Discovering a New, Older...Different Kind of Mexico...
Written: May 16 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The food, the place, the history, the music, the culture...
Cons: *NONE*!!
The Bottom Line: Spend a week in Oaxaca, a month, even a year. It still won't be as much time as you WANT to spend there. Read on to see why.
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Oaxaca |
Sitting at a sidewalk cafe at the front of the Zocalo in downtown Oaxaca, 400-year old colonial buildings on all sides, brilliant shades of red and green melding with the rough grey stones and wrought iron of antiquity, I can't help but feel like I belong in this place, no matter how foreign it feels, and I am. How many other Mexican cities have I visited over the years? Dozens easily...a hundred? I don't know. I know I didn't expect any surprises from a trip to Oaxaca, but I'm not merely surprised, I'm shocked at how Oaxaca manages to feel totally Mexican, yet totally unlike any other place I've ever been in Mexico.
Oaxaca is its own place. It marches to its own rhythm like very few cities ever do. I remember being in New Orleans several years before the era of Katrina misery, and feeling a similar sense of self-confident self. A sense of personality that comes from long traditions and deep culture. New Orleans has its cajun and its creole, and it has an entire cuisine that's a level deeper than anything else in America, and it has not just one entire genre of music to call its own, but several beats that always kept the city alive and dancing. Oaxaca has this kind of feel and profound depth to it. A feeling that can't be duplicated, in a place that has no real peer.
Visit Oaxaca, and you'll understand why people talk of the place in superlative terms.
I love Oaxaca. I love the historical, archaelogical, and anthropological roots of the place. I love its modern day culture, an elaborate tapestry of folk art traditions, contemporary artistic sensibilities, and the boldness to paint a downtown building bright purple and the one next to it bright green. I love food that's bold and intense and flavorful. I love drinks that are rough and manly, and not watered down for mass market nincompoops. I love music I've never heard before, and I love people who don't look just like me or think just like me. Oaxaca fascinates me...
Where Old Meets Ancient...
One of the reasons I like traveling is to reach out and touch pieces of history ... things that have significance and importance outside the ephemeral whims of fashion and fad. I like seeing things that testify to the stories of conquistadors and exploration of a wild and untamed continent. I like touching the altars where Franciscans missionaries once prayed before setting out on their arduous journeys to build missions where natives would either learn christianity, or be subjugated to European wills (depending on your perspective). I like seeing where civil wars were fought, and maybe some of the uncivil ones too.
I can see all of these kinds of things in Oaxaca, a city where the ancient Zapotec people built temples, palaces, and observatories 500 years before the invention of christianity. I can see where the Spanish conquerors built their palaces in the 16th century, and where Mexico's own father of freedom --- Benito Juarez --- would be born to lead the nation in the 19th century.
Spanish colonial churches have always fascinated me. Perhaps its their gloriously extravagant excess, or perhaps its simply wonder at how little the people had 400 years ago versus how grand the churches were, compared to how high on the hog 21st century Americans live, while we have cult-of-personality preachers who build churches with less personality than a Self-Store warehouse.
Oaxaca is blessed with several magnificent churches, but the grandest by far is the Templo de Santo Domingo. This is one of the most extravagant churches in all of Latin America and is a sight of astounding wealth.
Santo Domingo was restored in recent years, and the monastery section is now a regional museum (45 pesos to enter, but well worth it). What makes Santo Domingo so incredible isn't the museum though. It's not the garden of agave outside. It's not the tiled blue and white domes. It's the interior of the main church.
The altar itself is plated in 24 karat gold. The entire back wall of the sacristy is gilded, and sparkles with the gleam of gold, as does the entire interior of the dome. Standing at the altar and looking up, the ceiling is an overload of wealth and artistry. Amid the gold are dozens, if not hundreds, of small inset alcoves, each hosting an intricate statue of a saint. The ceiling of the nave is likewise gilded, but it has larger inset panels, each with a painting of a biblical event, from the birth of Christ to his resurrection.
The church of Santo Domingo is simply a phenomenal work of art. Few churches in the New World are as worthy a visit as is this one. Do not miss it!
Rich and opulent as Santo Domingo may be, it's the Catedral de la Cuidad de Oaxaca that is the most historically significant church in the city --- but that's because, as the cathedral, it's home base for the bishop and is the historical power center of christianity in the region. It's a big church, and stylistically reminscent of many of the churrigueresque cathedrals that were built in Mexico during the 16th and 17th centuries. While the cathedral doesdate back to 1535, it suffered earthquake damage in the 17th and 18th centuries and parts of it were extensively re-built. Inside, it's a darker, moodier church than is the brilliant Santo Domingo, though it's well known for its bronze sculptures of the asencion --- which I was told were actually done by an Italian artesan, not a Mexican or Spaniard.
If you really want to be stunned by a baroque style church, check out the Basilica de la Soledad. The carvings and sculptures on the facade are amazing. I can't always figure out what the themes are that tie things together on these old facades, but this one seems to be pretty clearly related to Christ's resurrection, with the crucifixion centered smack dab over the church entryway and, craning your neck to see what's up at the peak, it looks like a conception of the holy trinity. I thought it might be apostles who were watching the crucifixion from the sides of the church entryway, but I see only 10 statues...perhaps I slept through an important point during Sunday school...
Much of Oaxaca's history and culture is not just colonial though. It runs deep into the pre-Colombian history of the Zapotec people who settled in this region sometime around 1,000 B.C. Modern day Oaxacans built their city in a valley, but the Zapotec were known as "the cloud people" and they seemed to prefer living up on top of the mountains, and you find two major archaelogical sites on either side of downtown Oaxaca. On the west is the picturesque Monte Alban, on the east is the younger (only about 1,500 years old) Mitla. Locals told me that Mitla is sometimes referred to as "the city of the dead", but I think they were confusing it with Branson Missouri.
When the Spanish first conquered the Aztecs in the early 16th century, the Zapotec had been under the thumb of Moctezuma's minions, and like the Spanish, the Aztecs preferred being in the valley and had a fort lying on the current site of Oaxaca. The city evidently sports an Aztec name and not a Zapotec name, as its population might have warranted. Just a little useless trivia for you...I'm full of it (as I've been told countless times).
Venture out from downtown Oaxaca, and you can visit coffee plantations, rural artesanal markets, dozens of archaelogical sites, the rugged backcountry of Parque Nacional Benito Juarez, and natural wonders like Hierva el Agua (a petrified waterfall, if you can believe it!). There's also this place in the town of Tule where they have a tree that some claim is the oldest in the world (supposedly, it's about 2,100 years old, weighs 550 tons, and is more than 40 meters in diameter --- HEY! That reminds me! I was supposed to send a card to my mother-in-law!)
Oaxaca: State of the Arts...
Mexico is a country with a lengthy lineage of folk art traditions, and when I think of Oaxaca, I think of several Mexico's most distinctive popular art forms --- from the wildly fanciful alebrije wood carvings to the subtle elegance of the black-on-black light pottery that is widely sought throughout the world.
Yet it's not just popular art that makes its mark on downtown Oaxaca. The city is also a hotbed of contemporary fine art, and is the hometown of one of Mexico's most famous 20th century artists --- Rufino Tamayo --- a man perhaps more widely associated with the grand Mexico City mural tradition of masters like Diego Rivera, Juan O'Gorman, and Jose Clemente Orozco. Tamayo has a good-sized contemporary arts museum dedicated to him in Mexico City, but he's got another one here in Oaxaca as well. I was actually a bit surprised when I visited the Tamayo museum in Oaxaca because the museum isn't so much about Tamayo's works, it really centers more on the pre-Colombian artworks and themes that inspired Tamayo (and indeed, that seem to permeate into the souls of most of Mexico's most influential artists).
Tamayo is certainly the most widely known Oaxacan artist, but he's far from alone. There are several works by contemporary painters Rodolfo Morales, Rolando Rojas, Filemon Santiago, and Francisco Toledo hanging in the city's stunningly modern galleries of the Contemporary Art Museum of Oaxaca, and the number of downtown art galleries featuring contemporary works is eclipsed only by the number of downtown galleries spotlighting the carvings, pottery, sculptures, and textiles that make up the region's rich folk art tradition.
If The Gods Visited Mexico, They'd Eat in Oaxaca...
Mexico is blessed with some of the most interesting food on the planet and a cuisine that's justly regarded as one of the world's "four great cuisines". Some folks might regard Puebla as the heart of the Mexican kitchen, but I'd like to think Oaxaca would win that race by a good quarter mile.
Oaxaca is to Mexican food what New Orleans is to American food. It's the place where flavors intensify and local character dominates any tendency towards standardization and blandardization. I can get sick of Yankee pot roast or Minnesota hot dish in about 1 meal, but jambalaya and a good e'touffee?? I don't think so!
Same deal in Oaxaca. The flavors are bigger, the spices spicier. Mexico is the country that gave the world chocolate, but it's in Oaxaca where you find chocolate elevated to an art form, and brought down to street level with hundreds of artesans, crafting their own versions of the world's favorite confection. I don't think you'll find a milk chocolate bar in downtown Oaxaca. What you will find are deep, earthy, very dark chocolates, with an almost earthy and grainy texture, dredged through a house blend of crushed almonds, raisins, with a spicy edge of fresh ground cinnamon. You'll find blocks of homemade chocolate being sold in street markets. You'll find hot chocolate being served in the morning, whipped up lighter than a cappucino, yet miraculously black as the midnight sun and sweeter than molasses in January.
As if the chocolates weren't reason enough to eat like royalty, there's the coffees. Mexico isn't usually a country that Americans think of when they think about coffee-producing nations, but many parts of Mexico produce very rich coffees. Up until this trip, I've always favored the coffees from Veracruz, but the Oaxacan coffees are so robustly earthy with such a smooth texture, that I've got a new favorite house brand. In Oaxacan markets, its easy to find roasters who will blend a coffee as well as you can describe your preferences. Of course you can also buy it pre-roasted and pre-ground, and at shockingly excellent values (you can get coffee that's better than the best gourmet coffee shop in the states, but at prices below the cheapest grocery store brand on clearance sale). Starting off the morning with a steaming cup of robust goodness would be treat enough, but it's always served with fresh fruits and homemade pastries too. I know I don't want to ever have to settle for Starbucks and a muffin again!
I love a good stiff drink in the evening just as well as the next guy. Okay, so maybe I like it a little more than the next guy...whose counting? When in Mexico, I usually drink the beer. Sometimes the tequilas too, but usually beer. Not in Oaxaca! In Oaxaca, the thing to drink is mezcal, and it's an eye-opening experience to walk into a good Oaxacan restaurant and see 100 bottles of mezcal lined up on the back bar, with light young varieties, amber bottles of mellow aged mezcals, and even varieties flavored with fruits and spice and everything nice. I've got a whole lot more to say about mezcal in Oaxaca, but for now, let's just say that the spirit of mezcal cuts right to the heart of the Oaxacan drinking experience, and anybody who likes tequila or scotch is going to love the range of mezcals that you find in Oaxaca (and almost never anywhere outside Oaxaca).
I've been to places in Louisiana where the locals refer to their spicy steamed crawfish as "mud bugs", but I'll eat 'em anyway because they don't look like bugs to me (they look like little lobsters). In Oaxaca though, I'm extremely leery of people offering me bugs to eat. Not just because they go and stick worms (okay, so they're actually caterpillars) inside some bottles of mezcal, but if you go to the markets you'll find folks selling grasshoppers! Yep. In Oaxaca, people dry them and serve 'em up with a dash of chili salt and a spritz of lime. Not just in the markets either....I saw them in an upscale restaurant too, so if you get offered a plate of chapulines, you might want to pass (I tried a couple, and they taste like....weelll, not like chicken, that's for sure!)
Speaking of chicken, probably the most famous dish in Oaxaca is mole. Locals sometimes call their city "la cuidad de siete moles", but I don't know what the seven moles might be. There's certainly a lot more than seven variations around town, though colorado seems to be one of the most popular, and negro is the classic style that I think defines the flavor of Oaxaca better than any other taste sensation you'll find.
A Oaxacan black mole (mole negro) is is a thing of great beauty. As complex as the latest Microsoft operating system, but it sure as heck leaves a better taste in your mouth! What is a black mole? Well, it's fundamentally a thick sauce served over chicken (though I've been told that in centuries past, it was turkey more than chicken that was the classic mole meat). The sauce is a blend of 20 or more ingredients. Cocoa is the base, sometimes with coffee added in, usually with some kind of nuts, always with a healthy dose of chilis and spices. The flavors are ground together until none are discernible in their own right, and the mole takes on a personality that's an amalgam of everything good and all things black.
You can find at least one, and often several, mole dishes in every restaurant in Oaxaca. Your problem though is going to be figuring out where to eat. In many parts of the world you wonder if you can find a decent restaurant. In Oaxaca, you wonder if there are any that are not spectacular.
One of the most innovative restaurants in Oaxaca has got to be Los Danzantes, where dinner isn't just a meal, it's an experience! The cuisine is what I call "nouveau Mexican". It's stylish, with a contemporary flair, but with roots that are thoroughly traditional. This is a quintessential Oaxacan restaurant in that some of the dishes are so rooted in antiquity that they've become hip and "modern" as a young generation rediscovers the flavors that danced across their forefathers' tongues centuries earlier. The setting is beautiful, with an open courtyard and a blend of antiquity and contemporary and service that rivals that best dining rooms in Mexico City or New York. The food is exciting and fresh, the ambience hip and savvy, the service top drawer. The only thing that reminds me I'm not in this week's trendiest Manhattan hot spot is the bill --- dinner for two with drinks included is under US$50. I think Oaxaca must indeed be very, very close to heaven...
If you're just strolling around the downtown centro historico, you'll find an abundance of good eateries. I did lunch at a place right on the Zocalo (main plaza). It was called Casa de Abuela, and is located on the upper level of a building catty-corner from the cathedral. The place has a wonderful feeling of not having been updated since 1910, complete with black and white checked ceramic tile floors, impossibly tall windows looking over the plaza, all open to let the soft warm breezes waft in. A grilled chicken breast topped with mango salsa and crumbled queso fresco (goat cheese similar to feta) was a winner, though Mrkstvns Junior was not particularly crazy about having flor de calabaza (squash blossoms) in his quesadillas (they were spectacular quesadillas though....made with big chunks of Oaxacan cheese (similar to mozzarella) and the kind of rough-textured, hand-made tortillas that too many restaurants have quit making in an era of machine-stamped supermarket tortillas).
A City with Class...
If you've ever thought about doing a "learning adventure" type of vacation, I highly recommend that you think about doing it in Oaxaca.
A few years ago, I wrote about going to Antigua Guatemala to take brush-up lessons in Spanish. I did the same thing on another trip to Quito Ecuador. Both times I had an absolute blast and managed to get closer to the culture and make better friends with locals than I could ever have done on a simple "roll your own" vacation.
In Oaxaca, there are schools advertising spanish lessons, and you can do intensive courses for well under $200 per week. Most schools will also arrange local family homestay for you, if you really want to make an intensive course of it.
A totally different route would be some of the cooking and gastronomy courses that are offered in Oaxaca. There are courses offered by famous chefs, including owners of some of the most innovative downtown restaurants, and some feature appearances by people like American restarateur and cookbook author, Rick Bayless (who claims to have himself learned his magic largely in Oaxaca). You might not learn to cook like a professional in a mere week, but if you're a serious foodie, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place to visit than Oaxaca.
Beds of Class, Distinction, and Even Budgets...
There's a surprisingly wide range of hotels in Oaxaca, with a large number of small, boutique bed and breakfast type inns. On the small and personal side of the spectrum is the oft-praised Casa Oaxaca, though with only 9 rooms, its a place that you must plan ahead for if you really want to get in, and its among the priciest options in town. The Casa de las Bugambilias looks nice from the outside, though I didn't get a chance to stay there --- too bad since I understand the rates are under $100 for a double, making it a potentially good value for downtown, where prices can sometimes be ummm....not cheap.
I certainly didn't get a cheap price on my room at the Camino Real Oaxaca, but then, it is quite an upscale property, and it has an outstanding location in the heart of the colonial centro.
If you want more hotel options, I recommend checking the web site www.oaxacainfo.com (it's a bit commercial, but they have links to hotel reservation sites). For general info about Oaxaca though, it's tough to beat www.oaxaca-travel.com.
Getting to Oaxaca...
Oaxaca is somewhat remote, tucked into a mountainous region of South Mexico, but its not particularly hard to reach. There are regular buses that make the trip from Mexico City and other hubs, and you can even book tickets ahead of time (go to www.ticketbus.com.mx). From Mexico City's TAPO bus station, its about a 6 hour bus ride to Oaxaca (price US$40-50). If you're on the Oaxacan coast (Huatulco or Puerto Escondido), its about a 7 to 8 hour bus ride to Oaxaca, or 30 minutes by light plane with Aerotucan.
By air, Mexicana has the best service (most flights, largest planes) to Oaxaca, via Mexico City. If you don't mind smaller planes, Continental Express has a daily regional jet flight to Oaxaca from Houston.
Finally!
I could bend your ears talking about Oaxaca all day. From the length of this review, you might think I already have. I apologize. I just can't help but feel excited about this wonderfully complex, wonderfully traditional, wonderfully warm and welcoming city. A place with a unique style, a unique sound, a unique feeling, and a confident sense of self that's like very, VERY few cities on earth. Oaxaca is a special kind of Mexican city...quintessentially quirky. A gem.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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