Oaxaca

We’ve spent the last week in Oaxaca City, set amongst the mountains in south-west Mexico at an altitude of 1600m. It’s a colourful place, literally and metaphorically, proud of its music, culture and food.



Oaxaca's main pedestrian street

As in other parts of the country the buildings are brightly painted and the region is famous for its colourful handicrafts, as touted on stalls and by every street corner by enterprising locals.

 

Plaza Santa Domingo

One of Oaxaca's many churches

In the Zocalo, Oaxaca’s central square, there is live music every night – from traditional ‘banda’ (Mexican brass band), to mariachi bands, marimba players and buskers singing and playing guitar or cello.  At any one time in the square, you’re likely to hear at least two performances going on – I’m not sure how it’s possible for the musicians to concentrate and tune out the other music – but they are all keen to earn their evening’s tips!

I don’t think I realized how much of the music I like it influenced by the warm Mexican big-band brass sound. Of course, now it’s obvious, many of the bands I like are from the southern states in the USA, not too far from Mexico, so it’s obvious that the influence might creep across the border.

Here’s a track for you to listen to – and for those of you who know the bands Beirut, or Neutral Milk Hotel – see if you can hear the similarities (though less so in the vocals!)
 

The Zocalo is also home to many shoe-shiners and balloon sellers – there are surely too many of them to all compete with each other, but it all adds to the colour of the square.

Shoe-shiners in the Zocalo

Balloon-seller

One day we did a trip to nearby mountain village, Cuajimoloyas for some hiking and zip-lining. At an altitude of 3200m it was much cooler and a welcome relief from the scorching temperatures in the city. A three-hour hike, however, was exhausting at that altitude, where the air was so much thinner!

 

View from Cuijimoloyes

 

Looking down on to Oaxaca City

We ended the day zip-lining from one mountain village to another – a one kilometre zip line, eighty-metres high and travelling at 60kmph! Well done to Kev for facing his fear of heights to do this!

Zipline from Cuajjimoloyes to Benito Juarez

The foodie scene in Oaxaca is also something they are very proud of and it’s possible to eat very well and very cheaply, with lots of family-run traditional restaurants, food markets and local specialties, including Oaxaca’s own ‘string’ cheese (a bit like mozzarella), locally brewed craft beer, stout and mezcal.

Breakfast of champions!

We enjoyed a meal in the local market – a passageway full of barbecues serving grilled meat, chorizo, chilies and onions. We got rather more than we could eat – our limited Spanish meaning we were unsure quite how much we were getting and the locals taking the opportunity to sell us things by blinding us with science! The meal was cheap and delicious, however!

This led us to signing up for a crash course in Spanish – sixteen hours over four mornings – so whilst we’re still very much beginners, we can at least say a few sentences now and conjugate a few verbs! We’ll practice what we’ve learnt during the rest of our trip – all of which is in Spanish-speaking countries.

Next, we'll head down to Zipolite on the Pacific Coast next for a spot of beach time. I'll blog again from there.

 

Merida

On to stop two of our Mexican tour!

Merida is the Yucatan state’s capital and is a lively, cultural hub in land on the north coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

The locals are really proud of their Mayan heritage and consider themselves to be Mayan as opposed to Mexican. Many of the shops and market stalls sell traditional handicrafts and colourful embroidered cotton shirts, in the traditional style of their Mayan ancestors and many of the locals still wear these garments today.

The main square with the cathedral in the background

Despite its Mayan heritage, we thought the city itself has a European feel and it reminded us a lot of Seville or Catania. The city centre is arranged around a number of shady squares with restaurants with tables outside. There are even horse and carts – exactly like the ones in Seville – taking tourists on tours of the city centre. 

A shady square by the Santa Ana church

Apparently when the Spanish invaded Merida they knocked down several of the Mayan pyramids they discovered when they arrived and used the materials to build the cathedral and some of the other buildings, hence why it looks and feels a bit Spanish.



Another square, another church...

Merida is quite a small city – well, the city centre anyway. Everywhere is walkable and we only needed a couple of days to see most of the sights.
That said, we walked around eight miles a day according to my fitness tracker – no mean feat in the thirty-four-degree heat and blazing sunshine! It’s good to know that despite not doing any formal exercise, we are at least getting in a few miles of walking every day.

To take a break from the heat we escaped into a couple of art galleries to take in some local culture and to make the most of the air conditioning!

We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Popular Art. The latter was certainly an experience, being a very small gallery, run by a small and very enthusiastic team who spoke no English (and us with our very limited Spanish), but they insisted we saw every inch of the gallery including a twenty-minute video, of which we understood very little! There wasn’t a great deal of content in the museum, but we were really charmed by the warmth of the locals.

In the afternoon, we went for a stroll around the zoo, which formed part of a nearby park. They had an impressive selection of animals (especially considering it was free entry) including white tigers, jaguars, lions, crocodiles and hippos, but I’m not convinced all the animals were living in happy conditions as we saw a couple of them exhibiting some signs of distress, or certainly boredom. Hmm.

There is also a good foodie scene in Merida – many local Mayan specialities and the standard Mexican fare, like slow-cooked marinated pork, chicken 'mole' (a savoury chocolate-based sauce for meat), refried beans and of course, tacos and tortillas.

It must seem to readers of this blog that we do little more than eat and drink on our travels – well, it is certainly part of the experience! Here we had 'chaya' - a green leafy vegetable, very similar to spinach and apparently very good for you - we tried the chaya and lime juice, which was really refreshing.

A traditional Mayan feast!

We also discovered a good craft beer scene and in one bar we went to, of the eight local artisan beers on offer, three were stouts, so Kev was very happy! 

La Negrita - a trendy Merida bar

Next up we will travel to Tulum, on the Southern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula – and one of our favourite places in the world. We are looking forward to spending some time on the beach after our city break.

We’ll put down roots in Tulum for a couple of weeks, so it’ll also be nice to stop and unpack our bags for a while, instead of constantly being on the move. I’ll write again from there.