February 2022: Chiapas Textile Study Tour–Deep Into the Maya World
February 22 to March 2, 2022 – 8 nights and 9 days, starting at $2,795 SOLD OUT. At Oaxaca Cultural Navigator, we aim to give you an unparalleled and in-depth travel experience to participate and delve deeply into indigenous culture, folk art and celebrations. Our hope, too, is that we will all be well and […]
If it’s Tuesday, it must be … Where are we, now?
Finally, home to North Carolina and then back to Mexico in two weeks. If you follow me on Facebook you know I’ve been traveling in Eastern Europe. This was a tour offered by one of the largest operators in the world. Their buses and ships zigzag the continents and oceans. See below for a few […]
Tribal Art and Georgia O’Keeffe: New Mexico Study Tour
Tuesday, September 1 – Wednesday, September 9, 2020 – 8 nights, 9 days New Mexico was originally part of the Spanish land grant known as New Spain. It calls to me in a way that reminds me of Oaxaca: Vast vistas of mountains and desert punctuated by red and purple skies, stately organ-pipe cactus and […]
Chiapas Boundaries, Borders and Cloth: Cultural Tourism
Long before the Spanish conquest of the Americas beginning with Mexico in 1521, Maya land was contiguous. Maya peoples spanned what we now know as Chiapas, the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. While spoken dialects differ, the language of cloth tells a similar and familiar story of the universe and creation: corn, […]
Textile Travel Guide and Tips: How To Be a Cultural Ambassador
Cloth Roads just published a blog post called Textile Travel Guide: 10 Tips to Be a Star Textile Ambassador. This comes as a just-in-time-reminder for me about cultural sensitivity and travel to indigenous parts of the world where handmade textiles still flourish. My trip to India was bumped up a day, so I am on an […]
Dilemma: Teotitlan del Valle Panteon (Cemetery)
There were six of us trailing Magdalena into the village panteon at 5:30 p.m. for the annual ritual of sitting at the grave site to pay respects to loved ones gone. It was All Souls Day, November 2 in Teotitlan del Valle. The ritual in the village is an ancient one, predating the Spanish conquest […]
Discover the REAL Teotitlan del Valle
If you were to arrive in the village with a taxi driver or via tourist bus, you would have an entirely different experience than if you chose to travel independently. On your own, you might do some research in advance to identify the weavers working with the best wool, using higher count warp threads and only […]