El Tule Tree

After visiting Yagul, we drove to see El Tule Tree, which was on the way back to Oaxaca City in Santa Maria. El Tule Tree is a gigantic old "ahuehuete"(cypress) tree, believed the most massive in Latin America. Its base is over 53 meters (165 feet) in circumference and it stands over 40 meters (125 feet) high. They estimate it to be nearly 2000 years old and thus was probably standing here when Monte Alban was active, Yagul and Mitla were born, and the Spanish conquered the area in the 1500's.

Ahh, if Trees could talk!

The tree itself is located in the center of a small municipality with a very nice English-like rose and topiary garden and a Spanish Cathedral flanked by more modern Mexican and local government administrative offices.

After our tours with Geraldo, we returned to Oaxaca City, and once again made our way back to the Zocalo. We checked into our new hotel, the Marques del Valle, right on the Zocalo, and spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch and drinking frosty cold mugs of Sol beer at the hotel's sidewalk cafe restaurant. We went out that night for a really nice nouveau cuisine dinner at Restaurant El Naranjo near the Zocalo.

The Thule Tree