Oaxaca city, Oaxaca

Here's a little recap of the things I enjoyed the most at Oaxaca. Vivien & I spent 4 days there during holy week and we LOVED it. A lot of my friends who had already been there told us many good things about Oaxaca and they were right! You should definitely plan a trip there when visiting Mexico.

Ethnobotanical garden

The first thing we visited was Oaxaca Ethnobotanical garden. I Wasn’t expecting much from this when we entered the building, but it was actually very interesting and lovely. In order to walk around the garden, you need to do a tour with a guide.

They have tours in spanish (50 pesos), english and even French (100 pesos). Tours are limited and start every hours so plan in advance, especially if you don't speak Spanish. We decided to do the visit in spanish in order to practise a little: the guide was a sympathetic and smiling woman, with a very clear and understandable spanish.

The tour lasted around an hour, an included a "photo" break to give us some time to capture the beautiful plants. We learned some fun facts about Mexico's flora and got to see some pretty cool cactuses. I really enjoyed this place, as I am a nature lover and I definitely recommend it.

Monte Alban Ruins

Another ruin! Vivien & I weren't really thrilled about going to our 6th ruins in 3 months but our friends told us that Monte Alban was worth it so we went. And we were happy we did: these might the the 6th ruins we visited, its impressive how they all look different!

The site is quite big and the whole visit took us around 2 hours. It is built at the top of a moutain and situated around 20 min from the center of Oaxaca. To reach the site, we took a collectivo from the hotel Riviera del Angel (50 pesos for the round trip).

We got to climb some of the pyramids, which gave us a great view of the valley. Monte Alban is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and is quite well preserved and maintained.

It was really warm up there and we both ended up with sunburns so wear a good sunscreen and a hat and bring a lot of water !

Oaxaca's Food

One thing I will forever remember about Oaxaca is its food. There are so many delicious restaurants in this city, it's unbelievable! Below, a photo of a vegetarian tlayuda which is some kind of pizza with a tortilla base. We enjoyed our first tlayudas at Escapulario, which is a small cosy restaurant where you can also have chapulines (grasshoppers) and other insects,. As they are one the specialty of Oaxaca, we tried some and they were very spicy!

Vivien & I fell in love with a vegetarian restaurant called Hierba Dulce. We went there 3 times: the food was heathy and very cheap (the dishes in the photos are worh 45 pesos each!) and the setting was very lovely: it was situated in a traditional mexican hacienda.