Oaxaca & around
September 12, 2025 in Mexico ⋅ 🌧 20 °C
Leaving the picturesque Mexican Pacific coast on September 10, we drove to Oaxaca. This city has a very lively atmosphere, colonial buildings painted in bright colors, noisy markets with localRead more
Florin Paun
We stayed in this hotel for three nights. As you can see in the photo, the location is very safe, the building next door is the Oaxaca police headquarters. In the morning, while I was drinking my coffee, the police were lining up in the courtyard to go on missions.
Florin Paun
It is interesting to note that in Oaxaca, as in many other locations in Mexico, the customers of street vendors are more Mexican than foreign tourists. And in restaurants, the majority of the customers are Mexican. This detail is very important, as the atmosphere is much more authentic and relaxed compared to cities degraded by tourism, such as Antigua de Guatemala.
Florin Paun
In addition to being one of the oldest cities in Mesoamerica, Monte Albán was important for nearly a thousand years as the preeminent socio-political and economic center of the Zapotecs. Founded around 500 BC, Monte Albán had become the capital of a large-scale expansionist political entity that dominated much of the highlands of Oaxaca and interacted with other regional Mesoamerican states such as Teotihuacan to the north. The city lost its political preeminence by the end of the Late Classic (c. 500–750 AD) and was largely abandoned shortly thereafter. Small-scale reoccupation, opportunistic reuse of earlier structures and tombs, and ritual visitations marked the archaeological history of the site until the colonial period. The ancient Zapotec name of the city is unknown.