Friends, I am here today to sell you something. Namely, I am here to sell you the idea of taking a vacation to Oaxaca. They’re not paying me a dime for this. I’m proselytizing just because I love the place so much.
Readers will remember from my last article that Lea and I visited Oaxaca in 2016 to celebrate Día de los Muertos. Oaxaca is definitely the hot spot to be on the Day of the Dead, but there are plenty of reasons to visit this lovely part of the world at any time of the year.
Because we went there specifically for Day of the Dead, we had a lot of fun in transit – and by “fun” I sarcastically mean the other thing. We booked an evening flight to Mexico City, a brief stay at a hotel near the airport, and a quick morning hop south to Oaxaca . The travel gods were not pleased by this, so our hotel in Mexico City cancelled our reservation and every other place within a reasonable cab ride was booked as well. We could have got a room at the hotel inside the airport for the paltry sum of $400 USD. Instead we chose to sleep in the terminal.
Which was freezing.
Early and bleary, we landed in Oaxaca and were immediately welcomed by the warmth and easy laid-back atmosphere of this small, secluded city. We were also met, right at the departure gate, by people selling tours. Normally we would have set our shields on maximum and our phasers to stun, but we were tired, had a lot of travel to arrange, and when we saw that the agents were selling trips that went nearly everywhere we wanted to go for dirt-cheap prices (around $30 USD per person) we said “Sure! Why not!” and signed up.
But first things first: We needed food! After checking into our hotel, we grabbed a cab and went forth in search of sustenance. Oaxaca has a lot of good restaurants, many of which can be found around the Zócalo (the big square at the center of town) and along the Calle Porfirio Díaz, which parallels the pedestrian Calle Macedonio Alcalá. However, thanks to our handy Fodor’s guidebook, our first port of call was the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, a market and collection of eateries that is ground zero for traditional, authentic Oaxacan cuisine.
Basically, this is where the locals go to eat. The center of the market is an enormous maze of kitchens and food stalls where you order your food directly from the cook and sit at a bar (or at tiny tables for two). On the way into the building, if you’re coming from the street named Miguel Cabrera, you pass through a meat market where you can pick out a cut of meat from one stand, your vegetables from another, and wait while all of it is grilled for you and served on tortillas.
The Mercado 20 de Noviembre isn’t designed with tourists in mind, so they’ll spot you coming from a mile away. This won’t do anything to change the friendliness of the people, or how fantastic the food is. Sure, try some of the upscale restaurants in town, but go to 20 de Noviembre first.
So about that tour:
We signed up for a longer excursion that hit many of the top spots to visit outside of town. We scheduled it for the day before Día de los Muertos began in earnest, so as not to miss any of those goings-on while tooling around the countryside. The tour was conducted in a convoy of vans which, during the peak of festival season, were packed as full as they could go. Some had Spanish speaking guides and some English. However, because of an internal snafu at the tour company, we weren’t picked up at our hotel when we were supposed to be. The company sent an employee to fetch us in their personal car, and we caught up with everyone else at the first stop – after which we got to ride in the front seat with the driver of one of the Spanish-language vans, squished in between the passenger door and the gear shift. And yet, it was all good fun.
The first stop was east of town, in the village of Santa María del Tule, to see the Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress that has the largest trunk of any tree in the world. The trunk has a circumference of nearly 140 feet, and is 46 feet in diameter. The second place contender is either a baobab in South Africa or a giant sequoia in California, depending where you look online.
From there, the tour took us to visit (and shop at) an artists’ collective in Teotitlán del Valle where you can watch local artisans produce rugs and other textiles using hand-operated looms and natural dyes. The people of Teotitlán are of Zapotec descent and wear their heritage proudly. Lea and I found a rug there that we liked very much, and I failed utterly to negotiate the price down before buying it.
And that was before they gave us alcohol. The third stop on the tour was El Rey de Matatlán, a watering hole for travel groups where you can see how mezcal is produced and taste multiple varieties before battling your urge to buy multiple bottles. (I’d already blown our spending money on that rug, so we were safe.) Mezcal, distilled from fermented agave, is the beverage of choice in Oaxaca. Tequila is a sub-category of mezcal made from blue agave, but in fact there are many more varieties than I’d imagined.
The landscape around Oaxaca abounds with Zapotec ruins, which are very well preserved because of the region’s dry climate. Our tour took us to the second most important archaeological site in the area, Mitla (derived from the ancient name Mictlán). Mitla was the religious center for the Zapotec people, and the site is an amazing complex of well-preserved temples, tombs, and palaces.
Our last stop for the day was at Hierve el Agua, a natural infinity pool in the sky. The rocky pools are at the top of sweeping cliffs over a deep valley, above what appear to be enormous waterfalls – until you notice that the “water” isn’t moving. These white formations are caused by calcium carbonate from the springs that form the pools, carried by water trickling down and depositing minerals in the same way that stalactites are formed within caves.
For those adventurous enough, or who thought ahead and packed bathing suits, you can dip in the pools and enjoy the view of the valley. Lea and I did not, though we did enjoy taking pictures and sampling the snacks for sale at the village on top of the cliff.
Back in Oaxaca itself, there are plenty of ways to spend your time. There are so many art museums and galleries that now, three years later, it’s hard to remember which ones we went to, though I’m pretty sure we visited the Museum of Prehispanic Art, the Manuel Álvarez Bravo Photographic Center, as well as La Casa de las Artesanías. Of the churches in town, the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán is not to be missed. During the Day of the Dead festivities, the entire façade of the cathedral was lit up at night with an impressionistic video history of the region.
Directly connected to the Templo de Santo Domingo are the city’s botanical gardens, the Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca, and the Francisco de Burgoa Library. The museum has extensive displays on the history of the area, and needs several hours to fully enjoy. The library is no less jaw-dropping – the thirty thousand volumes inside, cultivated from monasteries and convents across southern Mexico, are positively ancient. I giggled to see a locked shelf of titles that had been banned by the Inquisition as heretical.
In Oaxaca, we also discovered the funniest street-crossing signs in the world.
There are plenty of places to shop in Oaxaca, but if pottery is your thing you should take a cab or bus out to the village of Santa María Atzompa. It is here that much of the traditional “black clay” pottery of the region is crafted and sold, as well as the green-glazed pottery that is unique to this village. We don’t often go in for souvenirs, but we did buy a beautiful green bowl, and I kept a black clay skull from Atzompa in my office at work until I “retired.”
Last, but certainly not least, if you visit Oaxaca you absolutely cannot miss the ruins at Monte Albán. Give yourself a day or two to get used to the altitude first, because Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotec civilization, and like all Mesoamerican and South American cultures, they loved to build their cities on top of the highest mountain they could find.
There are several great things about the site. First, it’s amazingly well preserved, given that it’s one of the oldest cities in Mesoamerica (dating back to 500 BCE). Second, all the tourists are over in Cancun visiting Chichén Itzá and Tulum, so you can actually see the monuments at Monte Albán without a thousand people taking selfies and blocking your view. Guides for hire are available, as always, but Lea and I wandered the city on our own, at our own pace. Just make sure that when you arrange transport up the mountain, you also have a ticket and a time to get back down.
In our travels, Lea and I are sometimes doing more than enjoying the local scenery and cuisine. We’re also on the lookout for a place to retire. Oaxaca is on that list of possible destinations. In fact, it’s pretty close to the top.
Here’s one last story to give you the flavor of the community: While scouring the Internet for Día de los Muertos activities, we came across a well-buried poster for a daytime comparsa in Tule, city of the giant tree. We took a cab there well ahead of the appointed time in hopes of finding a spot from which to view the procession. We consulted our map, found the intersection where the comparsa would begin, and staked out a doorstep where we could sit in the shade.
And we waited.
As we sat there, an event of some sort began to take shape. Young people of high school age walked by with band instruments. Old men set up chairs, tables, and a canopy in the middle of the crossroad. We waited for some activity to erupt, for the people of the town to pour out in droves, but nothing happened. That is, until the guys under the tent noticed us and invited us over. They pulled out chairs for us, right in front of everyone, so we could watch the band that had set up around the corner. Somehow, just by being there, we became guests of honor at the comparsa of Santa María del Tule, even though our Spanish was nearly as nonexistent as everyone else’s English.
The band played, old men danced with a Catrina, and bottles of home-brew mezcal were passed around. (Drinking was not optional.) While we were enjoying the event (and asking ourselves what we’d got into), a Chinese woman who’d been exploring on her own was roped in to be the center of attention with Lea and I. It was an odd, unexpected situation to say the least, but we felt very, very welcomed by these people with whom we shared nothing but a common humanity and a love of life.
Yeah. I could definitely go back there to stay.
P.S. Here’s a thing even long-time readers have surely forgotten. Waaaay back in Chile, this very time last year, I decided that when we returned from our South American odyssey, I was going to publish a collection of all my short fiction that had seen print so far. Ladies and gents, that collection is now available just in time for your holiday shopping pleasure! Check it out.
The Escape Hatch will return in early 2020. Where will the trapdoor open? Israel and Jordan! Stay tuned.