Pre-Hispanic Oaxaca Cooking Class with Vicky Hernandez
High up the hill in the shadow of Oaxaca’s famed archeological site of Monte Alban is a humble comedor on a dirt side street down the hillside from a paved access road. Carefully make your way down a curved, steep stairway cut into the hill to find the simple kitchen of Cocina Pre-Hispanica con Fogon […]
Oaxaca’s Monte Alban Archeological Site Key to Zapotec Civilization
The UNESCO World Heritage archeological site of Monte Alban never ceases to capture and hold my attention. I go there every time I host visitors to Oaxaca and each time there is something new that I notice or an area that is recently restored. The Spanish conquerors named Monte Alban, or white mountain, because the hill […]
Monte Alban: Closer to the Gods
Atop the Zapotec world and about 15 minutes from the historic center of Oaxaca is the great Meso-american archeological site of Monte Alban, named by the Spaniards after siting the mountaintop covered with the blooms of the white morning-glory tree (left photo below). The Spanish Conquistadores named Oaxaca for the plant, called in Nahuatl […]
Oaxaca and Family Travel
A reader just wrote to me with the following questions: Is Oaxaca safe for families? and What do we do once we get there? I think you will find Oaxaca a very welcoming place for families. A friend, her husband and two pre-teens lived in Oaxaca for a year “on sabbatical” to have a different […]
Byron Howes’ Oaxaca Day of the Dead Photos 2010
I’m giving you a link to some fantastic photos shot by Byron Howes who participated in our Oaxaca Day of the Photography Expedition 2010. You’ll see that we covered a huge amount of territory in a very short (6 day) period. We kept on our toes as we traveled the city by foot, went to […]
Oaxaca Community Museums Are Source of Pride, Attempt to Stem Tide of Outmigration
My friend Bruce lives in Baja, California (Mexico). We are carrying on a correspondence about safety, Oaxaca sights and sounds, and life as gringos in Mexico. He recently sent me the article written below and asked me to comment on it. Here is what I wrote back to him: “Thank you for sending me the […]
Savoring Monte Alban: Extraordinary Archeology
Just 10 minutes outside the city of Oaxaca lies Monte Alban, the mountain-top pre-Columbian city of the Zapotecs. The road to get there is a switchback and as one makes the climb into the clouds, it is easy to see why this site was chosen. It offered a superior 360 degree vantage point from which […]