Shots

We were to meet our tour guide for the day in the Zocalo and found that while some towns are sleepy on Sundays Oaxaca is not. Before 10 a.m., men were setting up stages and speakers and preparing for celebrations. Before the stage was fully built, beautifully dressed women were spreading their traditional scarves out in straight lines on the ground in front of it to save seats for whatever was to come. Our tour guide—Eduardo—arrived exactly on time and immediately asked us if it would be alright if he added a stop to the tour that was not advertised in the brochure; it would take an additional hour, but he assured us it would be worth it. That meant that instead of paying $22 for an eight hour tour, we would be paying $22 for a nine hour tour. We agreed.

The first stop was only 15 minutes outside of the city, where there is a 2000 year old ahuehuete (cypress) tree in the town of Santa Maria del Tule. It is as enormous as it is old, reaching 15 stories into the sky above the town which surrounds it. Five hundred years ago, the area where the town now stands was a lake and the cypress is a water rooted tree. It survived the major change in its ecosystem as the lake dried though nearly died until the villagers adopted responsibility for watering the tree and its offspring (one 1000 years old and another only four years old and already taller than the church in the town square) during the dry season. There are few older trees on earth, but there are cypress trees in Lebanon which date back 5000 years.  An interesting point about this town and almost all the rest is that the towns here have names in two parts: the Christian name that the Spaniards gave a place when they arrived and, well, the real name. Santa Maria is the Christian part, but before there were any Spaniards and before there was any Christianity around these parts, people just referred to it as the town of the tree (tule).

We continued down the Pan American Highway to Teotitlian del Valle, an area known for its tapetes (wool rugs).  Most of the people who live in Teotitlian (“Place of the Gods”) spin and color wool using natural dyes and then weave that wool on traditional hand looms. We visited the shop of Isaac Vasquez, a famous weaver about whom many books have been published and whose work has been noted by the Smithsonian. His son conducts demonstrations on the process of carding, spinning, dying and weaving wool. Susan had a hand at spinning and it’s harder than it looks when the young Vasquez is doing it with such ease. Dyes are made from marigolds and grasses and pecan shells and from the cochineal bug which is a tiny insect that cocoons itself on the cactus and is scraped off, dried, ground and then mixed with natural spring water to create a vivid red dye. When citrus juice is added it turns orange. When baking soda is added it turns purple. When Eduardo takes a cochineal cocoon off a cactus frond and smashes it into your hand to show you the red stain that results, it’s a little gross but also kind of neat. It looked for most of the day like stigmata and went nicely with the discoloration scars from my phytophotodermatitis. After all that, one appreciates the hours of labor and craftsmanship in each product and that appreciation turns into buying a rug; Susan’s bathroom is going to be more beautiful when she returns to Chicago. 

The tour took a left turn at this point and there was drinking. Our next stop was Tlacolula, famous for its mescal. Eduardo made clear that while tequila is the national drink of Mexico, mescal is the local drink of Oaxaca. It is made from the fermented hearts of the maguey cactus and the distilleries here are not so shiny as those in the states. This was a different kind of winery, brewery, distillery tour. The kiln in which the hearts are cooked is earthen and appears to be a mound of dirt with some logs holding tarps over it and a bit of an acrid smell hangs in the air. The maguey looks like peeled ginger, is stringy like sugar cane and is shockingly sweet and smoky to taste at the same time. It is ground by hand in an enormous wooden bowl set into the earth and then distilled. Mescal is 48 proof for men and 10 for women and this gender distinction is made by flavor. The natural flavor is similar to tequila but a bit sweeter and smoother in the mouth but burns on its way down. This is for the men. Mescal comes in two dozen flavors and these are for the women; some are creamy and similar to liqueurs and others are more like schnapps. “Try all the flavors,” they said. “Let me pour you another,” they said. “Have you tried cacahuate (peanut) yet?” they asked.  Really, after you’ve had a few, you hardly notice the burn.

While in Tlacolula, we visited the Sunday market which was a riot of smells and sounds and sights. This was a more indigenous market than the one we visited in Oaxaca City and there was both the orange of piled carrots and the orange of a woman’s skirt. There was both the red of the tomatoes and the red of a woman’s apron. There was both the hot pink of the flesh in the meat stands and the hot pink of the ribbons woven through a woman’s braids. There was the crackle of flame; in the center aisle of the meat market was a long row of grills. Customers go to the meat stand, pick out a cut of meat and the women moved to the grills to cook it on the spot. It was smoky and hot and wonderful.  Vendors wrapped quesillo into balls. There were seedlings available and seeds. This was the first time we’d been to a market with a guide, and Eduardo was invaluable. He explained what the different products were used for, why people were buying limestone (to soften the corn for grinding in the making of tortillas), explained which ceramics were local and which were not and was on hand to answer questions and make suggestions. He suggested grasshoppers as a delectable treat. And because it’s how they do, Susan and Chris helped themselves to them while in the market. They’re fried and seasoned and—like so many things here—tasted like hot chile peppers.  I would have had some but I was busy not having any. 

San Pablo Villa de Mitla (Christian name = St. Paul, real name = Place of the Dead) was the archeological heart of the tour. It is the home of ruins of a Zapotec city that was most populous in approximately 1350 AD. Because it was built later than Monte Alban, the stonework is more advanced and more beautiful. There are eleven different patterns repeated throughout the ruins each representing a different natural element from rain to snakes, among other things. In addition to their beauty, Mitla is exceptional because, in all of Mexico, it is the archeological site with the most original stonework; 90% of what a visitor sees is original compared to Monte Alban where only 60% of the stone is original. 

If it seems like we did a lot before lunch, it felt like we did a lot before lunch, and I think we did a lot before lunch.  I should also mention that before lunch—immediately before lunch, as we got out of the van and lined up to enter the restaurant—we were given one more shot of mescal. Eduardo mentioned more than once that it is important to drink mescal before a meal because it protects the stomach. I don’t think that a restaurant giving you a shot of something to protect the stomach when you’re on your way through the door is a ringing endorsement of their product; however, lunch was a buffet that included every kind of mole Oaxaca has to offer and everything we tried was terrific. 

After what might have been six shots of mescal and an all-you-can-eat Oaxacan buffet, we climbed into the van to drive 45 minutes higher and higher into the mountains on a narrow road shared with goats and donkeys and huge, van-crushing boulders that have fallen into the road from the mountain above. And one is left thinking, the mescal was supposed to protect me from lunch but what will protect me from this?

We arrived to Hierve el Agua in the late afternoon, an elevation of 9000 feet, and a rather magical place in which mountain springs seep from the limestone creating natural pools of water so loaded with minerals that deposits have formed that appear to be frozen or petrified waterfalls. In our pictures from this stunning place, Sue looks darling and I look like a dork. I’m vigilant about protecting myself from sunburn and am particularly concerned about my phytophotoderm patches, which means the last several days I’ve been wearing long sleeves and a big floppy hat. Not knowing what to expect from the day, I wore my gym shoes rather than my sandals and I’m glad I did. It was a bit of a hike and a slippery one, due to the water slicked limestone, but Susan climbed that mountain in her cute little crocs and didn’t miss a step. Rain clouds followed us up the mountain. It began to drizzle, and, at the same time, in a different part of the sky the sun broke through and—while we were at what felt like the absolute top of the world—we were privy to a rainbow.  About that feeling like we were at the absolute top of the world thing… like Chris and Susan, Eduardo is a member of the Church of Up, too. When I thought we could climb no further, he suggested we take in another panorama and brought us to a vantage point above where we had just been. And then, he suggested it again. It was literally and figuratively breathtaking.

This was a very fine day full of excitement and new information and wonder and, at least for now, I’m going to call it my favorite day ever.