Like countless North American snowbirds before us, we’ve come to the sunny city of Oaxaca, Mexico, for December. Oaxaca (pronounced wah-HAH-kah) sits on a plateau surrounded by mountains in southern Mexico, in the middle of the area where the country narrows as it heads toward Central America.
Oaxaca is known for its balmy climate, its mix of indigenous and European-based cultures, and its terrific food. This is the birthplace of mole (mo-lay)—sauces that deftly combine such diverse ingredients as chocolate, chili peppers, cinnamon, almonds, onions, dried fruit, and herbs into a variety of rich, complex flavors.
Our frequent travel partners, AJ and toddler Francesca, will be meeting us in Oaxaca this week. Until then, we’ve been taking Spanish classes to brush up on our language skills. Our days have fallen into a pleasant rhythm:
- Awake to crisp morning temperatures and inevitable blue skies.
- Breakfast on pastries, warm corn tortillas filled with beans and cheese, and big cups of fresh-squeezed orange juice from stands in a nearby park.
- Attend Spanish grammar and conversation classes until our heads feel like bursting.
- Walk back to our hotel in the early afternoon to rest our brains and bodies during the heat of the day.
- Emerge around 3 p.m. and head to a local restaurant for a big lunch/dinner (the main meal of the day in Oaxaca), often served on a shady terrace and usually featuring meat and vegetables in some kind of mole sauce.
- After eating, join the rest of Oaxaca’s population to stroll the streets of the old city center or lounge in a park as the temperature cools and the sun sinks lower. This is the best part of the day. Often as we walk along we pop into a shop or a gallery or an old church (though we’re saving our serious sightseeing until AJ and Francesca arrive).
- When darkness falls, around 7 p.m., head back to our hotel room to do our Spanish homework, read, catch up on editing work, and have a snack before bedtime. There’s no TV at the hotel, so happily we’ve been able to avoid most of the U.S. political news.
On weekends, we visit markets, take excursions to villages in the nearby mountains, or go to cultural events. Last Sunday, we attended a youth orchestra concert in a gaudy 1903 theater and heard music by Mexican composers from the 17th to 20th centuries.
Between encountering so much classical music by composers I’d never heard of, and wondering about the significance of various dates that local streets are named for, I realized how ridiculous it is that I (and many other Americans) know virtually nothing about Mexico.
This is a country older than ours, with its own rich history, literature, art, and music—a mix of diverse cultures, with states that are as different from one another as California, Mississippi, and Maine. And it’s right next to the United States. So why don’t most of us learn anything about it? I’m relishing the opportunity to chip away at my ignorance a little more each day.
