Photos by Josh Meister Photo.
Oaxaca is an amazing and colorful city. We spent just over a week there, eating, shopping, and exploring. Check it out here. We also took a couple of day trips outside the city.
There’s a lot of options for places to go and ways to get there. You can book a tour with any one of the numerous vendors throughout the city, you can navigate public transportation and colectivos (shared taxis) to get where you want to go on the cheap, or you can rent a car and go it alone. We opted for the latter for most of our exploration. And at $35US/day for the rental, insurance included, it was a very affordable option.
DAY TRIP 1 – MARKETS, MITLA, AND MOUNTAINS
On our first day with the car, we drove east and south, heading first to the famous Tule Tree, the widest tree in the world. This dude has a circumference of 164 feet! It’s an easy stop, on the way to everything else, and just takes a few minutes to walk around and check out.
Our next stop was Tlacolula de Matamoros, a Sunday-only market about 45 minutes drive outside the city with a really impressive food section as well as vendors selling everything from handwoven rugs (of course we bought a few!) and pottery to household and farm goods to live chickens. You haven’t been to a traditional Mexican market until you’ve been stuck behind a guy with a live turkey draped over his back through the aisles!
From the market, we headed to our farthest point out, Hierve el Agua, a set of natural rock formations that resembles a petrified waterfall with jewel-toned mineral pools at the top. It’s a gorgeous site! Ideally, it would have been better to get here earlier in the day, as the pools were a little crowded when we arrived. So we decided to skip those and opted for the hike down below them and back up. It only took about an hour, but was fairly steep, and I was huffing and puffing hard by the end of it.
Our last stop, heading back towards Oaxaca, was Mitla, an archeological site of the Zapotec culture. Oddly, it’s not labeled correctly on Google Maps, and there seems to be absolutely no signage to find this place. We had to double back a few times before we finally made our way through Mitla village and found signs to the ruins. It’s thought to have been an ancient religious site, and the best part is these super cool geometric pattern mosaics on the walls. Just from a graphic standpoint, it’s worth a visit.
We wanted to stop at Teotitlán del Valle, a rug-weaving village that’s on this route as well, and lunch at Restaurante Tlamanalli, put on the map by both The New York Times and Anthony Bourdain, but we didn’t make it, opting instead to take our time at the other stops.
DAY TRIP 2 – RUINS AND ARTISANS
Our second day with the car we headed in a different direction, southwest, toward a more popular and much larger archeological site, Monte Albán, a large pre-Columbian archaeological site. The ruins have been dated to as early as the 8th century BC. There’s several structures including temples, homes, tombs, and even a ball court for games. It was super interesting to walk around and explore, and we spent about an hour here. You can also hire a guide to get more detailed information.
Then we drove on to San Martín Tilcajete, a village of alibrije artisans. Alibrijes are essentially fantastical spirit animals. Think Pepita in the movie Coco. They’re typically brightly colored and sort of piece-mealed together from parts of different animals. Our favorite stop here was Taller d’arte Jacobo y Maria Angeles. It’s a well established workshop that’s pretty large and includes a sponsorship program in which they teach the craft to kids, both local and from elsewhere. They claim that several characters from Coco are based on their own – Dante the dog after one of their pooches and Mama Elena after their head cook. Sure, why not?
Our next destination was Santo Tomás Jalieza, a village right across the highway where the craft is weaving blouses, purses, table runners, and more. Not sure if it was just a slow day, but this place was almost deserted. We were the only shoppers around, and all the vendors tried to coax us to buy from them. Lastly, we finished up on our way back into the city with a stop in the village of San Bartolo Coyotepec, known for their black pottery.
DAY TRIP 3 – MEZCAL DISTILLERY TOUR
There’s tons of palenques, or mezcal distilleries, surrounding Oaxaca. We skipped the group trips and instead hired Edgar from Espacio Mezcal to drive us on a private tour for about the same cost. He took us to three different palenques, the first run by Berta who is one of only a handful of female mezcalerias. She was incredibly gracious and very excited to show off her operation. We watched the agave being mashed to release the juices for fermentation, got to try a first distillation (pretty strong, as mezcal typically goes through three!), chatted up some of workers who had already gone a bit heavy on the tastings for the day, and then went to her home to try some finished product, which was ah-mazing.
Our second palenque was a newer one, bright and light feeling, a definite contrast from the dark old-school vibe Berta has going. This one involved even more drunk workers, and we started to sense a theme. After a bit of a kerfuffle over Edgar’s car not starting, we figured out the issue and were on our way.
Edgar had clearly saved the most impressive stop for last. Lalocura, was started by Eduardo Ángeles, considered the godfather of mezcal, and is a much more mainstream production than the others. The palenque is huge and incorporates more than just the agave distillation with greenhouses and a farm. We were greeted by a couple of friendly dogs and then had a traditional lunch of eggs, beans, and tortillas. Then we got to explore the operation, in which everything is mashed by hand, as opposed to using horses or donkeys as the two previous palenques had. Finally we got to the tasting, which had its own set of processes, involving having each mezcal first poured on our hands and smelled before sipping.
Dropped off back in the city, we were full of spirits, delicious food, and a whole lot of new knowledge.
OTHER OPTIONS
We also researched a couple of other excursions, including an overnight hiking trip to the Cloud Forest, a few hours north of the city, and a visit to San José del Pacífico, known for their magical mushrooms, south about two and a half hours, close to halfway between the city and the coast. Although we didn’t hop on any of these options this time, we fully intend to visit the region again and check out some of these places!
All images TM & © 2019 Josh Meister Photo and Shari Margolin (unless otherwise stated). Please don’t steal or “borrow” – just be cool, be cool.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Fifty percent of any profits from these links will be donated to Charity:Water.