Anyone who knows anything about Oaxaca knows this city is the home of mole (pronounced “moh-lay”) which is a rich sauce most often associated with savory chocolate. However mole comes in a variety of flavors never seen in the US. Beyond all that cookery Oaxaca is a cultural center of southern Mexico, the place where heat and aridity meet history and Mesoamerica.
Dominican friars spent fifty years wearing out the patience of Spanish civil authorities as they dawdled building a cathedral on land given to them by the civil leaders. Finally they got it done. I have pictures of the gold encrusted interior to make you weep. Tomorrow.
Meanwhile this is the city founded in 1532, with a population of 700,000 which celebrates indigenous culture every year with a month long dance festival in July. Oaxaca de Juarez is a city filled with tourists who come to admire the colonial architecture and the pre-Spanish history of Zapotecs and Mixtecs who lived in this valley.
Our tactic when visiting a city is to get up early and drive into the heart of the area we want to visit, usually old town done where near the cathedral, the main plaza called the zocalo and a cluster of museums we may care to visit.
Get there by eight and we m can be certain we’ll find a decent parking spot on a street wide enough to allow trucks to pass out Promaster and there we base ourselves for as long as we are in the city.
I’ll take Rusty for a walk, he with his nose and I with my camera.
Only in Oaxaca that didn’t work so well. After about twenty minutes ambling there was a series of loud bangs like fire crackers and Rusty the survivor of pursuits had shootings in the Redlands got his PTSD. We went back home running to the safety of the van.
It was disappointing as the morning was fresh and cool and I was enjoying seeing the sights and being a tourist in the neighborhood. But I hate seeing him tremble so there was nothing else for it.
Last year we didn’t do much tourism in Oaxaca. I got a haircut and Layne went to cooking school. She then got sick for a day and soon thereafter we had to get going to rescue an abandoned dog. And that was Oaxaca 2022 for us!
This year we wanted to see the city and wander round and visit the cathedral and the cultural museum so we’ve done reasonably well getting up Monte Alban and so forth.
The city is lively as you can see and colorful and worth a walk. Rusty was calm by the time the museum was getting close to opening so we left him snug aboard GANNET2 with all the necessary accoutrements and he was ready to snooze. I wished the walk had been longer but when we got back three hours later he was glad to see us but not eager to get out of the van.
Above the slogan reads “Reform or Revolution” while below the words say no more femicide in the streets. The murder rate for women in all Mexico is appalling.
Our plan was to see the cathedral then go next door to the museum which includes art exacts from the Monte Alban excavations and then try some local mole sauces.
Hiding from the noise of fireworks:
