Oaxaca and more tourist stuff! 8 January 2024

After the success with the buffet breakfast yesterday we shot out of bed and over to the hotel restaurant. Alas, no buffet today Senor!

The choices from the a la carte were very nice and they brought pastries and fresh fruit, but really, no buffet when we have just found it!

Wandering up to Sarid and Aenaes’ hotel around lunch time we jumped in with them for a trip to an Alebrijes workshop. Alebrijes is a style of carving and painting. The carved objects depict animals and more often animals with mixed parts. For example a wolf with a fish tail. The story goes that artist Pedro Linares fell ill and dreamed of these colourful spiritual animals this led to his creations. They were named Alebrijes because in the dream the animals were all shouting “Alibrejes!”. Alebrijes animals are everywhere in the shops, but a trip to a workshop was the right thing to do, it was fascinating.

Our guide ran us through the process from the carving of the soft wood of the copal tree through to the end of the process. At this workshop they used paint from nature. The colours were made from ground bark, corn fungus, indigo flour, cochinilla bug (like our cochineal), charcol, pomegranate which when mixed with industrial lime becomes turquoise. The key to the colours is when they are mixed with the juice of a lime and or industrial lime. It was amazing watching the colours change as he added these.

Then to hold the colours fast they are coated with a mixture of honey and resin. This is the process used by the masters and later we saw some at another stall that were nowhere near the same quality.

As we walked past the artists I asked if they have to follow a pattern for each piece. We were told that they just go for it and make it up as they go along. Well not exactly in those words, but we got the jist of it.

It is amazing how uniform the patterns are when it is all done freehand!

In this photo the master had filled the cracks that happen as the wood dries out whilst being carved. He fills them with slivers of copal wood and glues them in. Later he will trim and sand them to perfection.

We saw so many pieces that would have loved to have purchased, but getting them home is the problem. The best pieces have long thin protrusions , like tails, eggs, spikes or feathers. So I bought a little iguana, and I am sorry to say that when I unwrapped him back at the hotel I snapped his tail off!  Oh well, don’t lizardy things drop their tails?

Our next stop was just around the corner to the weavers market where both Sarid and I were amazed at how this lovely Senora worked the loom. She did explain it to us, well to Sarid who later translated for me, but look in this video how the colour changes when she pulls the loom. This was a small market  where the ladies sold their own wares. I bought a beautiful hand woven table runner.

Our last stop was at the pottery shop. Barro Negro pottery is unique to Oaxaca. Barro negro translates to black clay, and all of the pottery is black. Most pieces are hollow and have a filigree effect. When we came to Mexico in 2000 I bought one of these pots in Tijuana and have always loved it. Now it has some little friends ready to join it. Hopefully they make it home in one piece! I would have loved to have got a big vase, but alas, suitcase rules!

After a wee rest in the afternoon we met Sarid and Aeneas once again and enjoyed a mole (pronounced molay), this time as a degustation dinner. The restaurant Los Paco Centro is just around the corner from our hotel. And we had a very different and interesting mole degustation.

Most places give you complementary salsas with tortilla chips or bread. I was coveting the little triple bowl that had the three bowls squished together and wondered if firstly the restaurant would miss it, and secondly if Lance would spot it in our packing. 

The three salsas were quite different, the green was the most spicy and smooth, the tomato one was full of tomato flavour and not spicy at all and the third was a smokey dark salsa with loads of flavour.

Aeneas and I shared a bottle of Mexican merlot, the waiter did advise that they had one older than the vintage we had chosen that would be a better choice, so we went for it and were not disappointed.

Shortly after our 7 mole arrived. Previously when experiencing a degustation the course arrive one by one, but I can see the sense in the seven being presented all at once.

Our waiter went through each style of mole separately, they were all very different starting with green and moving through to a thick dark black chocolatey mole which has 31 ingredients and takes 7 days to make. We oohed and ahhhed our way through them all with the accompaniments of rice, roasted plantain (bananas) and tortillas. Funny though, the tortillas were served in a fabric bag to keep them warm and moist, but the bag was a Scottish style tartan! And while the waiter was explaining the complexities of the dishes James Brown was belting out in the background!

The owner, sporting a manicured handle bar moustache, came and chatted with us. He said that the recipes were 120 years old and had been handed down through his family. His wife had taken the grandmother’s recipes and refined them from a handful of this and a pinch of that to proper recipes. And his wife is Russian! She came out and had a chat and talked us into trying some ant eggs! She said any you see from now on will be frozen, these were fresh. They actually were quite nice and had nice flavours with them.

We shared a sort of torte between the four of us as we were completely full and satisfied. Another lovely day in Mexico!