Oaxacan Wanderings

We woke up fairly early and had breakfast at the hotel. It was a buffet as I had expected, and it was about as good as I expected. Still, it was pleasant enough sitting there having coffee overlooking the garden. 

We went into the city and found our barbershop. I am not quite sure why we did not get any pictures here. The people who cut our hair knew little English, but they knew far more about cutting men’s hair than the folks at our local Great Clips. I must admit to a certain nervousness whenever a straightedge razor is applied to my neck, but the cleanness of the trim is amazing. 

We went to one of the most famous churches in Mexico after this, Santo Domingo de Guzman, the old Dominican monastery church. This structure covers most of a large city block and it was once larger. The facade of the church is beautiful, 

but it is the interior that is truly the most impressive. 

It is not simply the amount of gold leaf that has been applied here, but the charm of the carvings which mix both Spanish and indigenous styles. 

It’s not surprisingly a popular spot for weddings.

But we were not here primarily for the church. Instead, we were interested in the state culture center that now occupies the old convent. This is a fairly recent addition to Oaxaca’s cultural treasures. The Dominican monastery was closed in the 1850s as part of La Reforma, and in the aftermath of the Conservative defeat in the three year civil war that followed, the friars’ quarters were turned into military barracks. While the building was returned to the Dominicans during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas, the building was generally leased to the local university for  classrooms. In the late 1990s plans were made to restore it as much as possible and to make it an important regional museum. Additionally, the old cloisters and walled garden enclosures have been turned into a botanic garden showcasing the native plants of the state.

It’s interesting to wander through this old building. Parts of it are still somewhat ornate.

But most of it is quite plain. But that is interesting, too.

Looking at the views out the windows may be the best part.

Of course, there is a lot of religious art here.

The museum houses Oaxaca’s oldest library, an important source of information about the colonial era and the early years of independence. 

The botanic gardens are available only by guided tour. English tours are offered only two days a week, and today, alas, was not one of them. So we went along on a Spanish tour. Our guide, fortunately, knew how to speak clear, simple Spanish that people like me would understand. So I followed the tour and felt prtty good about my skills in this language. 

Oaxaca had many different ecosystems. The state is largely mountainous. On the south, Oaxaca is open to the Pacific and has the typical climate of Mexico’s southern coast — hot, wet summers and warm, dry winters. Much of this summer precipitation falls on the mountains which is still fairly thickly forested. Another mountain ranger is found on the north east side of the state bordering Veracruz. During the summer tropical storms drench the mountains here. In the middle of the state is a long, fairly flat, central plateau. On the lee side of both ranges, this valley is fairly arid but sustains a significant amount of agriculture. 

Cactus is one of the most iconic plants of the central valley. The garden showcased the cactus quite effectively. 

Cactus is amazingly photogenic. 

The section devoted to tropical plants was interesting, but other than a few bromeliads, it just looked like big trees with a lot of leaves.

There was also a large section devoted to cultivated plants, particularly corn. This is what corn looked like before people started to cultivate it. 

Doesn’t look much like an Iowa farm, does it? The native peoples of this area learned to alter the plant until the ears looked like this 

or this.

Certainly much more interesting than those big yellow things you find in an American grocery store. 

Along the way, as our guide talked, we rested 

and admired the historic building.

After the tour, we stopped by the Camino Real hotel. This was once known as the El Presidente, and when John and I stayed here twenty odd years ago it was the first time we had ever stayed at a hotel where they turned down your bed and put a chocolate there! It was once a convent for Dominican nuns and has been exquisitely restored. The courtyards are particularly lovely

and appealing to different kinds of guests!

We went back to our modern hotel and rested. In the evening we went back to town. We somehow found ourselves on a square we had never seen before. This area was not quite as well-restored.

But as night fell we noticed that this area was kind of a trendy area, not four tourists but for locals.

Today is the night before The Epiphany. In Mexico this holiday is Three Kings Day and it is the culmination of the Christmas season. Mexican children get presents on Three Kings Day, not Christmas. So the plaza area by the cathedral was packed with families. There was a place where the kids could get their pictures taken with the biblical figures. But others seemed more interested in having a family photo with superheroes for the day. 

Tomorrow, it’s back to Los Angeles and reality.

Welcome to Oaxaca

We left Puerto Escondido early in the morning. The sun had just come up when we arrived at the airport. When we had first come to Escondido nearly thirty years ago there was only a small airstrip here, only big enough for prop planes. It was not long after that it was widened to be large enough for jets. Today there are at least a couple flights each hour, most headed for Mexico City. We were not on one of those, however. Instead, just like the old days, we were on a small plane headed straight over the Sierra Madre del Sur toward the city of Oaxaca. 

Our flight on AeroTucan was indeed an adventure. It was even smaller that the plane we had taken all those year past. Our flight was full, and I think I counted all of 18 people. I saw almost directly behind the pilot. I was a little unsure how exactly he could see over the instrument panel, but it was nevertheless an almost perfect flight. Looking down at the mountains, I could see a maze of winding roads and I was grateful we were not taking the other option for going to Oaxaca, a twelve hour bus ride. Here I am rather inelegantly exiting this tiny plane. 

After getting our luggage, we caught a collectivo to our hotel. We chatted briefly with a woman from Canada and a couple guys from Seattle. We were the last to be dropped off. Our accommodations in Oaxaca are at the Hotel Victoria. John and I had stopped by this place years ago on one of our first visits to the city. I remembered it as being sort of at the edge of town and sort of 1950’s modern. As the taxi dropped us off, it no longer seemed so far away from the center and if anything a bit bleaker than I had recalled.

It was pretty early in the morning, so our rooms were not ready yet. We hung around the pool for a while even though it was pretty chilly.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he had been so obsessed with getting a room here, even though its Presidential Suite was about the cost of a standard room at the Camino Real, the most upscale hotel in the area. But when we finally got into our room, I decided John was a genius. Of course, you all knew that already, didn’t you? The room itself was absolutely huge. I used the iPhone’s panorama setting to try to get a feel for it, but of course it distorted everything. But you will still get the idea.

But the real attraction of the Presidential Suite is the view from the balcony. You can see the entire Valley of Oaxaca from here. This picture does not do it justice. 

As we were tired and the room was so wonderful, we decided to nap for a bit. 

After we were rested, we went into town. We stopped by a barbershop. They were full at the time, but happy to make a reservation for tomorrow morning. We walked around looking at some of the places we remembered. For some reason, neither of us took many pictures today. After a bit of that, we went back to the hotel.

In the evening, we went back into the city for dinner. We had made reservations for one of the area’s most talk-about restaurants, the Pitiona Cocina de Autor. This is one of those places with a multi-course tasting menu. We do not normally do that in Los Angeles, but Oaxaca has become famous not only for its traditional foods but for its emerging fusion food scene. And, besides, we knew this experience would be far cheaper in Mexico! And it was more or less what we expected. There were lots of largish plate with not much food on them, and the food was usually some rather odd mixture of things.  

Most of the dishes we liked, though we did not fall in love with any of them. Probably what I will remember most of all is that we were wondering if the package we had sent from Virginia had arrived at home. We checked the security camera footage and not only saw the package being delivered but a few hours later saw a young woman stealing it! I guess we’ll deal with this when we get home though I doubt we can do anything. Sigh. 

Chacahua

Today was the last day at the beach. Having had such a good experience with our previous excursion — at least the part not involving the overpriced hotel — we decided to book a day trip with the same people. We looked over the options and decided that Chacahua Lagoon National Park looked the most interesting. This is a large brackish lake located about an hour north of Puerto Escondido on the road to Acapulco. As you can see from the map below, there are actually three lakes here and a river. As I understand it, at the height of the rainy season the whole thing can become one large estuary. 

The area is famous for the amount of bird life there, and our trip was to be devoted first to looking for birds and after that for some recreation. It sounded good, and it was overall a fairly good experience. Our guide picked us up at the hotel in a minivan. His name was Ivan.

He spoke a little English, not nearly as much as Job. We were not sure yesterday whether there would be other people as well. But when we looked at the van, we were pretty sure that would be. We made three other stops. As it turned our, there were eight of us. I should have noted down people’s names and taken pictures of them. We had a young couple from Querétaro. They were very cute; both of them were finishing university. There were two woman traveling together from Mexico City. One of the had spent some time studying at UCLA and spoke better English than my Spanish. And there were two men, one a younger Mexican, and the other a pale European whose English was flawless but slightly accented. We think they were a couple. He was Swiss but mostly worked in England teaching Latin. Not being particularly clear on the difference between the dative and the ablative, we talked about other stuff mostly. 

The ride to Chacahua seemed to take forever, and the little towns were passed through reminded me that while the city of Oaxaca and the coastal resorts are reasonably prosperous the rest of the state is one of the poorest in Mexico and sends many migrants to the United States. Oaxacans, not Koreans, are the largest ethnic group in Korea town.

We finally parked and were put on a powerboat. The lagoon is enormous but quite shallow. There are numerous mangrove “islands” in the lake and the are home to different kinds of birds. 

We law lots of herons.

But there were also cormorants, pelicans, and hawks. 

And there were some birds I can not quite sure what they were. Our guide names them all in Spanish. 

After we had been on the lagoon for about ninety minutes, we were taken to a rather depressing center for the conservation of crocodiles. Even though it was supposedly run by the national park, this was nothing like the tortoise facility. It seemed like the worst kind of third world zoo. The poor creatures seems crammed into pens that were far too small for them. I took pictures anyhow. 

I also had to take a picture of this sign. I am surprised somebody even thought it was necessary to put this up.

After this, we went back in the boat and had a short ride to an area right by the place where the lake opened to the ocean. On both sides of the mouth of the lagoon were beaches covered with restaurants. As usual with these things, there seemed to be a connection between the tour operator and a particular restaurant. What made this area interesting was that the tables were so close to the water.

In fact, when the tide started to come in about half of the tables were actually in the water. Yet nobody seemed to care … or even notice.

We spent more time here than I wanted to. The food was okay. I did not much feel like swimming in the water here. Around four in the afternoon, Ivan led us up a long path up a hill. I thought we were returning to the van, Instead, we found ourselves at a small lighthouse. Walking up to the top, we did have a great view of the lagoon and up and down the coast.

As we were leaving a group of local boys scrambled to the top and acted like … boys.

After this, we finally went back to Puerto Escondido. It was dark by the time we were back at the Santa Fe. I was strangely exhausted. John and I went to a like restaurant on the beach that billed itself as sort of a biergarten. The food was pretty mediocre.

We have an early morning flight to Oaxaca tomorrow and I need to pack. I have overall enjoyed our time here.