Parental Visit Chapter 3: Oaxaca and Mexico City

THURSDAY (4/1)
Dad and I got up early and left Zamas and Tulum for the airport and our flight to Oaxaca. Besides our short layover in Mexico City I thought the trip went very smoothly. That is, until we got to baggage claim.

They lost my bag somewhere along the way so all I had was what I had with me. Luckily, I had my money, camera, book, iPod, and such with me, but I was still missing a lot. This was all made worse by the fact that when I got out of the taxi at our hotel I heard my pants rip a little like they’d caught on something and the rip expanded to an embarrassing size later when we were about to leave our room and explore the city more. My only pair of pants as far as I knew was no more. Oh, and the room Dad booked was supposed to have double beds but they gave us a room with two twin beds and the hotel was full. After much negotiating they decided to give us free breakfast and lower the price, but still.

So we left the hotel (me with Dad’s sweater tied around my waist) in search of a clothing store, any clothing store. I was on a mission. I plowed right into the nearest store and quickly came up with a few options. The girl seemed surprised when I came out of the dressing room, bought the dress, and left with it on, but she never saw the rip in my pants.

After I was properly clothed again Dad and I went for a stroll through the center of Oaxaca, which is very charming and immediately changed my mood. We stopped at a street market and looked around at all the colorfully embroidered blouses that seemed to be everywhere. From there we went straight for the nearest church after that, figuring we would be able to find interesting things around it. We lucked out with the church.

The Church of San Domingo was easily the most beautiful church in Oaxaca, and a close second to the Church of Guadalupe in Morelia for most beautiful in Mexico. It had a similar aesthetic to the church in Morelia with it’s over the top decorations, but the color pallet was more gold, gray, and white. The ceiling right as you walk in was decked out with figures that popped out for a 3D effect, all situated around tree branches which formed a kind of family tree. I’m not sure exactly what it’s demonstrating but it is certainly a show stopper.

Outside the church we stopped at a tourist kiosk and picked up a more detailed map of the city complete with a list of sights and several prepared walking tours. With the help of our new map we made our way down the absolutely packed main tourist street (as it had been described to us) towards the main square, or zócalo. The sun was starting to go down so everyone was either on their way to or from the zócalo which filled this pedestrian-only street.

I had heard from several sources (including my guidebook) that the zócalo in Oaxaca is the epitome of Oaxacan culture. It certainly seemed that way. I think everyone in the city of Oaxaca was in that square, people sitting on benches, enjoying food and drink in the surrounding restaurants, families watching the clowns perform, kids running through the crowds and buying sweets from vendors. It was crazy. The amazing thing was that no matter what time of day we went to the zócalo, and we went a lot, there were always tons of people there.

We walked around the whole square and checked out all the restaurants situated around it, under the arches of the surrounding buildings. We decided on a place and enjoyed a very good meal. I got a “Mexican Pizza” which had chorizo, beans, and jalapenos on it because, when would I get the chance to eat another “Mexican Pizza”? Dad got the most delicious mole I’ve ever tasted with chicken and rice. Among Mexicans, Oaxaca is well known for its cooking, and its mole in particular, so this was a real treat.

When we got back to the hotel after dinner I started watching a Mexican movie called Amar te Duele on TV. What initially drew me to it was that it featured young people and a lot of Spanish slang but then I realized that it was also about the social structure in Mexico. In the movie two young people fall in love in Mexico City but they are separated by social status. She’s really rich and basically the definition of “fresa” while he is poor and falls squarely under the “naco” category (slang words for high and low class). I didn’t see the end of it because I got tired, but I plan on looking it up. Also, the airport came and dropped off my luggage at the hotel!! The day started out bad but it ended well.

FRIDAY (4/2)
Since we didn’t really know what there was to do in Oaxaca we started off our only full day in the city with one of the walking tours outlined in the tourist map we got the night before. I decided we should follow the orange route because it seemed like there was a good variety of stuff between museums, churches, and markets. Each stop on the map had a little blurb about it in Spanish so I attempted translating each one for Dad as we went around the historical center. We saw a lot of cool things including the old aqueduct which now has houses built right up against it. I liked how they used the arches of the aqueduct as overhangs with their front doors peaking out like hobbit houses. We also saw the house Benito Juarez lived in when he was a young man living with a well to do Oaxacan family. Juarez is the most important figure in Mexican history and helped form the country into a much more modern state. He is the only person to have a Mexican national holiday dedicated to him. That’s how important he is. The house is set up with furniture from a typical 19th century Mexican household and information about Juarez’s accomplishments. Also on the tour was the church of San Domingo which we happily entered again and took more pictures! One fun stop was the Casa de las Artisenias which was a collection of stores with some really beautiful pieces in them. There was another textile store with more place mats and table runners that I know Mom would have gone crazy in. A not so exciting stop was at the stamp museum. We popped our heads in and sat in the shade of the courtyard there for a while but we weren’t really itching to look around.

After we had completed the interesting parts of the tour we went back to the zócalo for lunch (different restaurant of course) and then back to our hotel for a nice siesta. I did some research in my guidebook and was really kicking myself for not looking sooner. My guidebook talked about two sites for ruins outside the city that sounded really interesting but we only had another half day before we were going to leave. One of the sites is called Monte Albán and it seemed like it was used by many different groups over the years. It started out as a Zapotec religious center and city and changed hands several times, being abandoned and then repopulated, over hundreds of years. One of the greatest discoveries of Mesoamerican artifacts was made at Monte Albán in Tomb 7 in the 1930s. Over 500 pieces of gold, silver, turquoise, etc were found in the tomb of one ancient ruler. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to have time to go.

We set out for another stroll after having looked up a restaurant for us to eat dinner at and deciding on Los Pacos where my guidebook said they had a wide variety of tasty moles. We ended up in the zócalo again among all the people gathered there as the sun went down. We went into one restaurant situated on a balcony overlooking the square for drinks and snacks. I had started getting sick so I drank many cups of tea while Dad drank wine and we both ate bread with yummy garlic and herb butter and manchega(?) cheese. We sat there for a long time, drinking and munching, and when we finally decided to head out for the other restaurant it was nearly nine.

Los Pacos was a small place closer to San Domingo that had a good number of people in it. It’s true, they did have good mole. They also had some very peculiar light fixtures that kind of looked like the lamps had snot running out of them. Dad can be my witness to this fact, plus we took pictures because they were so weird.

SATURDAY (4/3)
We had a flight to Mexico City at 4pm which still gave us a good chunk of the day for sight-seeing before leaving. Having looked in my guidebook the day before, I now knew that there was a museum in the former convent of San Domingo right next to our favorite church.

The Cultural Museum of Oaxaca actually turned out to be a great find, and the perfect thing to do in the time we had left. First of all, they had audio tours!! Anyone who has traveled with me recently knows I love a good audio tour. Ever since Paris spoiled me silly with all its amazing audio tours I just can’t get enough. Then, the building was beautiful. My guidebook said that the Mexican government had put a lot of money into restoring it and it showed. And of course, the museum itself had a lot of great artifacts.

The whole museum was dedicated to telling the story of human settlement in the state of Oaxaca from the earliest times through independence. The star of all the exhibits was the treasure from Tomb 7 which varied greatly in materials and objects. Right when you walked in to the Tomb 7 room there were some intricately detailed pieces of bone or jade or something. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get a good enough picture to do the detail justice. Then right next to that was a human skull partially covered in turquoise mosaics. It made a very cool effect but was still a little creepy. Our audio guide said that it was possibly used as a cup in religious ceremonies.

Another interesting room in the museum was dedicated to the “conquering of souls,” as the religious conversion of natives by the Spanish is often called. It was filled with religious figures that all had stories. The audio tour said that the Dominican church got a good hold on southern Mexico early on and seemed to randomly assign patron saints to different areas based on the preferences of the missionaries. It also pointed out the correlation between the holy days of native cultures and those of the assigned patron saints, how they always seem to fall around the same time.

After making it through most of the museum we headed back to the hotel with some serious foot pains and left for the airport. This trip went much more smoothly, and we got to our hotel (Hotel Catedral) around six.

We didn’t want to waste any time so we quickly got settled in our room, I looked up a restaurant for dinner later, and we headed out for the zócalo which was only a few blocks away. The zócalo in Mexico City is absolutely giant. I think it’s one of the biggest plazas in the world. I’ve seen videos of political rallies held there with millions of people in attendance. Millions! On one side of the square is the Cathedral which is also giant and very dark and gothic looking, not very pretty on the inside though. Another side is taken up by the government palace where, on Mexican independence day (Sept 16), the president of Mexico comes out on the balcony and yells to the crowd,
“Viva Mexico!”
And they yell back “Viva!!”
“Viva Hidalgo!”
“Viva!!”
“Viva la revolución!”
“Viva!!”


There were a lot of things going on in the zócalo that night. There was a big religious concert going on called the Marcha de Gloria, and there were tons of people waving flags and singing along. There was also a very large, temporary structure with the title “Mexico en tus sentidos” which roughly translates to “Mexico in your consciousness,” I think. Dad and I wandered in there and it was pretty cool. It was all these images of different parts of Mexico and different aspects of Mexican culture. The pictures were all beautiful. At the end of the exhibit they showed a video with more pretty images of Mexico with a very intense soundtrack. I think it only had one dynamic: epically loud. It was still very entertaining and a surprise treat in our visit to the zócalo.

When we got out of that it was time for dinner, so we walked to the restaurant I had picked out that was only a few blocks away, Café Taburca. The restaurant had been around since 1912 and my guidebook said it’s one of the most famous restaurants in Mexico City. There was a lot of stained glass and colorfully painted archways. While we were there, a mariachi-type group started playing for the guests. When we walked out we saw that they were standing around in a big circle, spread out among all the tables. The food was yummy too. I got garlic soup and enchiladas, and the chicken in the enchiladas wasn’t dry or anything.

Once we were done eating we decided it would be best to just go back to the hotel and get some rest. Dad’s flight was at like 5am the next morning and we found out that Mexico’s start of daylight savings time was Sunday, so we were already losing an hour of sleep. There wasn’t much on TV so I ended up watching American Idol. I don’t know if it was an old one or not because I haven’t watched it since season two, but it was entertaining, and it was in English.

SUNDAY (4/4)
Dad woke me up before he left (at 3am) and I said good bye, or mumbled it. I was pretty tired. My flight wasn’t until later, so I went right back to sleep and woke up with my wakeup call from the hotel that Dad had set up for me. We weren’t sure about the time change so we just let them deal with it.

I got out of the hotel on time and on my flight just fine. My journey back to Guadalajara went very smoothly.

Thank you Mom and Dad for a wonderful and restful week!! I hope you are adjusting to life back in the US of A. I’ll see you soon!