Brian’s Microblog

Wednesday

After our classes we walked around a little and then we had reservations with another student at a fancy restaurant called Levadura de Olla. The service was amazing and their concept is to present traditional foods in creative ways. The food was very good, but it is expensive.

Later we walked around town again. The plaza at the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Soledad had a Guelaguetza event, maybe a practice, presented by schoolchildren. Guelaguetza is an annual indigenous cultural event in Oaxaca and nearby villages. The celebration, which takes place in July, features traditional costumed dancing, native food, and artisanal crafts.

We walked over to the Zocalo and it was much different than the previous Wednesday. There were food stands and other vendors all over as well as a number of camping tents. It seemed to have something to do with a teacher’s union or government employee union seeking support. Then we walked up to the Santo Domingo church to see if anything was happening there, but it was quiet.

Thursday

At noon a man and his son came to visit us at the language school with a lot of textile products. The father received some awards for his traditional weaving craftwork, and together they showed and explained how ancestral weavers in the area were able to produce dyes of different colors for their wool textiles. Various plants are used for several colors and tiny snails that live on cacti produce a purple color.

After our afternoon class we went in search of quesillo, a traditional Oaxacan cheese that has a sort of stringy form which is rolled into a ball. We found a good shop and bought some to bring home, then stopped at a rooftop terrace restaurant with a great view of the city.

After bringing the cheese back to our room and resting for a bit we went out again to look at some of the old local churches. Unfortunately we did not go in to the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Soledad because a sign said no shorts were allowed and we were both wearing shorts.

We went in to the Catedral de Oaxaca. This is an elaborate cathedral with many chapels along either side of the main area, and the main area is sort of divided by an area for a choir or maybe for monks with a walkway down the middle to a speaking platform with statuary.

Afterwards we looked for a light dinner and had been recommended La Popular. It was good but not great. The highlight of the dinner was when a procession that might have been a wedding procession passed by with a big cloth sphere on a stick, large dancing mannequins of a man and a woman, a couple of Tiliche dancers, several traditional dancers, and a big band. The Tiliche is a figure we have seen in various forms around town but I was not able to get a good picture of it.

From this Substack entry:

A tiliche is a man wearing a huge suit of tattered clothing covered in multi-colored strips of cloth. The tiliche’s mask is made up of animal skins, and their huge, exaggerated sombrero is made of woven palm fibers. Tiliches are associated specifically with the town of Putla Villa de Guerrero and are famously connected to the town’s huge and raucous Carnaval Putleco, which occurs just before the start of the Catholic ritual of Lent, which lasts for 40 days.

You can see some in action here.

And there is a tiliche statue in the Zocalo.

We did some homework back in our room and then caught up with some email and internet stuff, and I started working on this blog. The power went out three or four times for several minutes each time, and then at almost ten there was a pretty big fireworks display from the nearby Basilica of Nuestra Señora.

Monday

We went to the Tacos de Carmen Alto food cart for lunch and ran into one of the couples we met on the Mezcal tour the day before. They were trying to get a quick lunch before they had to head to the airport, but the cart had a bunch of people waiting. They did get their food and headed out while we were still waiting. A young man from Germany asked for some help translating. We ended up talking with him for a while. It turns out he wanted to try several things from the cart but did not realize how much food he had ordered.

After our afternoon class we walked back over toward the Santo Domingo church and went into the Quinta Real. This building had been a convent in the early 1800’s but some political changes in the 1860’s meant that it ended up being used by the government for various purposes through to the early 1900’s when it languished. For a while the chapel was used as a cinema while the rest of the building deteriorated. Finally in the 1970’s there was a sort of public-private partnership to restore the building and it ended up becoming an upscale hotel. When I talked to one of my teachers the next day about it, it sounded like maybe the hotel got a way better deal from the government than it should have, but in any case it is now really beautiful.

We went across the street to La Rueca, a restaurant which has a rooftop patio over a gallery that is built around an old printing press. We had a light dinner while some weather blew in and things began blowing around the patio with some rain showers. Fortunately we finished our dinner and made it back to our hotel before it began raining in earnest, which is apparently very unusual this time of year.

Tuesday

After class we went to the Museum of Oaxacan Culture that is in the old monastery attached to the Santo Domingo church. There are some great displays there covering a lot (actually too many to absorb in one visit) with the feature display being the relics found in a tomb at Monte Alban. Signs say cameras are not allowed, but many people seemed to ignore that in halls other than the room with the tomb relics.

The museum overlooks the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca which unfortunately has been closed every time we tried to go.

March 15, 2026

We got to have a nice breakfast of tamales in our courtyard then we walked a bit over a mile to the Jalatlaco neighborhood where we met the tour van for our Mezcal Journey tour. We got there a bit early so we circled a block and found a bunch more nice murals.

The tour was almost full with us and seven other people. We had an interesting mix: a couple from Luxembourg, another from Scotland, from Puerto Rico, and a single guy from Texas. We drove about forty-five minutes east and a bit south of the city of Oaxaca to the town of Mitla. There we stopped at a field of cactus with some promising-looking construction that will eventually be a sort of up-scale Mezcal tasting room and maybe an area to make Mezcal.

Mezcal is sort of like Champagne - you can make fermented agave cactus drinks wherever, but it is only Mezcal if you make it in the state of Oaxaca or a few other states in Mexico. Also, there are hundreds of species of agave and Mezcal can be made from dozens of them. However, only the Espadín variety is easily cultivated, so most Mezcal is made from Espadín. Mezcal made from other varieties can be very expensive because those varieties have to be found in the wild and, while Espadín matures to harvest size in seven to ten years, many of the other varieties can take up to twenty years to mature.

At the field of Espadín we tasted our first Mezcal in what is either a traditional or touristy way: by having it poured down a long leaf of the Espadín into our mouths.

After our first drink we all got a chance to work with a machete to cut first the sharp leaf tips off the long leaves, then to cut the leaves. Drinking and machetes, safety third!

There were a couple of ‘wild’ varieties of agave growing near the field.

Then we went to the Discípulo Mezcaleria (also known as a palenque) to learn how the Mezcal is made. A few guys were clearing rocks from this pit after they had finished cooking a batch of agave hearts. The process is to put a bunch of firewood at the bottom of a big pit, then cover it with almost literally a ton of rocks. Then they light the fire and let it burn for a day or so to try to get the rocks up over a thousand degrees Celsius. When the rocks are super hot and the firewood underneath has mostly burned out, they lay down a protective layer of plant fiber left over from a previous batch, then the agave hearts, then cover it all with a tarp and a bunch of dirt. This way the agave is primarily cooked by the heat of the rocks, although some of the smoky flavor probably comes from residual firewood.

After being sealed in with the hot rocks for a day or so, the cover is removed and the agave hearts are crushed by a big rock wheel pulled by a horse or ox.

After being crushed, the agave ‘pulp’ is put into a vat with some water and left to ferment for several days.

Once it reaches the proper level of fermentation the liquid is drained from the vats and then goes through a distillation process twice or even three times. To be classified as ‘artisanal’ only simple (“moonshine style”) stills can be used. To be classified as ‘ancestral’ the still cannot be made of metal - typically a clay pot is used.

An artisanal still at Discípulo.

And later we visited Un Día a la Vez (“one day at a time”) Mezcaleria where they have what I think is an ancestral still, although the steam from the clay pot condenses onto a metal lid that is cooled with flowing water, so I’m not sure it is officially ‘ancestral’.

After learning about the plants and the process we tasted a lot of Mezcals. Many of the varieties are predictable, such as different types of agave, Mezcal aged in whiskey or other barrels, aged for longer times, etc. But many are very eclectic. In addition to the predictable stuff, we tried:

• Mezcal with the “worm” (actually the larva of a moth that can infest agave plante)
• Mezcal with a scorpion in the bottle (supposedly adds a muscle relaxation property)
• Mezcal where a raw turkey breast is suspended in the still for the second distillation - unexpectedly seems to add a fruity essence
• Mezcal aged in bottle with cannabis leaves

We also tried some “froo froo” Mezcal drinks with coconut, pineapple, or cream added.

Fortunately we went to the restaurant Doña Chica in the middle of the tour where we had a huge lunch.

An interesting day that left us ready to chill out for the evening in our little apartment.

March 14, 2026

We had reservations for a tour to Monte Albán, a major archeological site, that started at 8:00am. We got up a bit early and just had some left-over pizza and pastries for breakfast and then headed to the tour office. We rode a bus with about thirty people across part of the city and then up a steep, winding road to the top of the large hill where Monte Albán is located.

It is unclear exactly how the name “Monte Albán” originated. According to our tour guide this site, which was a ceremonial gathering place as well as housing the elites of the Zapotec empire, should be named something along the lines of “city of jaguars”. It is an impressive site - the Zapotecs leveled the top of this substantial hill and constructed a huge plaza that could hold tens of thousands of people for ceremonies and events. The site was in use from around 500 BCE to 900 or 1000 CE, so it represents the center or a major center of one of the longest-standing empires. Because it had already been abandoned by the time Spanish Conquistadors arrived, they didn’t feel the need to build churches atop the pyramids and otherwise try to destroy it.

We walked around with the tour guide for a couple of hours, then had some time afterwards to wander as we wanted.

Our guide says this is one of a handful of the most important archeological sites in the Americas, another one of which is Machu Picchu which we have been fortunate to have also visited.

After the tour we stopped at a huge supermarket to pick up some stuff for our room, then we went to Vino & Vinyl and had a really tasty late lunch. You can add albums to the ‘playlist’ from their large selection.

We were pretty tired after that and hung out in our little apartment researching what to do on Sunday.

March 13, 2026

Today is the fourth Friday of Lent (La Cuaresma), and a uniquely Oaxacan tradition is to celebrate El Día de la Samaritana. This tradition dates back to some time in the 1800’s when a couple of churches handed out water while preaching about the story where Jesus is crossing Samaria. In the story (as I, an atheist, understand it) the people of Samaria were not getting along with the Jews at the time. Jesus stopped near a the well of Jacob, thirsty from the journey, and a Samaritan woman ended up giving him some water despite their differences. Other churches in the area began copying this tradition and it has become a celebration of Oaxacan generosity based on religion but now open to all. Many restaurants and bars join the churches in handing out water-based drinks starting around noon on the fourth Friday of Lent. Many serve the drinks either from big clay pots or from coolers decorated to try to suggest a well.

We had our normal class in the morning, but at noon someone from the school brought some big coolers full of orchata and tuna (not the fish, which is atún, but a sweet fruit of a cactus) and we all got cups of orchata con tuna to drink. Then we did a little bit of class work before going with our instructors out in the streets with our cups to take part in the celebrations.

I had a substitute instructor for the afternoon today. During the class part she gave me a little printout of various Mexican slang words and expressions - very important stuff to know, carnalitos! Then she set out in search of a chilacayote (a type of squash) drink. We eventually found a gift shop serving it. The taste reminded me of rice milk, but my instructor said this was not a good example, and that they must not have made it correctly. We ended up not finishing those drinks but we found some peanut-flavored water that was very tasty, and later some jamaica (hibiscus) water. The streets were crowded, especially near the churches, and people were having a good time.

After the instructors left we wandered around a bit more with our cups. The event had mostly ended but we did find a restaurant that gave us some orchata with cantaloupe chunks in it that was really tasty. We were a bit tired so we chilled out in our little apartment for a while, then we went to the restaurant attached to the Boulenc bakery that we have been enjoying pastries from. We got some really tasty pizzas and now we have some leftovers as well.

March 09, 2026

We slept fairly well and did not get any messages early in the morning about our flight being canceled. We ate another Best Western breakfast and saw on the news that TSA lines in various airports around the country were extremely long so we packed up quickly and got to the airport almost three hours ahead of our scheduled flight. Fortunately ABQ is a very sleepy airport and the line was longer than usual - we had to wait for five or six minutes to get through TSA.

Unfortunately there was some kind of issue with the airplane - United said there was a cleaning issue, and it arrived late. We departed a bit over half an hour late which made for a slightly stressful layover in Houston, but we made it.

We arrived in Oaxaca a bit before the sun went down. The hills had nice lighting as we approached for landing.

We got through immigration and customs without any issues and took a collectivo (taxi van that makes multiple stops) to the bed and breakfast associated with the language school and got settled in, then we walked around. Julie knew of a reliable street food vendor but wasn’t sure exactly which street they were on. Eventually we found it and got some quesadillas for dinner.

We stopped at a small grocery on the way back to the room. The room features a fridge, microwave, and electric kettle so we can make tea and coffee and keep some drinks cold.

March 08, 2026

We woke up to the news that United had canceled our flight from Albuquerque to Houston, which left us no way to get to Oaxaca. We are re-booked on the same flight tomorrow, but it was a long battle with United’s customer service to get even “Economy Plus” seats on the new flights despite our canceled flight being in Business. It seems like their rebooking algorithm should give you either the same class of seats you had on the canceled flight, or the best available seat in the re-booking if the same class is already full but, no, it just re-books you into the worst seat on the plane.

Anyway, after that we had a day in Albuquerque. Gustavo had some good suggestions but my wife was very tired. We ended up walking to a grocery store to pick up a couple things for the trip. On the way back we stopped at Differential Brewing where we had some decent but not amazing beer and a really nice pizza, but they played really loud and harsh punk rock music for all but the last few minutes we were there, then the playlist made a sudden transition to country.

We walked past a large and old cemetery where trees were already blooming.

We spent some time at the hotel trying to accomplish some stuff on our devices, then went for another walk in the evening, eventually ending up at 377 Brewery where the beer was better but the food less interesting.