I left Oaxaca on Feb 9th headed for Mexico City. I hadn't bought a plane ticket yet because I wasn't sure when I would be ready to leave, but I needed to be in San Francisco before Valentine's Day.
I assumed I would stop in Puebla, but I got a late start. Thanks to the prior evening's festivities,
estuve crudo. This didn't make the traffic any easier (note - the cars in the middle are parked on the old abandoned railbed that runs through town):
Once on the road, the scenery was grand, back into beautiful deserts:
I looked longingly at the road carved into the side of the mountain in the distance:
When I crossed into the state of Puebla, the roads became dramatically worse, potholes everywhere. The vegetation also changed. The road was lined with big sugarcane plantations. All of a sudden the air started smelling of heavy, sticky, burnt sugar. It was actually quite tasty. Then I saw this:
A refinery surrounded with truck after truck of sugarcane, waiting to be unloaded.
It was getting dark, so I opted to stay in Tehuacán. There isn't much to say about Tehuacán, touristwise, but it's fairly cute for a sizeable city and Lonely Planet recommended a hotel overlooking the zócalo:
The next day I noticed something odd about Tehuacán and Puebla. There are countless intersections like this one. Talk about mixed signals...
Tehuacán:
