Category Archives: Oaxaca 2009

Oaxaca 2009 (No Clever Title Yet)

First day con­fu­sion. Imag­ine our sur­prise to arrive in the Zoco­lo this morn­ing and dis­cov­er that the Car­rera Panamer­i­cana was fin­ish­ing it’s first stage in our front yard. So to speak. Lots of clas­sic cars (with clas­sic dri­vers) ral­ly­ing across Mex­i­co. You can find the whole sto­ry of a race that was revived on the official … 

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Day 3, in which we passed through 3300 years of history

Today was our first day of being offi­cial “tourists”. We went out with Jane and Nico, our guides, and five oth­er peo­ple who are stay­ing here at Casa Colo­nial. Today’s jour­ney was to the north into the val­ley of Etla. Sec­tions of adobe wall are every where. First we went to San Jose de Mogote to see … 

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Day 4, in which we visit many things that Rudolfo Morelos loved

Day 4 (which was actu­al­ly yes­ter­day) we went to Ocot­lan. Birth­place of the painter Rudol­fo More­los. But before we got out of town I saw this set of signs and thought you all need­ed to see them as well. Ocot­lan is south of the city of Oax­a­ca. The biggest build­ing in town is the church. Unlike … 

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Day 5, in which Jim visits Monte Alban

Today, the ‘tour’ was sched­uled to go up to Monte Alban, a pre-columbian arche­o­log­i­cal site just west of Oax­a­ca. My love­ly bride has seen it once, that was enough for her, so the tour depart­ed slight­ly down on troop strength. It was a beau­ti­ful day, some cloud cov­er so it did­n’t get too hot, but … 

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Day 6, in which we went to the market

Today began with a trip to the Abas­tos mar­ket, near the south edge of the cen­tral dis­trict of oax­a­ca. Today was the open­ing of the spe­cial ‘Muer­tos’ sec­tion of the mar­ket, full of spe­cial flow­ers, can­dles, trin­kets and food for the “dia de los muer­tos” cel­e­bra­tions. We bought flow­ers, can­dles, lit­tle skele­ton fig­urines, copal incense, … 

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Day 7, in which we watched a man pull a rabbit out of a tree trunk.

To day it was south and a lit­tle west of town to the Zaachi­la val­ley. Traf­fic has been ter­ri­ble this week so our guide Nico took us down a super-secret short-cut. Like going down the rab­bit hole. Speak­ing of rab­bits. Our first stop was the wood carv­ing vil­lage of Arro­zo­la. Arse­nio More­les took a machete to … 

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Day 8, in which there was one very big tree and a lot of little stones.

Today is Fri­day, we must be head­ed for Mit­la and ‘the tree’!. Our first stop is in San­ta Maria del Tule, to see a huge, sev­er­al thou­sand year old tree. In the cen­ter of the town. Pret­ty amaz­ing. The red­woods are taller, but this honker is huge at the trunk! Play­ing ‘name that crea­ture’ is an … 

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Day 9, in which there is a lot of thread(s)

Today is the Hal­loween for most of you all. Here in Mex­i­co it is the day before Muer­tos. There’s lots of get­ting ready and clean­ing and arrang­ing going on. We were out and about doing tourista things this morn­ing. Our des­ti­na­tion was Teoti­t­lan de Valle, home to the most famous of the Zapotec weavers. We started … 

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Day 10 — in which there are pots and metal creatures

Most of the day was spent in San Bar­to­lo Coy­ote­pec. Our first stop was at the work­shop of the fam­i­ly of pot­ter Dona Rosa. The Dona Rosa invent­ed the bur­nish­ing tech­nique that pro­duces the glossy black pot­tery that the vil­lage has become known for. Her son don Valente con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion. Here are three pots … 

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