I just returned from a quick weekend trip to Oaxaca City. Oaxaca is renowned as a food and art destination, and I knew I wanted to visit on this trip. Even though I was barely there for 48 hours, I got a great sense of the city and I’ll definitely be back for a longer visit.
I took a flight down on Friday, and landed around 1pm. I didn’t have a plan for the rest of the day, so I solicited some feedback from a work friend, and got the suggestion to visit Monte Alban, a hilltop Zapotec city dating to ~500 BCE. Good tip Ian! I jumped on the back of a DiDi motorcycle taxi for the 20 minute ride up to the site. I’m not a big motorcycle person, but it sure is nice to be able to weave through all the traffic.
There’s a great YouTube video which details the full history of the site and the culture. The site consists of numerous temples, palaces, tombs and houses, and it was occupied in various phases over 1,500 years. It would have been great to visit with a knowledgeable guide, but I found a free audio tour online which, though in Spanish, I mostly understood. What I definitely understood was the heat! Like visiting Teotihuacan, there’s no shade and the sun feels awful close. Even though Oaxaca is only a few degrees warmer than Mexico City, the air isn’t as dry, and there’s not as much smog to soften the sun.
I wandered around the site for a few hours, enjoying all of the amazing views. The builders flattened a hilltop to create the site, so it has amazing panoramic views of the valleys below.
After exploring, I needed to figure out how to get back to the city. I figured I could always call another motorcycle taxi, but I wandered to the main parking lot in case there were any taxis milling about. There was only one, and he was already in negotiations with a couple of folks from San Diego. I was able to tag along for the ride down the hill, where he handed us off to another taxi for the rest of the journey.
I got checked into my room and went for a wander of the city. Oaxaca was founded by the Spanish in the early 16th century, and has a historic center which retains much of that Spanish colonial architecture. One of the unique traits is a green-tinted stone which was used to construct many of the buildings. As I was wandering the city, I came across what I initially thought was a parade, but which turned out to be a sort of wedding-party-in-the-street. Apparently Oaxaca is a popular wedding destination both domestically and internationally.
A bit later, I came across a parade which actually was a parade, celebrating Carnival. I found a good article which explains some of the symbolism (sadly I hadn’t read it in advance) – many local villages were represented in the parade with music, dancing, devils, and lots of cross-dressing men. The latter apparently intended to satirize the pomp and circumstance of formal weddings. It was a lovely thing to stumble upon!
For dinner, I went to a place Avidan had suggested, Labo Fermento, which focuses on fermented foods (who’d have guessed?). Since I knew I’d be doing a food tour on Saturday, I figured I’d try something a little less traditional for dinner, and it was lovely.
Saturday morning, I grabbed a pastry at Pan Con Madre, a trendy bakery, then met up with my food tour through Culinary Backstreets. We started with breakfast at Mercado de La Merced. The focus of the tour is exploring traditional Oaxacan culinary history and the importance of certain ingredients. Oaxaca has a strong food tradition around chocolate, spices, and herbs. We sampled different drinking chocolates – traditionally they would have been pure cocoa, without any sugar, though nowadays they’re sweetened. We also had some tortillas with cheese and chicharron. On our way through the market, our guide Pablo bought some nixtamalized corn kernels and other ingredients. Then we went to the communal mill, where we had the corn ground into masa dough. At the mill, a man was grinding other ingredients for mole paste and the smell was amazing.
With our freshly made dough, we walked to a local restaurant where the dough was made into tortillas for us. To fill our tortillas, Pablo gave them hoja santa (pepperleaf) leaves, which were griddled with eggs. It was delicious, and a wonderfully hands-on way to structure a food tour. Other stops on the tour included tlayudas (a crisp tortilla topped with beans and cheese), chocolates, various moles, and finally a stop for ice cream in another market. It was a lovely ~5 hour experience with a great group of retired folks from around the US.
I ended my day with a lap of the historic city, and then a street hamburger in a park – since it was Valentine’s day, I didn’t really want to fight for a seat in a restaurant. My “oaxaqueña” burger included beef, bacon, ham, grasshoppers, two kinds of cheese, lettuce, jalapeno, and who knows what else.
On my way back to my room, I came across another wedding. This time, it not only included puppets but lots of slightly dangerous fireworks, which was extra fun. One activity involved people taking turns holding a bull sculpture rigged with pinwheel fireworks – I’m not sure if the goal is to see how long you can last before you hand it off, but it was a lot of fun to watch.
I wrapped my trip to Oaxaca this morning with breakfast in a market, and another walk through town. The town itself is completely packed with galleries, museums, and textile shops, but I figured I’d save those for a future trip. Kat would never forgive me if I visited the textile museum without her.
My return trip was easy, and I’m glad to be back in Mexico City, with plenty of ideas for a future trip to Oaxaca.
So glad you got to do this… though the hamburger with grasshoppers does not appeal.