Mexico Markets Photo Essay from Mexico Travel Photography Facebook Group
We recently completed a five-day challenge to post photos of Mexico Markets on the Facebook group page for Mexico Travel Photography. Members posted 158 photos. We have over 250 members and there’s room for many more! Next up is a challenge for September 15 and 16: Post ONE photo to honor Mexico Independence Day. Bring […]
San Juan Chamula, Chiapas: No Photographs, Please
It’s impossible to take a photograph inside the once-Catholic church of San Juan Chamula. It is a Sunday haven of pre-Hispanic mysticism, with folk practices that go way back in indigenous history. Tourists are warned to tread lightly. My body aches to take a photograph of the family crouched on pine needles in front of […]
Penland School Cooks in Oaxaca
We will be going back in time this week. A few days ago our participants from Penland School of Crafts gathered at Casa de los Sabores, the cooking school operated by chef Pilar Cabrera Arroyo. Our menu focused on mezcal including a flaming skewered pineapple and shrimp dish that went up in flames before […]
Wandering Oaxaca and Teotitlan del Valle
After our Art Huipil Workshop ended, I retreated to the rooftop terrace where I live in Teotitlan del Valle to finish The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. The views of the surrounding Tlacolula valley are glorious from there, especially at sunset. It’s winter, the dry season. The night air is clear and cold. The […]
Market Town Sunday in Oaxaca, Mexico
Our Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat 2014 is coming to a close. We have been furiously writing this week, opening up to truth, reality, powerful voices, memories, love, comfort and despair. Tonight, we will speak at a reading. Tomorrow, most will return home. Today, I share this creative non-fiction piece with you as […]
Morocco Journal 6: Essaouira Faces and Places
The melting pot of Essaouira attracts Anglos and Moslems from throughout the western and African world. This week I met a Parisian couple, both professionals, whose parents immigrated from Tunisia and Algeria. Their gorgeous children captured my eye. The mom of these children, Saoud, speaks four languages fluently — French, Arabic, English and Spanish. […]
Morocco Journal 2: Marrakech–Oaxaca Connection
After a 24-hour journey from Raleigh, North Carolina to Marrakech, Morocco via Madrid, Spain, I headed out on Day One with my guide Fadil into the labyrinthine Marrakech souq (souk). I was forewarned. It is easy to get lost. Don’t even think about going in without a guide, advised a U.S. State Department friend who lived […]
Vendors of Oaxaca: On the Streets, in the Markets
Whether it’s the selling of food at a street corner, hand woven palm hats from a seat at the edge of a high concrete planter box, or from behind a market stall, commerce is alive and well in Oaxaca. At night, returning from a delicious dinner of coconut shrimp at Los Danzantes restaurant, we turned […]
Tlacolula Shopping List: Oaxaca’s Sunday Market
The Sunday Tlacolula regional tianguis (indigenous market) is where locals go to buy everything imaginable: furniture, cookware, light bulbs, plants, vegetables, fruits, meats, rebozos, live animals, jewelry, aprons, CDs and DVDs, clothing and plumbing supplies, just to list a few! Portable stalls, covered with blue plastic tarp, line the streets for blocks on end. Interspersed […]
Pinatas Galore Plus Great Shopping at Mexican Market “La Cumplidora” in Sanford, NC
Drive by window-shopping is my weakness. I was on my way to meet professor Robin Greene, who leads our Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat: Lifting Your Creative Voice, at our mid-way breakfast diner in Sanford, NC. Almost there, and I noticed some pretty remarkable, huge pinatas hanging in a store front on the […]
Oaxaca Gallery-Hopping, Shopping + Dining Expedition with Norma Hawthorne
Oaxaca Gallery-Hopping, Shopping and Dining Expedition with Norma Hawthorne, Wednesday, February 1 to Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Collectors, foodies, shop-a-thon pacesetters and novice wannabees are invited to join me for an all-inclusive adventurous foray into the back streets, alleyways, and dirt paths of indigenous villages and cobbled city streets to discover the best of Oaxaca. First, […]