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Published: April 11th 2012
Oaxaca
Street musoMarch 1999 and a few languidly pleasant days were spent absorbing the unique ambience of San Cristobal de las Casas, deep in the south of Mexico. The amalgam of the ubiquitous Spanish colonial architecture and indigenous Mayans wandering amongst made this town a standard stopover enroute to or from Guatemala.
In the interim, European chic came to town and decided to stay. The resultant love child may be mourned by some who bemoan the myriad of trendy bars, cafes, restaurants and boutiques now operating behind the colonial facades, but not us, we thrived on it. The sight of gritty indigenous street venders cohorting tourists directly in front of some of these edgy establishments is a sight for jaded tourist eyes. VIVA la Juxtaposition!
This week the town was packed with visitors, mostly Mexican but also a smattering of Westerners, for Semana Santa. Hectic yes, but a healthy buzz of buoyant activity. Some sort of place for the bride to spend her birthday. (we won't be mentioning numbers).
It's a thin, man-made line on a map that divides one nation from another, but occasionally the nuances either side of that border create a nation's identity, differentiating it from its
Oaxaca
Street lights and party time neighbours.
Such was the case crossing north from Guatemala into Mexico. The faces and language may be the same but immediately the infrastructure had taken a quantum leap and there was a greater sense of affluence. Costs are up but they're not disproportionate to the increase in standards. Mexico still provides solid punch for your peso.
The food? Cooking shows can sell air tickets. To Guatemala they don't, to Mexico they do. If you are coming to Mexico, don't forget to pack the palate, indulge and then wash it all down with a couple of the world's sweetest brews.
Speaking of food, just north of San Cristobal (if you can call an 11 hour overnight bus ride "just") is the city of Oaxaca, capital of the state of the same name and with a cuisine all it's own. The ingredients pretty much mirror those elsewhere in Mexico but some creative gastronomes somewhere earlier in history managed to conjure up a few individual ways to amalgamate those ingredients into a style that has produced some finger licken delights. At regular intervals, the sensual aroma of mole (be sure to pronounce it molay) would grab hold of the olfactory
senses and drag you around the corner. One lunch break, sitting legs outstretched in the midst of Oaxaca's food market (a kind of muscled up version of Westfield's food court only with character and real food) , chomping into a tlayuda (tough to pronounce but easy on the taste buds) and sucking on a Corona, I became all contemplative. No need to be prostate in a hammock by the beach to conclude that I was actually living the Corona commercial.
Oaxaca also "boasts" itself as the birth place of Mezcal. This agave based potion is touted as a Oaxacan "must do", so when in Rome ............. Now that the Mezcal box has been ticked, could somebody please nail that box shut so that it never sees the light of day again. Cutting a short story long, if the Oaxacans stop drinking this stuff and use it for good instead of evil, then Mexico might also lay claim for providing the fuel for the first manned mission to Mars.
As for looks, use a sieve to siphon off a touch of San Cristobal's trend, add a teaspoon of earth and you've got the historical centre of Oaxaca City. This
historic centre is surrounded by a scrubby work-a-day outskirts. In many respects it sprouted memories of numerous Eastern European metropoli, butt ugly on the skin but juicy on the inside, a kind of architectural custard apple.
During Semana Santa, Oaxaca is one of THE places to be, a large part due the colour and pomp of its Good Friday parade. Antigua Guatemala might argue the Top Dog status but regardless, there's a level of piety here that's gotta impress the "Man Upstairs". If you're ever going to receive an epiphany, Semana Santa in Oaxaca just may be the place. Purple is the colour of choice for threads in Guatemala and while it's also big hit here, red, yellow, basic black and traditional Klanster white also get a start.
The town also sports a few satellite attractions, the Supreme Pizza of those being the ruins of Monte Alban. The Zapotecs, who began construction of this city pre JC, really knew not only HOW to build buxom structures but also WHERE. From its lofty pedestal overlooking the valley below, those pesky Aztecs up north and Mayans down south would have had a job on their hands launching an attack on
Monte Alban.
I think this is our third time to Mexico and it probably won't be our last. We're not Robinson Crusoe in being enamoured with this country and plenty of reasons for extolling its virtues are on display in San Cristobal and Oaxaca. I've said it before and I'll say it again, VIVA MEXICO!
NB. This may be the last edition for a while. We've a couple of weeks ahead where Internet connections are sketchy at best. On the upside, bring on the salsa.
Yeatesy.
A day travelling in a bus to get to Mexico for my birthday was well worth it. The bus ride from Xela in Guatemala to San Cristobol in Mexico that normally would take approx 7 hours was further delayed by a recent landslide on the Guatemala side. This enabled the local kids to be somewhat entrepreneurial by offering to carry the passengers bags around the landslide for a small fee rather than head to school. Unfortunately for them, they didn't know the 3 gringos had just completed the 55 klm treck in the Chuchamatan Mountains carrying our bags, so we were well able to manage the
half a kilometre walk with bags in tow around the landslide. Sorry kids, a week earlier and you would have made decent money from us tourists. Instead they had to feast on the Mexican tourists who happened to have a lot more luggage than us anyway. To add to that, we feasted on rubbish the night before to empty our pocket of the last of our Guatemala quetzals and then we discovered we needed to pay for a pick up vehicle on the other side of the landslide, and didn't plan on the trip taking approx ten hours all up, with no money, no water, we were really happy to eventually get to our lodgings. Ah but they didn't have our reservation!!!! After some good Spanish on Gary's part, my booking confirmation on my iPad (finally the iPad redeems itself) and Burch's calm demeanour, our rooms are found and we are hustled to our new lodgings. San Cristobal has really come of age, it's more chic and offers a lot of choice in terms of cafes, bars, restaurants and general tourist interests. My birthday was celebrated by sampling a bit of everything it had of offer, coffee and cakes at
a trendy cafe, a drink and meal and a new bar/ restaurant and a day of checking the town out. To say Mexico cuisine has lots more to offer than Guatemala is an understatement. For a vegetarian, Mexico offers some great vegetable dishes, but probably the most impressive is the abundance and variety of the meat dishes. For the past few days since we have been in Oaxaca (pronounced wah haka) we have been eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local markets. The two boys have made a bit of a name for themselves at our lunch time venue. Each day as we enter the market the cry goes out that "hueros" (gringoes) are back and rather than spruik for our business they yell to Yolanda (the small, rotund extremely friendly vendor/cook/madam) that we are on our way, and Yolanda takes the boys in tow, filling the basket with shallots, peppers, their choice of pork sausage, beef or other thin lean strip of meat for the BBQ. She then cooks it to perfection, takes them along and hustles the locals out of seats to make sure her gringo customers get prime seats, yells to the other vendors to bring
San Cristobal de las Casas
Churros maker. Yummy but heart crushers. us salads, guacamole and drinks. All this for about $4. The boys salivate and look forward to this moment all day. They do say the way to a mans heart is through his stomach, I had better watch out, Yolanda is stepping on my turf!!!! I dare say the boys might have withdrawals tomorrow as we leave Oaxaca for Mexico city.Penny
More images at:
www.colvinyeates.zenfolio.com
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Doug
non-member comment
Mexico looks like the place to be
Enjoy your birthday