Oaxaca
Alone

SAMPLE

Why Oaxaca

Mexico City gets the headlines. Oaxaca gets the people who come back. It is a smaller, quieter proposition: a colonial city of green cantera stone set in a highland valley, ringed by mountains, built as the capital of a state that is home to more Indigenous language groups than any other in Mexico. That fact is not decoration. It is the reason the city eats the way it does, sells the crafts it sells, and feels, even after a single afternoon, like the surface of something much larger.

Put plainly, Oaxaca is a walkable colonial city and the capital of an intensely Indigenous state. Almost everything worth traveling for here (the food, the textiles, the mezcal, the black pottery of San Bartolo Coyotepec, the rugs of Teotitlán del Valle) was made somewhere else, in villages across the valley, and brought into the city to be sold, eaten, and admired. Oaxaca de Juárez, the city proper, is a market town and a stage. The valley is the workshop. Understanding that distinction early will change how you plan your days.

A free excerpt from Oaxaca Alone.