Oaxaca Rocka

We arrived on Oaxaca at 11 o'clock at night on Friday. They have an old school, walk-across-the-tarmac airport. This picture earned Sergio some stern looks form the airport police.

We take this photo every time we see this sign.

The zocalo in the center of town is lively day and night. We took a quick stroll before getting some end-of-week sleep.
Day 1: The City

The next day we got up early to admire our bed & breakfast's patio and get started wandering around the city.

Our patio at the hotel.

We walked to some amazing markets (grasshoppers, a million kinds of mole, chocolate, etc.)

Then we went to look at churches.

Iglesia de Santo Domingo

The Basilica. This is where they saw the face of the Virgin Mary on a donkey's saddlebag. It is also famous for its adjacent palaza and its amazing ice cream fair with flavors like "beso de angel."

"What do you want? I'm eating an angel's kiss here..."

A girls' basketball game in an open gym off the main drag in town! Starved for any kind of hoop action, Sergio made us stop and watch. The girl with the ball appears to have made the team solely based on her relatively-freakish height (she was about 5'5"). Lowest scoring basketball game ever.

On the roof of "our" house Saturday evening. Right across the street, the neighbors had a cage of monkeys living on their roof. Things like that are starting to not even seem weird anymore

View from the hotel roof. You can't see the monkeys, but the mountains look pretty.

Day Two: Monte Alban



Monte Alban are some ruins right outside of town, of the Zapotec people. They're not as large or as well preserved as Teotihuacan but the setting is far more picturesque. The ruins are on top of a mountain which offers a 360-degree view of the whole Oaxaca valley.

Note the lack of other people messing up the vista.

Some of the city's former residents.

Sergio styled his hair in homage to the mountain peaks.

Yet even more steps to climb.

It takes years of research and practice to master this dance.

Back in Oaxaca, on a Sunday afternoon...

There was an orchestra downtown, a couple of lady singers, a cumbia band and political speeches. Apparently, election day was right around the corner and there's a heated contest for city council. We saw a lot of "Lenin for President" signs, which was kind of weird.

Speaking of politics, Oaxaca is a center for social movements. In fact a year ago the whole city was basically shut down by protests against the local government. The street art/graffiti left over from that was pretty extensive.



We got some bonafide organic Oaxacan coffee before we hit the road back to Mexico City.


It was a great trip, and we were happy to take home some Oaxaca with us -- coffee, mole, some handicrafts. Sasha wanted to take this guy too but as you can he's pretty well set where he is.