Four days in Oaxaca: a mountaintop flattened by hand and the best cooking in Mexico

Three nights in the old centre, a morning on a levelled mountaintop, an afternoon in the treasure room, and enough time left over to eat properly.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Oaxaca (city)
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Oaxaca is small, low and green, and it is the one Mexican city people come back from talking about the food. Two and a half thousand years of Zapotec and Mixtec history sit on the hills around it, the Spanish laid a grid over the valley floor in the sixteenth century, and almost nothing has been allowed to rise above three storeys since, partly because of the earthquakes.

The result is a centre you can cross on foot in twenty minutes, with a colonial cathedral at one end, a convent of unreasonable gold at the other, and a covered food market in between. The ruins of Monte Alban are twenty minutes uphill from all of it.

Four days is enough to do that properly and still spend an afternoon doing nothing. It is not enough for the whole valley, which has weaving villages, mezcal distilleries and a second archaeological site strung along one road east. That is a fifth day, and a good one.

Highlights

  • Monte Alban at nine in the morning, a whole mountaintop flattened by hand around 500 BC
  • The gold ceiling of Santo Domingo, and the Mixtec treasure from its excavation next door
  • The smoke corridor at the 20 de Noviembre market, where you buy the meat and they grill it in front of you
  • A cactus garden in a former army barracks, planted by the artist who fought to save it
  • Mezcal, which here is a drink with a region and a producer attached rather than a novelty

Where to stay

Oaxaca, three nights

The centre is built from a greenish local stone, which is why the old city has a colour of its own and why it was called the green Antequera under Spanish rule. It kept the grid, the two and three storey height and most of the buildings, and it is a UNESCO site for exactly that reason.

It is also a political city with a long memory. The most revered president in Mexican history was a Zapotec boy from the mountains here, the square has a semi-permanent encampment of protesting teachers, and 2006 saw an uprising that closed the city for months. None of that troubles a visitor, but it explains the tents.

Day by day

Day 1 in Oaxaca (city)

The Zocalo, the cathedral and the smoke market

The square is the whole introduction. It has a bandstand, a canopy of enormous laurel trees, cafes under the arcades on every side, and a slow drift of balloon sellers, buskers and people simply sitting. Take one of the outside tables and stay an hour.

The cathedral is on the north edge, a low broad front in the same green stone, built and rebuilt over two centuries because of the earthquakes. Half an hour covers it.

Then walk two blocks south to eat. The market on 20 de Noviembre is the size of a city block, and the corridor along its eastern side is a hall full of charcoal smoke where you buy raw meat by weight from a butcher and hand it straight to a grill. Get a table, order tortillas and salsa and whatever is being carried past, and do not wear anything you mind smelling of woodsmoke.

  1. 17:00

    Zócalo

    Visit

    The main square, shaded, arcaded on all four sides and permanently busy with street acts, vendors and the occasional protest camp. The best hour is around seven in the evening when the whole city comes out.

  2. 18:15

    Catedral Metropolitana

    Religious

    Begun in 1533 and knocked about by earthquakes ever since, which is why it is broad and low rather than tall. The baroque front is the local interpretation rather than the imported one.

  3. 19:30

    Mercado 20 de Noviembre

    Eat

    Four entrances, a block of food stalls, and on the eastern side the Pasillo de Humo, where the grills run the length of a narrow hall. Buy the meat from a counter, eat it three metres away, and add chapulines if you are curious.

With more time: An early arrival leaves the afternoon free, and the walk north up Macedonio Alcala from the square to the convent is the obvious way to spend it: five pedestrianised blocks of galleries, courtyards and coffee.

Day 2 in Oaxaca (city)

Monte Alban, a mountain flattened by hand

Go early. The site is on a ridge above the valley with no shade at all, it opens at eight, and the shuttles and coaches build through the morning. A taxi takes twenty minutes from the centre and there is an hourly bus from town.

What the Zapotecs did here is hard to take in from photographs: they levelled the top of a mountain, by hand, from about 500 BC, and built a plaza on it the length of several football pitches. At its height around 17,000 people lived up here, which made it one of the largest cities in the Americas at the time. It was already long abandoned when the Spanish arrived.

Allow two to three hours and walk the perimeter rather than cutting across the middle. The platforms at each end are the viewpoints, and from the southern one the whole plan of the place finally makes sense: a sunken court for the ball game on one side, a strange angled building in the middle that lines up with nothing else, and mountains in every direction.

  1. 08:00

    Taxi or shuttle up to the site

    Travel

    Twenty minutes each way. Taxis wait at the ruins for the return; the shuttle runs roughly hourly and sells a fixed return time, so check the last one before you buy.

  2. 09:00

    Monte Albán

    Historic

    A UNESCO site and the Zapotec capital for over a thousand years, begun around 500 BC on a levelled ridge above the valley. Two to three hours of walking, no shade, and a hat is not optional.

  3. 11:00

    Los Danzantes

    Visit

    A wall of carved figures in contorted poses. Early archaeologists called them dancers; the current reading is that they are captives, mutilated and about to be sacrificed. The stones here are replicas and the originals are in the site museum a few minutes away.

  4. 11:45

    South Platform

    Visit

    The big stepped platform closing the south end of the plaza, and the best view of the whole site. Climb it last, when you already know what you are looking at.

  5. 14:00

    Late lunch back in town

    Eat

    There is a cafe at the site and not much else. Come back down and eat properly in the centre instead.

With more time: The afternoon is free, and the alternative use of this whole day is the valley road east, which strings together an enormous ancient cypress, the weaving villages, the mezcal distilleries and the Zapotec stone mosaics at Mitla. That is a full day with a driver, and it is the reason to come back.

Day 3 in Oaxaca (city)

Santo Domingo, the treasure and the cactus garden

One block holds the best three hours in the city. The Dominican church is the first stop and it is a shock: every surface of the interior is gilded and modelled, the family tree of the order sprawls across the ceiling above the door, and the side chapel on the south is more elaborate again.

The convent beside it is now the state museum, and its centrepiece is the contents of a tomb dug out of Monte Alban in the 1930s: hundreds of objects in gold, jade, turquoise and carved bone, left by Mixtec nobles who reused a Zapotec tomb centuries after it was built. It is the richest hoard of Mixtec goldwork ever found, and it is upstairs at the end of a very long circuit of cloisters.

Behind the whole complex is the garden, which occupies the grounds the army held until the 1990s. It is not a park you wander into: entry is by guided tour at fixed times, and it is worth arranging the day before.

  1. 09:30

    Templo de Santo Domingo

    Religious

    Built between 1570 and 1608 and later covered inside with gilded plasterwork to a degree that has to be seen. The Capilla de la Virgen del Rosario on the south side is the highlight. Weddings take it over on Saturdays.

  2. 10:45

    Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca

    Visit

    The old convent, room after room of Zapotec, Mixtec and colonial history, ending with the gold and turquoise excavated by Alfonso Caso in the 1930s. Give it two hours minimum. The upper cloister windows look straight down into the garden.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch on Macedonio Alcala

    Eat

    The pedestrian street running back to the square is lined with courtyards set a few metres off it, which are quieter and better value than the tables on the street itself.

  4. 16:00

    Jardín Etnobotánico

    Nature

    A former army barracks turned over to native plants in 1993, after the artist Francisco Toledo led the campaign to stop a hotel being built on it. Guided tours only, capped at thirty people, no bookings: Spanish tours run an hour, English ones two, and the times are posted at the gate.

With more time: Evening is when the mezcal bars around the centre are worth the detour. Order a flight of three from one producer rather than three different brands, and ask what the agave was.

Day 4 in Oaxaca (city)

Two small museums, then the airport

A short last morning within four blocks of the square. The textile museum is the better of the two and takes under an hour: an eighteenth century house given over to the weaving of the state, which is the thing you will have been seeing in every market and understanding none of.

Then the house where Benito Juarez grew up, a few streets north. He walked down from a Zapotec village in the mountains speaking no Spanish, worked here as a servant, and ended up president; he remains the only indigenous one Mexico has had. The house is plain to the point of bare, which is exactly why it was kept.

Eat lunch near the square and go. The airport is twenty to thirty minutes away and the road is straightforward.

  1. 10:00

    Museo Textil de Oaxaca

    Culture

    An eighteenth century mansion restored in 2007, showing the techniques, dyes and designs behind Oaxacan weaving. Free, small, and the best possible preparation for buying anything in a market.

  2. 11:15

    Casa de Benito Juarez

    Culture

    The modest house where the future president lived as a servant boy after walking down from the Sierra. Half an hour, and it makes the statues of him across the country mean something.

  3. 12:30

    Last lunch under the arcades

    Eat

    Back at the square, where the trip started. Order the black mole if you have not had it yet.

With more time: With a late flight, add the graphic arts institute two doors from the church, a small free collection of prints in a colonial house with a courtyard cafe.

Before you go

Where to stay

Stay inside the historic centre, which is roughly fifteen blocks square and where everything in these four days happens. North of Independencia Avenue is the smarter half, with the boutiques and the better restaurants along the pedestrianised Macedonio Alcala. South of it is louder, cheaper and where the markets are.

Either works and both are walkable. Rooms in converted colonial houses are the local speciality and cost a fraction of what the equivalent would be in Mexico City.

Getting there and around

Xoxocotlan airport is a twenty to thirty minute drive from the centre, with flights from Mexico City several times a day and a handful of direct routes from the United States. Shared vans from the arrivals hall cost a fraction of a private taxi and drop you at your door.

In the city you walk. Taxis are cheap for the trip up to Monte Alban or out into the valley, and there is an hourly shuttle to the ruins from the centre. Nothing in the centre needs a car.

Eating, which is the point

Oaxaca has its own kitchen rather than a version of the national one. Tlayudas are the enormous crisp tortillas everyone eats late at night, chapulines are toasted grasshoppers sold by the cupful in the markets and taste of chilli and lime, and the moles here run to seven distinct recipes, of which the black one is the famous one.

The market stalls are not a compromise. Breakfast and lunch are what the markets do best, dinner is when the restaurants come into their own, and the gap between a good stall and a good kitchen is smaller here than almost anywhere.

Mezcal

Mezcal is made from agave, roasted in earth pits, which is where the smoke comes from, and the valley east of the city is full of small producers. Drink it neat and slowly, in the small clay or glass cups it is served in; the orange slice and worm salt are for the tourist trade.

The distilleries worth visiting are an hour out of town on the road to Mitla, so they belong to a valley day rather than an evening. In the city, the bars around the centre pour twenty or thirty varieties by the glass and will explain the differences if you ask.

When to go

Two dates fill the city and both are worth planning around rather than into: the Guelaguetza, a state-wide dance festival in the second half of July, and the Day of the Dead at the very end of October, when Oaxaca is one of the places people fly in for. Rooms in both periods book months ahead and cost several times the usual rate.

The rest of the year is straightforward. The rains come in the afternoons from June to September and clear by evening. October to April is dry, warm in the day and cool enough at night to want a jacket.

Oaxaca is a city people arrive at for two days and leave after five. The pace is slower than anywhere else in Mexico, the centre is small enough that you keep passing the same people, and the food is genuinely a reason to come rather than a bonus.

Keep one afternoon with nothing in it. It will fill itself with a market, a courtyard and a conversation.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Oaxaca?
For the city itself, comfortably. The centre is small and the one essential trip out of it, Monte Alban, is a morning. What four days will not fit is the valley east of the city, which is a full separate day of weaving villages, mezcal distilleries and a second ruin.
Do I need to book anything in advance?
Only accommodation, and only if you are coming for the Guelaguetza in July or the Day of the Dead at the end of October, when the city fills months ahead. Everything else here is walk-up, though the botanical garden runs on fixed tour times worth checking a day early.
How do I get to Monte Alban?
A taxi from the centre takes about twenty minutes, or there is an hourly shuttle bus from town that sells a fixed return. Go at opening time rather than mid morning: there is no shade on the site at all and it gets very hot by eleven.
Is Oaxaca safe?
Yes, by any reasonable measure, and it feels it. Ordinary care applies late at night on the darker streets out of the centre, and pickpockets work the big wholesale market, which is not one of the markets on this trip.
What should I eat?
A tlayuda, a black mole, and at least one thing you cannot identify from a market counter. Chapulines are toasted grasshoppers and taste mostly of chilli and lime, so they are an easier start than they sound.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: add a valley day, drop a museum, move the nights around, or extend it to a week.