La Paz: Season Two

Adapting to City Life, Sort Of

Hola amigos. It has been awhile, but we are here in Oaxaca centro, and we love much about the city: its culture, art, people, food, and yet… we think we are kind of done with large cities.

By Mexico City standards, Oaxaca is super small, the city central is only 260,000, give or take some thousands. And yet it’s busy, with lots of traffic, exhaust fumes, narrow streets and sidewalks, and recently many—too many to count—large dead beetles on the sidewalks. Apparently, it has to do with the rain.

We have been most relaxed when we went out to Monte Alban, the awesome pyramid surrounded by mountains and alive with birds.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re having a great time. We’ve visited a number of museums, and learned more about the Mesoamerican culture and the art in this area. We’re enjoying our Spanish classes and the teachers. In fact, I can’t believe we have only one day of class left. 

We’ve had some great meals: moles, posoles, memelas, chocolate, taquitos, chapulines (grasshoppers, I don’t want to eat them all the time; but they’re not bad). And there’s so much more to sample.

We’ve made some trips to the towns outside Oaxaca. I mentioned Monte Alban. We visited San Martín Tilcajete, where we met people creating weavings, paintings and the alebrijes (carved wooden creatures that are painted with exquisite detail). Yesterday we went to San Bartolo Coyotepec, where the artisans make pottery from a black clay without a wheel. 

This woman started doing this work at age five. Her work is beautiful, and she has memorized all her patterns.

The area where the women work is tranquil and surrounded by the workshops, homes and gardens. 

It’s amazing to see the processes—so much unchanged for generations—and the workmanship. We only wish we had more space in our bags. We considered buying another, but we have too many stops to lug an extra bag around before we get home.

In the workshop of Jacobo y Maria Ángeles, where they make  alebrijes.

The cook at this workshop was the inspiration for Abuela Elena  in "Coco."  We didn't meet her!

El barro negro is used to create these pots. In the 1950's, Doña Rosa created the process to burnish and fire this clay, there by making it decorative pottery that people would buy. (Plastics were making the use of pottery for containers obsolete.) Thus she kept their art alive.

We loved our stay at the Casa Colonial after our debacle at the last AirBnb. It truly was relaxing and felt like home. We are located in a different AirBnB, which is centrally located and only two blocks from our school and three from the zocalo. Unfortunately, we’re a bit tall for the place. We’re good with the outdoor area and the bedroom, barely with the bathroom, and we can’t use the living room because we can’t stand up in it. Oh well…we’re not here much.

See. It really is a low ceiling.

We’re looking forward to our trip to the Oaxacan coast in five days before heading back to Ashland. We need some small-town beach time.

Of course, we wonder how we’ll do with all the cities we plan to visit in Europe this fall. Is this truly about cities or just travel fatigue? This living out of a suitcase is messy and still unfamiliar, and the plan is to do this for many more months.

And as we consider the next stage of our travels, we can only think, holy shit, are we ever going to be able to find what we need in our storage unit?