El Árbol del Tule

I spent last weekend in Oaxaca city, hanging out with friends, eating good food, and visiting some of the local attractions still on my list. There are so many things to see in and around Oaxaca city, little by little I'm checking them out.

A few miles outside of the city is a small town called Santa María del Tule, known for a big-a** tree that is over 2,000 years old. As you can see in the fotos, it makes the church next to it look tiny! And I assure you, it's a decent-sized church. Stats on the tree: it's a type of cypress called ahuehuete and measures 58 meters (64 yards) around, 42 meters (138 feet) high, diameter of 14 meters (46 feet). My guidebook says its branches reach 15 stories overhead, and the estimated weight is 636 tons!

The trunk is really interesting, it's not circular like most tree trunks. Walking around it is like walking around a weirdly-shaped house, the trunk divides into separate out-growths and is very ridged and gnarled. I can only imagine how difficult it was to get approximate measurements!! You can find shapes of animals and faces naturally occurring in the grooves and ridges of the trunk, I definitely saw a deer, an elephant, a T-rex (for Gavin!) and an ogre's face.

It was obvious that the tree had seen better days... Oaxaca has been facing a water shortage for a number of years, and it was clear that the lack of sufficient water was affecting the health of the tree. Certain groups are trying to protect the tree and its water sources, and are pushing for long-term solutions like reforestation in the mountains around Oaxaca.