold winds get blocked, but our local hosts come to the rescue with a big cauldron of café de olla Mexican coffee that’s been heating up over glowing orange embers, matching the sky in front of us. After we’re two cups in on that and have had some sweet bread with local apple jam, one of our guides blows through a conch shell, welcoming the sun god, and out comes the second drink for warming up: Oaxacan mezcal poured into tiny clay cups.

Feeling warmer and happy about nature’s light show, we descend down a trail that is steep and difficult. It’s one of those times when I realize it was probably better that we could only see two steps in front of us with phone flashlights on the way up. It looks a lot scarier now.

That’s just a warm-up for a real hike ahead of us, however. After a hearty breakfast in Llano Grande that’s suitable for people who will be on the move all day—chorizo-topped tlayudas—we set off for the next village of Cuajimoloyas.

Through the Canyon of Cueva Iglesia

There are more than 400 bird species in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca and more than 350 types of butterflies. We see plenty of both as we move past fields of wildflowers and a healthy variety of trees. There is some agriculture near the villages, all done organically without pesticides, and we see some cornfields still set up the way they were in pre-Hispanic times, with the trifecta of key food items of the time. Squash plants spread across the ground area as the corn is growing, lessening the number of weeds that can get the sunlight they need to grow. Beans planted between the rows of corn keep climbing even after the corn is harvested, using the stalks as natural beanpoles.

About an hour and a half in we reach a clearing and take a break, noticing that some in our group are lagging further behind than they should be. Since there’s no cell service up here, one of the guides pulls out a walkie talkie and arranges for a mid-hike pickup for some who are struggling with the move from sea level the day before to 10,000 feet now. The rest of us forge on but that night, two in our group are still dealing with altitude sickness they can’t shake. They have to abort and head down to the capital city where the oxygen is not so thin.

The rest of us keep hiking through forests in their natural state, though there are some cows and semi-wild horses grazing in two open fields we pass. In between two of them there are piles of crap we need to avoid stepping on. “The cows know there is another field at the other end of this trail,” our guide Mario tells us, “so they walk on the trail to go eat somewhere else.” Sometimes the cows think the grass is greener on the other side.

The deeper we get into the wild, however, the fewer signs of non-native animals we see, including humans. I’m impressed about how there’s no discarded garbage anywhere, a drastic difference from what I usually observe on Mexican hiking trails. Here the Mancomunadas participants are really taking care of the communal lands.

The 400,000 hectares of the sierra are controlled by indigenous communities (Zapotec, Chinantec and Mixe) within approximately 60 communal properties. Its excellent state of conservation is not an accident: the communities of the Sierra Norte possess an ancestral knowledge of sustainable use, protection, and conservation of the resources found in their territory.

The highlight of this day’s Sierra Norte trek is a canyon showing off nature’s power, with sheer cliffs and giant rocks that have tumbled into crevices. We take a one-way spur off the trail to check out the namesake Cueva Iglesia—an area within the rocks that is sometimes used for church services in the wild.

We arrive at our cabins in the town of Cuajimoloyas and occasionally get a glimpse of the view they have when it’s clear. Now that we’ve stopped moving, however, we’re cold and need to get the fireplace going. It’s going to have to warm us up before dinner and then keep the cold at bay during the night, when the temperatures will get down to the low 40s Fahrenheit.

Mountain Medicine and Tamales

We emerge from the blankets the next day and quickly pile on the clothing layers and hats. The embers in the cabins’ fireplaces have died out and outside our windows, there’s a steady rain and fog covers the town right below us. We enjoy another hearty breakfast of a “small tortilla” that’s the size of a plate. Since it is folded over, they have put two in front of each of us.

We won’t need energy for hiking though because the guides have made the wise decision to abort the day’s hiking excursion and figure out a Plan B. While we’re talking about that, huddled under an overhang outside, one of the local hosts appears with a familiar sight: a bottle of mezcal to start the day. This one is steeped in mango, however, and at this point doesn’t feel at all out of place just after breakfast. We drink it out of small bamboo tubes with a string that can hang around our necks.

We stick with the plan of visiting the impressive suspension bridge in the town of Benito Juarez, however, named after Mexico’s most-admired historic president and a native of Oaxaca state. Most photos of this bridge you see online are bright and sunny, but I’m enjoying the more dramatic view we’re getting on this day of drizzle and fog. I may be cold and wet and the usual view is obscured, but it’s worth it for the enhanced aesthetics around the bridge.

We then head to the house of a local healer, a medicinal plants expert named Ester Luis Juarez who also happens to be a massage therapist and one of the English-speaking Mancomunadas hiking guides for Sierra Norte Expeditions. The day before we had passed her on the trail, coming the other way.

She has more than 20 different herbs and flowers laid out on a table and goes through the particular properties. Some are native to the area and aid with everything from kidney stones to headaches, but she also talks about ones many of us have in our kitchens, like rosemary, spearmint, thyme, and oregano. We finish up with a tea that’s popular in the area, made from wild peppermint that grows all over the mountains; it’s supposed to help with both digestion and hangovers. There aren't a lot of doctors in these parts, so these plants are relied upon for everyday ailments.

The late lunch stop isn’t at a restaurant, but rather in a big dining room of a working organic family farm outside of Benito Juarez town. After our bellies are full of fresh-picked vegetables, chicken in red mole sauce, and hand-patted tortillas, dessert comes around. It’s simple but delicious: apples from their orchard topped with honey from their beehives. One person in our group is allergic to apples, so the grandmother says a few words to a grandson and he runs out the door. A few minutes later a bowl of strawberries shows up on the table instead, brought in from a strawberry patch around the corner.

The patriarch Eli—sporting the wildest eyebrows I’ve ever seen on a human—takes us on a tour to show off what they’re growing. On one side is a cornfield and close to the house is a garden split between an outdoor area and a greenhouse. In between the greens, the squash, the carrots, and the berries are fruit trees of multiple varieties. There’s also a chicken coop supplying daily fresh eggs. This family doesn’t need to do much grocery shopping.

That evening, after huddling by fireplaces for a while, we walk downhill from our cabins to restaurant Casa de Piedra for a tamale making workshop. We mix cornmeal dough, press balls of it flat, spoon in fillings, then fold them together to go into corn husks. As a team we’ve produced at least 100, then at least 150, and I’m wondering who is going to eat all of these tamales. Soon we find out: the local Mancomunadas crew, the town’s police department, and various government workers all stream in for a communal meal with the strange foreigners. I’m a little worried that our tamales will get a thumbs down, but they get scarfed up and all is well.

Walking in Zapotec, Aztec, and Mayan Footsteps

The last morning, when the two shots of mezcal are almost keeping me warm as the crew from Panaderia Betito serves up breakfast and coffee, I’m looking at the weather outside with dread. We have a 16-kilometer hike in front of us and there’s a steady drizzle coming down, on top of the whole town being blanketed in fog. A local community representative shows us around the various restaurants in Latuvi town before we take off and each comes with a similar refrain: “Outside of rainy season, there’s a really spectacular view from here.”

Once we start walking on the Camino Real trail from Latuvi to San Miguel Amatlan, however, either our guide Mario’s prayers to the gods have been heard or the gods just want us whining low-landers to get moving and return home. The rain disappears, the temperature rises, and suddenly we’ve got a clear day of walking on a historic trail.

Back in the days before roads, before horses that the Spanish brought, the Mesoamerican people traveled by boat or on foot. Despite the slow speed, however, there were thriving trade routes between the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean, between the coasts and the interior. Shells for obsidian, fish for corn, cacao for gold, and on it went. While we tend to think of the various civilizations as separate entities, there was a lot of cross-culture trade and collaboration between the Aztec, Maya, and local Zapotec people. The trail we’re on was one of the key routes between the two oceans and it’s fun to imagine the goods that passed through here 800 or 1,000 years ago.

The scenery along the way is impressive as the trail winds along a river, affording views of various cacti, agave, bromelias, and abundant Spanish moss. When there’s a clearing in the trees, we see rock formations and forests, with birds flying between high trees and a canyon opening up before us. It’s a mostly even trail, but with a few climbs here and there, enough for us to start encountering something we haven’t felt for days: sweat.

The layers start peeling off as we near the end and our stomachs start rumbling. When we get to the van, a driver and our local hosts are waiting, along with a bottle of mezcal to pass around of course.

We reminisce around a lunch table eating at a restaurant with its own trout farm by the river. We’re warm, we’re happy, and in a relaxing setting in the mountains with the sound of flowing water around us. Soon it will be back to a noisy city and hotels owned by absentee landlords, with nebulous paths to follow for the money we spend. For a few days in the wilderness, however, we have gotten to see what communities banding together can accomplish, all while respecting the forests and all the creatures we share them with.

IF YOU GO:

In the individual towns like Benito Juarez and Latuvi, domestic travelers can just show up and pay for a cabin and a hike. It’s best to book with Expediciones Sierra Norte ahead of time, however, to ensure that everything is set up for transportation, an English guide is arranged, and cabin spaces are available. Leave the planning to them and the meals will be memorable as well. Spend a few days in the area since there are more than 100 kilometers of trails, plus other activities available. Assume you will be out of touch for a few days and mind their advice when they say to pack warm layers all year and waterproof ones on top from June through November. Package prices are in pesos.

Editor Tim Leffel is an award-winning travel writer and blogger who is based in Mexico when not moving around as a nomad. He is author of several books, including The World's Cheapest Destinations (now in its 5th edition), Travel Writing 2.0 (now in its 3rd edition), and A Better Life for Half the Price on living abroad. See his long-running Cheapest Destinations blog at that link.

Related features:
The New Stars of Community-based Tourism in Mexico: Melipona Honey Bees by Tim Leffel
A Guatemalan Town Rediscovers Its Identity Through Art by Shelley Seale
Tourism as a Force for Change in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere by Tim Leffel
The Unveiling of Mezcal: Visiting Oaxaca's Artisanal Distilleries by Lydia Carey


See other Mexico travel stories in the archives.