From the category archives:

Oaxaca 2009

Day 10 — in which there are pots and metal creatures

2 November 2009

Most of the day was spent in San Bar­tolo Coy­ote­pec.
Our first stop was at the work­shop of the fam­ily of pot­ter Dona Rosa. The Dona Rosa invented the bur­nish­ing tech­nique that pro­duces the glossy black pot­tery that the vil­lage has become known for. Her son don Valente con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion.
Here are three pots that sit […]

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Day 9, in which there is a lot of thread(s)

31 October 2009

Today is the Hal­loween for most of you all. Here in Mex­ico it is the day before Muer­tos. There’s lots of get­ting ready and clean­ing and arrang­ing going on.
We were out and about doing tourista things this morn­ing. Our des­ti­na­tion was Teoti­t­lan de Valle, home to the most famous of the Zapotec weavers.
We started in the […]

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Day 8, in which there was one very big tree and a lot of little stones.

30 October 2009

Today is Fri­day, we must be headed for Mitla and ‘the tree’!. Our first stop is in Santa Maria del Tule, to see a huge, sev­eral thou­sand year old tree. In the cen­ter of the town. Pretty amaz­ing. The red­woods are taller, but this honker is huge at the trunk!
Play­ing ‘name that crea­ture’ is an old […]

Tagged as: mitla, mosaic, tule

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

29 October 2009

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 […]

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Day 6, in which we went to the market

28 October 2009

Today began with a trip to the Abas­tos mar­ket, near the south edge of the cen­tral dis­trict of oax­aca. Today was the open­ing of the spe­cial ‘Muer­tos’ sec­tion of the mar­ket, full of spe­cial flow­ers, can­dles, trin­kets and food for the “dia de los muer­tos” cel­e­bra­tions. We bought flow­ers, can­dles, lit­tle skele­ton fig­urines, copal incense, […]

Tagged as: Abastos market, San Martin Tilcajete, wood carvings

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Day 5, in which Jim visits Monte Alban

27 October 2009

Today, the ‘tour’ was sched­uled to go up to Monte Alban, a pre-columbian arche­o­log­i­cal site just west of Oax­aca. My lovely bride has seen it once, that was enough for her, so the tour departed slightly down on troop strength.
It was a beau­ti­ful day, some cloud cover so it didn’t get too hot, but […]

Tagged as: monte alban

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Day 4, in which we visit many things that Rudolfo Morelos loved

27 October 2009

Day 4 (which was actu­ally yes­ter­day) we went to Ocot­lan. Birth­place of the painter Rudolfo More­los.
But before we got out of town I saw this set of signs and thought you all needed to see them as well.
Ocot­lan is south of the city of Oax­aca. The biggest build­ing in town is the church. Unlike many colonial […]

Tagged as: churches, josefina aguilar, ocotolan, pottery, Rudolfo Morelos, sculpture, wood carving

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Day 3, in which we passed through 3300 years of history

25 October 2009

Today was our first day of being offi­cial “tourists”. We went out with Jane and Nico, our guides, and five other peo­ple who are stay­ing here at Casa Colo­nial. Today’s jour­ney was to the north into the val­ley of Etla.
Sec­tions of adobe wall are every where.
First we went to San Jose de Mogote to see some of […]

Tagged as: hacienda, mermaid, pottery, ruins, san augustine etla, san jose de mogote

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Day 2, in which we visit 3 churchs and 1 bar.

24 October 2009

Today we took a lit­tle walk­ing tour with our host Jane and a cou­ple of other guests.
A block away from the Casa there is a lit­tle alley on the back side of the local mar­ket. It’s a good place to stop for a soda in the shade.
The Vir­gin of Soledad is the patron of the City […]

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Oaxaca 2009 (No Clever Title Yet)

23 October 2009

First day con­fu­sion. Imag­ine our sur­prise to arrive in the Zocolo this morn­ing and dis­cover that the Car­rera Panamer­i­cana was fin­ish­ing it’s first stage in our front yard. So to speak.
Lots of clas­sic cars (with clas­sic dri­vers) ral­ly­ing across Mex­ico. You can find the whole story of a race that was revived on the offi­cial site […]

Tagged as: carrera panamericana, race cars

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