Oaxaca - I´ll skip the grasshoppers , gracias

Trip Start Jan 04, 2008
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Trip End Dec 17, 2008


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Flag of Mexico  ,
Thursday, January 31, 2008

I have enjoyed three days in Oaxaca city which really seemed to fly by for some reason , its worrying my trip seems to be going faster and faster. Oaxaca is a pleasant and relatively small city which centres around a zocalo (square) and alameda next to it .. seems to be a place where people like to sity in cafes and watch the world go by. Anyway as is becoming the norm in my Mexican cities tour I managed to see most of the main sights in the city on foot in the first day - the cathedral , zocalo , alameda , market and what I thought was the highlight which was the Iglesia de Santa Domingo and the adjoining Convento de Santo Domingo house which houses a very good museum of Oaxacan history. The cultural museum only opened in 1998 and before this the ex-monastery building was used by the Mexican military as a base. On the second day I went on an organised tour to a number of different places in the Valles Centrales around Oaxaca city . Highlight was undoubtedly the few hours spent at Monte Alban which is the site with ruins remaining of an indigenous city (of the Zapotecs , keeping track of all the different indigenous groups from history is proving challenging , apparently Oaxaca alone has 16 groups) a few miles outside Oaxaca city Monte Alban 30
Monte Alban 30
 . The site is very impressive , not least due to its location high up on the hill so you can see the valley all around , there are quite a lot of ruins to see and a few to clamber on , all set around the very large grand plaza ... and we had a pretty good tour guide to explain what was what. Pretty gruesome some of the things the Zapotecs used to do to captured warriors from other tribes (wont go into grim details but its depicted on some old stones at the site). They werent too pleasant to their own tribe at times either - we heard tales of human sacrifice on a regular basis to appease the gods including apparently players from the "pelota" ball game they used to play .. and not the worse player / "burro" of the match but rather as it was thought to be a great honour it could be the captain or someone from the winning team - hmmm.... wouldnt fancy being sacrificed after my Sunday morning footie , honourable or not . Oaxaca is famous for its artesania / handicrafts so the tour took in a couple of workshops , seeing a 70-something grand master of black pottery at work making a pot and another place which made carved painted wooden animals (more impressive than it sounds on paper). One other extraordinary highlight of Oaxaca was the BIG Tree of El Tule. There is a village a few miles from the city which has a ridiculously big tree which is supposed to be the biggest biomass in the world. Its 42m high and 58m around and makes the church in whose churchyard it stands look tiny. Its funny there is another tree in the churchyard which no-one takes any notice of but it is actually also extremely large , just not on the scale of the "Grand Arbol" Hostel was fairly quite the first couple of nights but the 3rd night I had a fun night with a Kiwi and a German cooking kebabs and guzzling the cheap cerveza (at 2 quid for 6 bottles of Sol you cant go wrong). On the subject of cuisine I have become completely addicted to the Oaxacan "tlayudas" , which are giant crispy tortillas topped with choice of meats , cheese and spicy sauces , kind of like a Mexican pizza... really really nice if a bit messy to eat with the fingers as is their wont. I couldnt be persuaded to sample one of the other Oaxacan culinary delicacies "Chapulines" = grasshoppers - they like to fry them and have them with chilli and lime - there are bucketloads on sale by the market , funnily enough I wasnt feeling hungry that afternoon. Anyway Oaxaca was fun and now I am moving to the Oaxaca coast for some much needed beach time.     
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