Bike Tour

Once of the people we met on our tour with Alvin was Eric Ramirez, an English-speaking freelance tour guide who gives tours and in particular drives for a tour group that specializes in bike tours, so we decided to sign up for one to see the rest of the sights we couldn't see on the first day with Alvin.

Mixed reviews here. Mostly good: we went to Tula, home of the world's largest tree. From there we biked to a carpet maker about 20 kilometers away, mostly dirt road and a great way to see the country. Linda fell getting out of the van, a loose seat belt from the front seat that dangled down and caught her foot, resulting in a nasty fall that hurt her wrist and elbow, but she's tough, and we continued with the ride.

From there we went to a family-owned rug shop, and got the tour of how the wool is cleaned and dyed. After a few more miles of riding, we re-boarded the van and headed to the stone waterfalls, which were great, very dramatic.

Earlier, we had specifically asked about Mixla, the ancient Mayan ruins, which were advertised as part of the tour. And we asked again, to confirm our interest in going. Eric confirmed that we'd be able to see Mixla, but when we left Aguas Hierbas, we were told that the ruins were closed but we could see them from the outside, from the surrounding town. This was pretty disappointing, since we easily could have seen the ruins had we just reversed the last two items. So my advice to myself and to any readers -- even if you think it's spelled out, re-confirm everything. We were the only ones on the tour, so seeing the Women's Rug Co-operative and Mixla would have been easy to do, and should have happened.

Oaxaca Tour with Alvin

Before we arrived, we scheduled an all-day private tour with Alvin Starkman, a Canandian ex-pat who retired to Oaxaca a few years ago and clearly loves the place. I can unabashedly say if you can afford it ($200 US for an 8-hour day), this is definitely the way to do a Oaxaca tour. In my experience in almost all my travels, most tours to craft places provide a commission to the tour guide for bringing people to their shop. This tends to draw tour guides to the place offering the highest commission, rather than based on the tourist's interests.

Alvin's not in that category, at least I have no reason to think that. He picked us up in his pick-up truck, and we headed out to hit some of the popular tourist attractions outside of Oaxaca.

COCHINILLA

The first stop was the Cochenilla Research Center. We almost skipped this, but it turned out to be a great stop. This tiny parasitic bug, which lives in the leaves of the Nopal cactus, contains a bright red dye which for years was a major contributor to the prosperity of Oaxaca. Knowing about this dye gave a new appreciation to looking at the Oaxaca textiles.

MEZCAL

After a stop for breakfast which included a tlayuda, a large, stuffed tortilla, we went to a tiny mezcal production place. Tiny. Mezcal is a cheaper cousin to tequila, easier to make and takes less time to age. I don't particularly care for it, but it was interesting to see the process of heating the cactus leaves, burying them, then crushing them into a liquid from which the mezcal eventually ferments.

BLACK POTTERY

Oaxaca is famous for a particular style of high-gloss pottery, and we went to the shop were it all started, had a nice demonstration of how the pottery was made by the grandson of the woman who discovered and popularized the process.

OCOTLAN MARKET

Linda had never been to a big Mexican market on market, something you need to do in Mexico to appreciate the chaos and beehive of activity. Alvin make sure we got to try different candies, mezcals and pulques (another cactus-based drink), even fried grasshoppers (me, not Linda). There were lots of live turkeys there -- Christmas is almost here, and people were getting ready for their big dinner. Outside of Oaxaca is very rural, lots of villages, and I think many people slaughter their own fowl for dinner.

KNIFE MAKER

After the market, we walked over to a local knife-maker. Normally I wouldn't plan on doing something like this, but again, turned out to be fascinating. He uses a process from Seville to create beautiful steel knives out of old materials, mostly car parts. If I had any interest at all in owning a beautiful knife, this would be the place to buy one. I took a video of them straightening and tempering a knife that used to be a shock absorber spring.

SAN MARTIN WOODCARVING

One popular artistic style in Oaxaca is finely-painted wood carvings of fantastic animals -- geckos, lizards, dragons, that kind of thing. We toured a family-owned woodcarving production area, and saw every step of the process, from looking at a branch of a copal tree to being displayed as a museum-quality piece.

By this point, we were running out of steam, and feeling very culturally satisfied. But still managed to get an art auction of Oaxacan artists in before heading to dinner.

Siete Balcones (7 Balconies)

Dinner was okay -- no meal with cigaratte smoke is ever fantastic, this one was okay, but perhaps because we were tired from the trip, everything seemed like a bit of an effort.

Our hotel, Casona del Llano, got great reviews on TripAdvisor.com. But the combination of an uncomfortable bed, luke-warm staff and distance from the Zocalo gave us sufficient motivation to consider other hotel options. And a good reason for a walk through Oaxaca on a beautiful day.

We found some of the hotels our cab driver had recommended, and I started to get nervous about actually getting a room at a nice hotel during the Christmas holiday. We stumbled across Hotel de los Siete Balcones at the corner of the pedestrian walkway (the Alcala) and Morelos, one block from the Zocalo. We decided this was the perfect location, and were not disappointed.

It's a small hotel, just 7 rooms (5 regular, 2 master suites, one of which we took, which actually had 2 balconies). The staff was super-friendly, it includes a breakfast of fresh fruit, yogurt, granola, hot chocolate and coffee, and a few days they had tomales and quesadillas. All in a beautiful courtyard. Grade: A+

Local Oaxaca and Maintenance Day

Today was a "maintenance" day -- making some decision about the rest of our trip, including travel arrangements. I write this post mostly so remind myself and any other travelers that might happen upon this blog -- use a travel agent. Yes, in the Internet Age it's nice to be your own travel agent, but sometimes things aren't available on the web (yes, it's true). We wasted a bit of time trying to track down flights from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido, and to come up with a plan to visit Chiappas (the neighboring state to Oaxaca), and basically we couldn't do it with the normal arsenal of tools I regularly use to plan travel.

So while considering an eco-tour to the Sierra Madre Mountains, we came across Chimalli Travel Agency (M Bravo #108) and the very patient (and English-speaking) Francisco Perez Morales. He got us direct flights to Puerto Escondido for about $100 pp each way from the tiny AeroTuscan, which has no online booking and flies 7 and 11 passenger planes to the beach about once a day. He also got us a flight from Tuxla (Chiappas), but dealt with Mexicana for the re-routing. Grade: A, highly recommended.

We ended the day with dinner at La Biznaga, which we had high hopes for. Very artistic interior, and the menu is beautiful, a work of art by itself. But it's 100% smoking, and after moving tables once, we still ended up with someone smoking within a few meters of us during the entire dinner. Service was terrible, I think once we moved tables we were labeled as problem customers and were ignored the rest of the evening. Very disappointing, since I had such high hopes and it had received good recommendations.

Arriving in Oaxaca

Our trip started off on a rough note. The upshot is that we left a day later than we planned. Flight was fine -- the only confusing part was that in Mexico city we cleared immigration, but customs was done in Oaxaca, the final destination. I've never done those in separate airports before.

Other than being long, flight was fine. Had a nice lunch in a Cuban restaurant in the Mexico City airport, which is now smokefree in entire airport (which is a change from earlier this year, when I flew back in March I filled out one of those comment cards making the suggestion. I doubt it helped, but I'm sure it didn't hurt).

On the plane, met a film maker who travels extensively, he mentioned visiting Chiappas instead of the beach. We're still not sure of our itinerary, in part because making reservations on the smaller aircraft is very difficult to do from the US.

Took a private cab from the airport (187 pesos, about $16, v. 44 peso pp with the slower, multi-stop collectivo. ) The cab driver was friendly and chatty, and we realized that hotel is not as close to the center of Oaxaca (the Zocalo) as we'd thought. He mentioned a few other options, as well as a restaurant close to our hotel which he described as the best restaurant in the area, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Heading to Oaxaca

This blog is a bit of a cheat, since it's not really happening in real time. Well, parts are. Parts are reconstructed after a few days, after merging photos from 3 cameras (4 if you could the cell phone), filtering out parts best forgotten, and praising that which is praise-worthy and memorable.

So let's get the story started.