OAXACA · MEXICO
Mezcal, mole and a valley full of ruins.
Cooking classes and market crawls, mezcal palenques on the Tlacolula road, Monte Albán and Mitla, Hierve el Agua, and the craft villages where the alebrijes and the rugs are made.
Only here
Some things only happen in Oaxaca.
Cooking classes and craft markets you can find in a hundred cities. Agave roasted in earth ovens, water turned to stone on a cliff edge, and copal carved into impossible creatures belong to this valley.
Petrified water
Hierve el Agua
One of only two petrified waterfalls on earth. Mineral springs have run over a cliff for thousands of years and left cascades of white stone frozen mid-fall, with spring-fed pools at the top that spill toward the Sierra. The Zapotecs cut irrigation canals into this rock more than two thousand years ago.
- 1 Hierve el Agua, Tule Tree, Mitla and Mezcal Distillery Tour
- 2 Explore Hierve el Agua, Mitla, Tule, Textile and Mezcal for a day
- 3 From Oaxaca de Juarez: Hierve el Agua and Mezcal Distillery
Agave and smoke
The Mezcal Route
Mezcal is Oaxaca’s spirit in every sense. On the Tlacolula road through Santiago Matatlán, the self-declared world capital of mezcal, family palenques still roast agave hearts in earth pits, crush them under a stone tahona pulled by a horse, and distil in copper by hand. You taste it where it is made, straight off the still.
- 1 Oaxaca: Tule, Mitla & Hierve el Agua, & Mezcal Tour
- 2 Boil the water and distillery mezcal tour
- 3 The Mezcal Journey
Copal and colour
The Alebrije Villages
In San Martín Tilcajete and Arrazola, whole families carve fantastical creatures from soft copal wood and paint them in fine dotted patterns, no two alike. The craft is barely a lifetime old and exists nowhere but these valleys. Sit with a carver and watch a block of wood turn into a winged jaguar.
- 1 From Oaxaca: Monte Alban, Alebrijes & Black Clay Day Trip
- 2 Monte Albán, Arrazola, Cuilapam y San Bartolo Coyotepec.
- 3 Essence Zapoteca Monte Albán, Barro Negro and Alebrijes for a day.
Start with the standout
The day most people remember.
More travellers build their Oaxaca around this one outing than anything else on the list.
The classics
Oaxaca's Most Popular Tours
Monte Albán, Hierve el Agua, the mezcal road and a cooking class in a courtyard. The days most people come to Oaxaca for.
Where to begin
The experiences an Oaxaca trip is built around.
Mezcal tastings, the valley ruins, a cooking class, Hierve el Agua, the markets and the craft villages. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day out
How to do the Eastern Valleys.
The Tlacolula valley east of the city holds the Tule tree, a weaving village, the ruins at Mitla, Hierve el Agua and a string of mezcal palenques. Most people do it in one long loop. Three ways to make the day, by pace and budget.
Seven moles
The food capital of Mexico.
Oaxaca is where Mexican cooking gets its depth. Seven distinct moles, masa ground by hand, chapulines and quesillo in the Benito Juárez market, tlayudas over charcoal late into the night. Spend a morning shopping a market with a cook, then turn it into lunch in a courtyard kitchen.
Read the guide: the best Oaxaca cooking classes →Teotitlán del Valle
Wool, cochineal and the backstrap loom.
In Teotitlán del Valle, weaving is the whole town. Families card and spin churro wool, dye it with cochineal, indigo and wild marigold, and weave rugs on pedal looms the Spanish brought four hundred years ago. The reds come from an insect; the patterns come from the ruins down the road.
See the weaving workshops →Two thousand years up
A whole mountaintop, leveled by hand.
The Zapotecs sheared the top off a mountain above the valley floor and built a city on it: plazas, pyramids, a ball court and carved stone figures, all aligned to the horizon. Monte Albán ran for more than a thousand years and still looks out over three valleys at once.
Monte Albán tours →By how far you go
Pick your day, by distance.
Oaxaca rewards both the slow wander and the long drive. Stay in the centre for markets and mole, head into the valleys for ruins and mezcal, or keep going, over the mountains to the cloud forest and down to the coast.
Stay in the city
Markets and mole, on foot.Walking tours of the centro, market food crawls, cooking classes in courtyard kitchens, and the cacao and chocolate workshops, all inside the city.
Into the valleys
Ruins, agave and stone pools.Day trips east and west: Monte Albán and Mitla, the mezcal palenques of Matatlán, the craft villages, and Hierve el Agua on its cliff.
Over the mountains
Cloud forest and the coast.Further out: hiking the Pueblos Mancomunados in the Sierra Norte, and the long road down to the Pacific at Puerto Escondido and Huatulco.
By place
Oaxaca and the valleys around it.
The city for markets and mezcalerías. Hierve el Agua for the stone pools. Mitla for the mosaics. Teotitlán for the rugs. Tule for the tree. The Sierra Norte for the cloud forest.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Mezcal if you came for the agave. A cooking class if you came hungry. Ruins, markets, craft workshops, a bike through the valley, or a printmaking studio.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Oaxaca? A long weekend that hits the markets, the ruins and the mezcal without a wasted hour.
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