Back from Mex

Sorry for the long layoff, but we're back from vacation and we've got some pictures to post. I call it "Mex" because I was reading Raimond Chandller over the trip and I got in the habit. Hopefully this is not politically incorrect. Anyway, we spent a week in Oax-ca City, Mexico. Today's post I'll talk about our impression of the city itself, and I'll follow up on food and sights a bit later.

The "other O.C." is a smallish city in southern Mexico, landlocked but in a valley surrounded by the ranges of the Sierra Madre. The region is known for its crafts and for growing the cactus for "mezcal," an 80-proof alcohol made from the same family of cactuses as tequila. We didn't do much in the city itself--which was exactly what we planned. Mostly we just explored, taking in the city and learning about its history, and eating. Most of our major activities were in the surrounding areas.

The architecture is an interesting combination of styles: you have the narrow streets of Mediterannean Europe, ornate buildings of Renaissance missionaries, and low-lying storefronts of the American West. Here's a typical street, with a bunch of storefronts on one side, and on the other a wall marking the grounds of the Santo Domingo cathedral:


The neighborhoods revolve around the churches, of course, and the accompanying squares, that remind me of the Italian "piazza." However the squares here had an even more public and social feel. Weddings and graduations (along with music and drinking) would spill into the squares. One time we saw sets of local kids organized by age group doing some kind of line dance. Another time, we saw kids dressed up in peasant outfits walking on stilts as part of some political campaign. Always there were people just hanging out and being social (and a few harassing you to buy knick-knacks, although not as much of this as I expected). Some of the squares in the central locations were touristy, but some seemed entirely local. Here's the Church of Our Lady of Solitude, close to the neighborhood where we stayed:

Finally, the city is distinctive for its markets. There are a bunch, each one with its own specialty. We visited a craft market, a spice market, a produce market, a market with food stalls, and a huge (acres) flea market with all of the above. Here is my wife in the food stall market, enjoying a chocolate "elote" (kind of like hot chocolate mixed with corn juice):


Aside from your typical problems with travelling in a developing country, the only major downside was really bad pollution--worse than Be-jing, in my opinion. Part of the problem is that the streets are so narrow, so the exhaust from the old buses and cars has nowhere to go but right in your face. Oh yeah, and the city completely changed about halfway through our visit when a bunch of people took over the entire downtown area, camping out in the middle of the street and covering the streets with tarpulins set at the average Mexican height of about 5' 3". Eventually we learned that this was a demonstration by the teachers in the state demanding more money and support. It was an interesting way of communicating that message, but I'm not sure if it was effective.

More on things we actually did in the other O.C. in the next couple of days!