At 9 I met the Instagrammer at the spot from where one can catch colectivos to Tlacolula’s Sunday market. It was a pleasant journey, quite chatty. I told hre about my limpia, she told me about her limpia, and with this early morning exchange of innermost secrets it was easy to get along. We arrived […]
What could have been
An unexpected successful, if short, excursion this evening. I went out to get dinner and had thought I would go to Llano park for the delicious elotes from the cart one has to queue for 20 minutes for. At the last minute, as I walked towards Porfirio Diaz, I changed my mind and decided to […]
Worst end of farmyard
It was the 14th birthday of my Spanish school and in the break there were two cakes. One, a tres leches cake, the other a jelly made with cream and with bits of regular green and red jelly suspended in it. It looked like something out of a 1950s American cookbook. Glad to have tried […]
Dream home
This morning, or rather afternoon, we caught a colectivo to San Augustin Etla. By morning I mean afternoon, but it was the first thing we did this Sunday after brunching. By catching a colectivo I mean we stumbled around in the general area where the colectivos left from until we were shoved into a taxi […]
Last day off
Today, Sunday, was our last day off. Tomorrow we both return to work and my Spanish classes begin. We had a late start to the morning, lingering over tea and the news (for me) and exercise and calls home (for the GF). I was very pleased as last night, before realising that I was felled […]
Head case
The second day was less pleasant than the first. The first part of the walk was very easy indeed: first a steep walk down to the floor of the narrow valley with a small yellow silted river (I would call it a stream really) running down in, and then along the stream for about four […]
Two workshops
This afternoon we got a cab to San Martin Tilcajete, one of Oaxaca’s artisan villages, this one specialising in carving alejibres. These are fantastical brightly painted wooden animals – a relatively recent invention, less than a century old, but the village’s most famous and lucrative product. Tilcajete is about 40 minutes outside Oaxaca, set amidst […]
Boiling pots, abandoned cities
The morning brought bad news. I called home for Eid and learnt that a relative is very unwell, so that my father had to fly suddenly to Karachi. Very troubling indeed. KP had Eid yesterday, after multiple reports of a moon sighting, despite the astronomical evidence that only 0.2% of the moon would have been […]
Third day off
This morning we took a bus to Monte Alban, climbing up above the city to the hills surrounding it. The Central Valleys of Oaxaca were laid out below us, heavily inhabited but still very green, and it was a clear day with pockets of mist rising here and there. So very pretty, though it rained […]
Second day off
Today we decided to stroll up to the aqueduct. This is outside the Centro Historico, but through a very lovely, quiet neighbourhood crisscrossed by canals, green and full of trees. We stopped for lunch at a superb little place with an outdoor garden overlooking one of the (dry) canals and ringed by old stone arches. […]