Day 7, in which we watched a man pull a rabbit out of a tree trunk.

To day it was south and a lit­tle west of town to the Zaachila val­ley. Traf­fic has been ter­ri­ble this week so our guide Nico took us down a super-secret short-cut. Like going down the rab­bit hole.

Speak­ing of rab­bits. Our first stop was the wood carv­ing vil­lage of Arro­zola. Arse­nio More­les took a machete to a block of wood and cre­ated one of his sig­na­ture long eared rabbits.

This is the view of the back yard (and stu­dio) of one of the other carvers. I have really bad stu­dio envy.

I haven’t been to Arro­zola in about 5 years. The town looks much the same but the qual­ity and vari­ety of work being offered has gone way up. This pea­cock is one example.

All the way down this main street you can walk into the front room of any house and find carv­ings for sale.

At one house where I bought a lot of lit­tle things like ear­rings and hair sticks, this lit­tle par­rot fol­lowed us around while we shopped. If you look closely you can see that he fol­lows the painters around too. That’s a lovely shade of blue on his tail.

After Arro­zola we went to Cuila­pam de Guer­roro. Their mar­ket day is Thurs­day. We walked through the ani­mal mar­ket. They don’t get a lot of gringo tourists walk­ing through the ani­mal market.

Most land in this val­ley is worked with oxen.

Goats, with lit­tle bun­dles of alfalfa tied to the panels.

All of the pigs are this pale pink pricked ear type.

Turkey is native to Mex­ico and the favored meat for fies­tas. All of these will end up under a mole this weekend.

This is look­ing over the town from the site of the large — aban­doned Domini­can church.

The Domini­can church in Cuila­pam was one of sev­eral being built in the Oax­aca area in the mid­dle of the 16th cen­tury. There were more churches being built than there was money to build with. This one was aban­doned in favor of the cathe­dral in Oax­aca city.

The chapel as been par­tially restored. It never had a roof. The indige­nous peo­ple could not fathom the idea that you would go –inside– to pray to your god. The Domini­cans met them half way. In a church but with­out a roof.

Today’s arty shot is of the tower of the chapel and the clear blue sky.

No one can say how many of the Zapotec Indi­ans were bap­tized in this font. Some­thing between thou­sands and hun­dreds of thou­sands. The angels faces were clearly carved by locals rather than Europeans.

One last look at the val­ley before head­ing back into town for lunch.

Lunch at La Biz­naga (bar­rel cac­tus). Most places have a fixed price lunch spe­cial called the Comida Cor­rida. Run­ning lunch. Today it was pork­chops and apple sauce.

La Biz­naga has one of the great bars in Oax­aca. There are so many votaries in this city. It’s nice to have one devoted to the agave plant.