We have been looking forward to this town for a long time. We have heard so much about Oaxacan Mole and all the other great Oaxacan foods that we really mapped our trip to end up in Oaxaca. We had fantastic food in Puebla but Oaxaca just had so many more places making fantastic meals. And we thoroughly enjoyed this city! Unfortunately, we were here during a teacher’s protest. Teachers here are making less than $5 per hour and definitely deserve to make a living wage but their protest made it difficult to see the real city. Hundreds of teachers filled a 6 block by 6 block square around the zocalo (square in the heart of town) with tents and tarps hanging 5 feet high, which made it difficult to walk and even see where you are walking. Oaxaca is also known for their political resistance so this isn’t an uncommon situation. Residents seemed to just accept it and find away around the center of the city. The protest could last weeks or months more but there is hope that it will end after the Mexican presidential elections in early June. While it was a pain navigating the tents and tarps, overall it was a peaceful and tidy protest.
We were able to duck our way under the tarps to find the markets and restaurants and we found the food we were looking for. Several different types of moles were available in addition to specialties like memelas, tlayudas, chapulinas, empenadas, and tamales oaxaquenos. We did not go hungry, and enjoyed trying everything including Oaxaca’s famous Mezcal which is a smokey version of Tequila..
Monte Alban is a Zapotec ruins site that sits on a hilltop just a few miles from the city of Oaxaca. We took a bus up there one morning and were amazed by the views from the ruins as well as the enormous size of the whole site. My parents had an epic summer road trip in 1967 where they drove their 1965 Mustang on a huge summer tour of Mexico. They remember seeing the Oaxaca zocalo dances on a Saturday night with the boys walking in a big circle and the girls walking in circle around them while the older women watch from the outside to ensure nobody gets too close. It doesn’t happen like that anymore :>) But, their pictures from Monte Alban don’t look too different from the pictures that we took.
The Monte Alban site also had a tomb that they found some of the best preserved treasures in Mexico. We visited the museum in an old convent and got to see the artifacts there that didn’t get stolen and taken to Europe. I really liked the skull covered with turquoise mosaic tiles.
We also took a tour to see the much smaller ruins of Mitla. They were not as old but featured some really cool designs inside and outside of a priests residence. We also stopped on the tour at a Mezcal distillery, a rug making factory and the widest tree in the world in the small town of Tule. My parents had also been there before.
Overall, we enjoyed our time in Oaxaca, but we feel like we didn’t get to see it at its best because of the big protest that took up much of the center of town. It was really chaotic and got me a little stressed out while walking through tents or next to all of the traffic snarls caused by the blocked roads. We did like our Airbnb. We want to come back again and see Oaxaca at its best. And eat some more of the food.
This is the last stop on a 5 month trip through Guatemala, Colombia, Aruba, Curacao, the Galapagos, Panama and then Mexico. It was our longest trip yet and it might have been a bit too long for us. We are missing our friends and family even though we did have a great visit with a few of them in Bucerias, Mexico. We aren’t tired of traveling, but we just want to see people a bit more. We are still planning some epic trips but we are going to try and break them up a bit more with trips back home every 3 to 4 months.
Next stop- Home!!!!