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Why Travel With Us: Help sustain regenerative traditions.
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- We know the culture! This is our land! We are locally owned and operated.
- Eric Chavez Santiago is tri-lingual --Spanish, English, Zapotec.
- Eric was founding director of education, Museo Textil de Oaxaca + folk art expert
- Norma Schafer has lived in Oaxaca since 2005.
- Norma is a seasoned university educator.
- We have deep connections with artists and artisans.
- 63% of our travelers repeat -- high ratings, high satisfaction.
- Wide ranging expertise: textiles, folk art, pottery, cultural wisdom.
- We give you a deep immersion to best know Oaxaca and Mexico.
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We organize private travel + tours for museums, arts, organizations, collectors + appreciators.
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Creating Connection and Meaning between travelers and with indigenous artisans. Meet makers where they live and work. Join small groups of like-minded explorers. Go deep into remote villages. Gain insights. Support cultural heritage and sustainable traditions. Create value and memories. Enjoy hands-on experiences. Make a difference.
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What is a Study Tour: Our programs are learning experiences, and as such we talk with makers about how and why they create, what is meaningful to them, the ancient history of patterning and design, use of color, tradition and innovation, values and cultural continuity, and the social context within which they work. First and foremost, we are educators. Norma worked in top US universities for over 35 years and Eric founded the education department at Oaxaca’s textile museum. We create connection.
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OCN Creates Student Scholarship at Oaxaca Learning Center Giving back is a core value. Read about it here
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Meet Makers. Make a Difference
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Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC has offered programs in Mexico since 2006. We have over 30 years of university, textile and artisan development experience. See About Us.
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Programs can be scheduled to meet your independent travel plans. Send us your available dates.
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Arts organizations, museums, designers, retailers, wholesalers, curators, universities and others come to us to develop artisan relationships, customized itineraries, meetings and conferences. It's our pleasure to make arrangements.
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Select Clients *Abeja Boutique, Houston *North Carolina Museum of Art *Selvedge Magazine-London, UK *Esprit Travel and Tours *Penland School of Crafts *North Carolina State University *WARP Weave a Real Peace *Methodist University *MINNA-Goods *Smockingbird Kids *University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Tell us how we can put a program together for you! Send an email norma.schafer@icloud.com
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Valentina’s Garden
My friend Annie, known locally as Ana del Campo, lives on the hillside on the other side of the river Rio Grande that runs through town from the presa (dam) throuh the cleavage between two mountains. We came to visit her some years ago and that is how we got to Teotitlan del Valle. Annie was the second gringa to connect with a local Zapotec family and be invited to build a home on their land. A former psychologist, she is an expert Shiatsu massage therapist and has a loyal clientele in the village and in Oaxaca. One of the treasures and pleasures of coming back to Teotitlan is to enjoy time with Annie, sipping tea, catching up, looking out over the village below from her hillside perch, and then laying down on her mat to give myself and my body over to the expert pressure touch of her hands and fingers in her sublimely tranquil space. This evening was my third massage of the week — a totally relaxing experience, and I feel I can splurge with this expense because the cost is 200 pesos (about $18 USD) per hour. As I walked up the winding rocky drive to her brick and stucco casita, the stars sparkled in the sky and were mirrored by village lights below creating a seamless vision of dancing stars with no horizon. Annie has asked me to visualize who I am in the form of an animal to take as my talisman as a form of meditative relaxation. I am a gazelle, sleek, agile and grazing. Annie tells me that my body will respond and become the form that I visualize.
After the massage and to honor my gazelle, Annie makes me a plate full of salad containing at least four different lettuces, fresh grated beets, cherry tomatoes and bright red nasturtiums from Valentina’s garden. This is for grazing, she says. Valentina, who was once Valerie, moved to Oaxaca some years ago from somewhere in el norte and started an organic garden. She sells her bounty every Friday and Saturday at the Pochote Market in the Arcos, just beyond Santo Domingo Church on Macedonio Alcala. Annie sprinkled goat cheese and pecans on the salad and topped it with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. I followed her lead. This is the ONLY way I will eat lettuce in Mexico — organically grown and washed in purified water by someone you know and trust. To top it off, Annie brings to the table a red tortilla, handmade by Esther (Ess-tare) her neighbor, who ground the village grown red maize herself. Below us, the band is playing its posada repertoire, drum beats, tubas, and saxaphones call out to the night sky. A firecracker rocket is a shooting star. I imagine the tables full of revelers eating fiesta tamales with amarillo mole, downing shots of mezcal followed by beer chasers, sucking limes and salt, dancing the slow Zapotec two-step far into the night, men in one line facing the women opposite them, never touching. The firecrackers pop and the dogs bark in response. The bray of a donkey punctuates it all. Tomorrow, Mary and Joseph will move to another home where the cycle repeats the harmony.
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