Noche de Rabanos

The entire city of Oaxaca is one big festival during the Christmas season with hundreds of food stands, carnival rides, craft markets and parades or posadas every night. Legend has it that 350 years ago two Dominican monks came up with a marketing idea to help indigenous farmers sell their produce. They encouraged the farmers to carve their beets, carrots and radishes into fantastic shapes and thus were born the “Night of the Radishes”. The radishes are specially grown for the occasion and have been heavily fortified to grow to their sometimes-enormous size of 40 inches – needless to say they are not consumable. Since 1897 the management of this special festival was taken over by the municipal government and promoted as a tourist event. Each year on December 23 dozens of displays are set up for the three-hour evening event and thousands upon thousands of people converge on the zocolo to witness these very original folk artworks. Here is but a small sample of the sculptures – my favorite: farm life with tractor.

Mescal and Tequila

There are eight varieties of the maguey plant all of which are used to make mescal, a small-scale artisanal product. Tequila a variety of mescal only permits the use of blue agave maguey exclusively. The process of production is essentially the same with tequila production being much larger in scale. It takes about seven years for the maguey plant to mature and be harvested. The leaves are trimmed off leaving only the “pineapple”. The pineapple is split into quarters and left to dry for about two weeks. The pineapple is then crushed under a millwheel to create fibers, which are then placed in a large barrel with water and allowed to ferment for about two more weeks. The mash is drawn off and distilled in copper kettles producing raw mescal (this is the real porch-climber stuff ) and then aged in barrels, blended etc. While this producer had dozens of crema or flavoured mescals and a respadado the distillery’s 3 year old anejo (aged) mescal reminded me of a very smoky peaty scotch. Worm negotiable.

Hierve el Agua - Frozen Water

Well not really frozen but they are white from all the minerals in the water. They also call it boiling water but really it is carbon dioxide - soda water. This must be the original infinity pool. Photos of the site were first published to the outside world in 1989 and the photographer took them while on a remote mule trek in the mountains searching for remote native culture. It is still quite remote. The ride to the site was up about 4000feet and then over a ridge and down about 3000 feet all on a one lane gravel road. On parts of it I was thinking of possible headlines in Canadian papers - Ok just kidding - barely. We met some very nice people on this tour and hope to tell you more of them sometime in the future.

Santo Domingo Church - Oaxaca

This Dominican Order church and monastery was built between 1570 and 1608 and like all the churches on Oaxaca have thick stone walls – some being in excess of thirty feet according to my estimate. The exterior is fairly austere but the interior cloister and throughout the monastery we start to get hints of the glorious sanctuary of the church itself. Deb and I were wandering around marveling at the paintings and all the gold when we stumbled upon a string trio of musicians standing in a small alcove. We continued wandering around the Alter and a priest came out from behind it and started setting up for a mass. We moved discreetly away just as the trio started playing the wedding march and as the wedding party began their procession. Really quite nice! Note that we are pretty much in the tallest structure in the city. Most buildings are only one or two stories high – wise considering Oaxaca gets over 200 earthquakes per year. Apparently we were there during a 5.2 quake but we were entertaining some friends in the RV at the time and never noticed the shaker.

Monte Alban - Oaxaca

This is the first ruins we have visited on this Mexican tour and it is interesting that this site is quite different than others we will encounter. Monte Alban – White Mountain -was first occupied by the Zapotecs around 500BC, however most of what we see is from the years 300 to 700AD. The population on the surrounding terraces was estimated to be around 25,000 people. The site itself was largely ceremonial with regular festivals for education and showcasing music and dance. It is surmised that this location was a sort of teaching hospital given the large numbers of stone carvings illustrating hundreds of illnesses and afflictions. Some sort of written text accompanies the illustrations that to this date has not been deciphered. It is also believed that sophisticated operations on the brain were done due to the recovery of skulls with precision cuts precisely where modern medicine enters the brain cavity. This site is unique as well in that over its entire history no human sacrifices were ever made. While what we see now shows stepped construction it was actually smoothly covered in white stucco and decorated with colorful frescos. The whole site was part of an astronomical observatory with one five sided building being the key element. What you see in the pictures is the commanding view the location has looking into three valleys and controls the entire region (no wonder that Cortez wanted this area for himself). The main plaza would be for music, dance and oratory competition and celebration while the ball court was used for recreation and conflict resolution. Think of this game like tennis without the racket – you struck the hair filled leather ball with foot, hip shoulder or elbow - the side sloping areas were in play – and spectators sat at either end cheering on the players, one side against the other although nobody died at the end unlike other pre-hispanic ball games.
Note the breeched birth in this stone carving – writing accompanies the tablet but is undeciphered. The somewhat dull building here is the observatory and it highlights the summer and winter solstice with light passing through the building. That we were here on the site for winter solstice is either good luck or good planning, I won’t disclose which.

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