Oaxaca, Mexico March 2025

Photos by JackPaulus.com

The city of Oaxaca is in the south-central part of Mexico and is known for its unique and amazing food culture as well as various historical, geological and cultural sites in and around the city.

Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán

..which has a stunning interior

Oaxaca is known for its food and we partook.

We also took a gastronomy tour through the sprawling 40 acre (!) Abastos market which is a maze of stalls selling absolutely everything (not unlike the enormous souks of Marrakesh) and this is only the second largest in Mexico.

Our tour guide led us through while eating a truly amazing breakfast and lunch.

And in Oaxaca that of course means roasted chapulínes (grasshoppers)

You buy them by the kilo

It's hard to describe the density of merchandise, colors, textures, sounds and humanity as to pause to take a photo of the most dense parts would cause a rude traffic jam so here are more casual scenes.

A local, upon hearing that we'd spent a second day wandering the Abastos, said (in spanish), "Oh, you're very brave travelers!" as it is not where tourists would normally go. It was both a highlight and overwhelming.

On our second day through we stopped for lunch in a quiet alley.

Flores de calabaza con quesilla

About an hour and a half East of Oaxaca is Hierve el Aqua which has an impressive rock waterfall and various mineral formations.

This has to be really, really old.

The entire thing that we were on is another rock waterfall still being formed.

There were lots of people about but I've spared you the swimmers

We also stopped at Teotitlán del Valle about 45 minutes East of town to see a local weaving cooperative.

The dyes are all organic with this red produced by the crushed remains of a local insect mixed with lime juice.

All colors are created from natural things

I remember that airline..

Mitla is a pre-Columbian site founded 100-600 CE and is perhaps as old as 900 BCE.

As the Spanish so often did, the stones of the old structures were recycled to build churches nearby.

The pillars used to hold up the roof of something similar to bamboo.

The stonework was amazing

And we stopped at the Árbol del Tule (a Cypress) which is the widest tree in the world and is about 1,500 years old.

It has been DNA tested to be a single tree.

On a mountaintop next to Oaxaca is Monte Albán at 6,400 ft (about 2K meters) which is one of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica. It was the center of Zapotec culture from 500 BCE - 800 CE.

It was abandoned long before the Spanish arrived for unknown reasons

This was the ball court where it was said that the winners were killed as a sacrifice.

The rectangular stones are original and the others are reconstruction.

We were also in town for International Women's Day where things got a bit heated.

We happened to not be in town when this occurred

Some other scenes from the city of Oaxaca.

Some people can't tear themselves away from their phones

We bought too many shirts in el Mercado de Artesanías

The library

Photos by JackPaulus.com