I loved Oaxaca. It was small and walkable, and everyone seemed to know each other there. There was so much art everywhere, with talleres de artes graficas (graphic arts workshops) and gallerias (galleries) around every corner. There’d be calendas every other day, the streets filling with dancers as the band walked through, pulling more and more onlookers in. And there was the food – before I’d gone to Oaxaca, basically every Mexican I’d met had told me that Oaxaca had the best food. They were 100% right. It was phenomenal (and often pretty cheap too).
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I’d started my time in Oaxaca with Amy. We’d planned to rendezvous there for 2 and a half weeks, after which she’d leave and I’d stay on for a bit longer. We’d intended to take some lithography workshops, eat lots of good food, and cafe hop our way around, while working productively on the cafes’ free wifi.
Amy was actually working – she still had her full-time job and was just working remotely while in Mexico. For me, “working productively” meant knocking some tasks off a backlog I’d built up over the past few years – sorting through all my files in Google Drive and Dropbox, typing up and finishing various half-written blog posts I’d scribbled on bits of paper, updating my various websites, etc etc. Things I’d vaguely wanted to do, but which were never important enough to prioritise.
We managed one lithography workshop. Amy took to it more than I did – it hurt my hand, and I felt like I needed to improve my basic drawing skills before I could really take advantage of a new medium. And I wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped I would be. Instead, I fell prey to the siren call of many fantastic books, which I don’t regret at all. There was a good reason those tasks were on my backlog, after all – they really weren’t that important.
But we did successfully eat lots of good food, and have lots of deep conversations. When I was younger, I loved reading about how Shelley and the Romantic Poets or Epicurus and other philosophers of his school would get together and discuss all these big philosophical and creative things in between making art and reading and spending time in quiet contemplation.
It sounded idyllic – and here, in Oaxaca, I felt like I was getting to do something very similar. I’d spend time learning how to draw, reading, discussing things like feminism and ethics, and meditating. It was as stimulating and fulfilling as I’d imagined.
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Then after 2 and a half weeks, Amy left, and my life changed again. I got a job, kind of accidentally. I got a membership to a co-working space. I ran every single day. I got to know more locals – and, admittedly, more foreigners too. I started to have a more rooted life. Here’s what it was like:
Home
We stayed in an AirBnB with a family who were renting out multiple rooms. I loved staying with them. There were three generations of women – Martha, Evelyn, and Zoe – and their employee, Manuel, who was basically like one of the family too. They were so hospitable. When Amy and I were there together, they taught us how to make empanadas, and plied us with organic small-batch mezcal that they’d made themselves. At this point I didn’t really like mezcal (that changed later), but I loved their mezcal, served with lime and sal de guisano (literally worm salt, because it’s made by toasting worms and then grinding them up with salt).
Once Amy left, I spent a lot more time with the family, which was wonderful because I think I’d have gotten lonely otherwise. Sometimes I’d have breakfast with them, which was such a pleasant affair, long and slow with lots of conversation. I’d have dinner with them too sometimes, and almost every day, in the evening, I’d make tea for everyone – either assam with a dash of milk, or rooibos, both of which they’d never tried before.
They took me out for tlayudas, painted my nails, told me about their family history, invited me to their Christmas celebrations, generally involved me in their day, and treated like I was part of the family. It was great, and it made me feel so at home.
Running
I hadn’t done much exercise in Veracruz because it was so hot that I basically always felt like I was melting. Even before that, I hadn’t run for ages because I’d gone too hard, too soon, and hurt my ankles and knees and lower back.
But Amy inspired me to run again, and we went for a jog together up the Cerro del Fortín, this giant set of stairs that leads up to an auditorium that overlooks the whole city. I took it slow and started by only running every 2-3 days, stretching thoroughly before and after each run.
It was so beautiful and peaceful and fun. But I didn’t think I could keep it up once Amy left – I needed that social pressure to get me out the door. And then I listened to The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, a book that I absolutely recommend everyone read. Duhigg talked about the habit loop – a cue, a routine, and a reward – and that before you could do something, you had to believe that you could.
I figured I’d test out his advice with running. Could I successfully run every single day that I was in Oaxaca? My cue was waking up, the routine was making my bed, putting on my running clothes, and heading straight out the door. and my reward was usually a freshly baked basil pesto sourdough focaccia and a handful of goyitos (sourdough English muffin trims with a lemon glaze) from Pan Con Madre.
It worked.
It felt so good whenever I ran. Some days I’d feel anxious or grumpy in the mornings, but once I’d start running I’d see all the beauty around me and feel so free and happy and just….grateful. It felt pretty amazing afterwards too, especially when I was eating all those delicious baked goods. If I didn’t feel like running – which happened often – I’d either think about how good I’d feel on my run, or promise myself that I’d get an extra treat from the bakery.
All I had to do was get out the door. I could tell myself that I’d just run around the block if I wasn’t feeling up to it. But usually once I’d get out, I’d want to go all the way up the stairs.
The Nike Run Club app helped a lot too. The guided runs are phenomenal and always made me feel like I had my very own cheerleader encouraging me and making me laugh as I ran. I hate speed runs on my own – I generally refuse to do them – but not only did I do multiple speed runs with the app, guided by Coach Bennett, I was smiling like a lunatic the entire time I was doing them, because it was just so much fun.
Pan Con Madre, Boulenc, and Cafe El Volador
I mentioned that I’d go to Pan Con Madre almost every day after my run. Most bread makes my stomach cramp and sends me running to the toilet, but I can usually manage sourdough bread – which was fortuitous because most of Pan Con Madre’s bread was made with ‘masa madre’ – the Mexican name for sourdough.
Pan Con Madre is a ridiculously cute little bakery with some of the best bread I’ve had anywhere in the world. If I went early enough, they’d also have some of the previous day’s bread on discount – which was a great excuse for me to branch out and try lots of different things/eat even more bread.
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I’d often come in with my own bowl so that I wouldn’t waste paper bags, and sometimes they’d have to cut the bread up to make it fit inside. They were so friendly – if I was panting hard when I got in, they’d grab me a glass of water. I’d usually have a nice little chat with Michelle, the girl who worked at the register in the mornings, and she’d always see me out the door with a ‘Nos vemos mañana’ – see you tomorrow.
The other bakery I loved was Boulenc, who also made a lot of sourdough. Boulenc has these fabulous sandwiches with broccoli florets sautéed in thyme and garlic, fresh tomatoes, goat cheese, and spicy mayonnaise – to which I’d add their sweet salsa, an unconventional – but delicious – mix of flaked chilis, hazelnuts and cranberries.
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All the sandwiches at Boulenc are phenomenal, but the broccoli was my favourite by far. They also had a thick, homemade keffir that I adored. And that broccoli sandwich, which was so big that sometimes I’d only eat half at one time (along with keffir and a dessert) keeping the second half to eat as a late afternoon snack, was 80p – less than $5USD, or a little more than $6AUD.
I can’t really convey how good that broccoli sandwich was. It was like heaven. If I were to end up on death row, I’d want that sandwich for my last meal. Given the depths of my feelings, I ended up going to Boulenc a lot. They also had a large variety of cakes and pastries, of which the orange cake, made with almond meal, was my favourite. I went there so much that one of the staff on the front door, Benjamin, would remember me, as would Jose, my favourite waiter, who’d come and greet me whenever he saw me there.
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Boulenc was popular with locals and foreigners, and very often I’d run into someone else I knew there, or would strike up a conversation with a stranger while waiting behind the pastry counter. The only thing they didn’t do well was their pizzas – they looked amazing, but I found them fairly mediocre.
My last local haunt was Cafe ‘El Volador’. I found that if I went home in the evenings, I’d get distracted by the family or Netflix, and couldn’t get myself to draw. But Cafe ‘El Volador’ was just around the corner, had 25p juices – I’d always get a mix of orange, mandarin, and lime – and was both quiet, and situated in a beautiful square. I’d go there almost every evening, order a juice, and sit and draw.
Eventually I started talking to Christian, the guy who worked the evening shifts there. We’d chat for ages, and he’d tell me about Mexico and correct my Spanish. I even bought him over some homemade banana bread. I like to think we became friends.
Other honourable food mentions:
- Doña Ceci makes the best tacos de cazuela (the Oaxacan name for tacos de guisado). They have sooo many fillings and you can mix whatever you want. They also do a mean agua de maracuya.
- Chepiche has fantastic baked eggs.
- Cafebre is overpriced, but they do have a delicious bagel filled with bacon and avocado and a rather strange assortment of other fillings that sounded strange but tasted delicious.
- Casa Taviche is all Mexican food, but fancy. They have a menu del día that consists of 3 courses and a drink, for less than 100p.
- Filemón has great sandwiches and coffees – not as exciting as Boulenc, but it’s super cute and everything’s fair trade and benefitting local communities.
- Ancestral is pretty expensive, but it’s worth going to just to eat the molotes – pastries made with plantain dough and stuffed with cheese. They basically melt in your mouth.
- Cactus Loncheria does fantastic sandwiches and salads.
Convivio
I ended up, rather unexpectedly, getting a job while I was in Oaxaca. I hadn’t planned on working yet – I’d wanted to explore more of Mexico with Workaway – but it was a remote job, working only 10hrs a week, for a startup in which I thought I could have an impact. I figured I’d at least try it – if I hated it, I could always quit.
As it turns out, I quite liked it. It’s satisfying to work on interesting problems, and work is a lot more enjoyable when you only have to put in a few hours a day and don’t have to attend lots of meetings.
But getting a job meant that I needed decent internet, and since cafes and even libraries in Oaxaca have awful, patchy connections, I ended up getting a membership to a coworking space, Convivio.
I remember the first day I worked from there – Jair, who was at reception/the bar was so lovely and welcoming, and chatted to me about good places to eat as I made myself a pot of rooibos tea. Allison, a girl who I’d ‘met’ online in a Facebook group, and who had a bunch of mutual friends from the Bay Area, was also working from there, and we grabbed lunch together that day at a cute local cafe. I chatted to Colby, another coworker, who invited me to lunch with him the next day. In the evening, I choked down some mezcal (free for Convivio members), and chatted to Ian about tattoos from Shamans in Thailand.
It was wonderful. I loved coming in and chatting to Jair and Liz over tea. I liked slowly getting to know the rest of the coworkers, grabbing lunch or going on snack runs to Boulenc with whoever else needed a break at the same time as I did. And while I hated mezcal at the start, I’d have a tiny bit most evenings, and eventually began to like it.
A month membership meant I also got free entry to Convivio events. The coworking space was a bar and event space in the evenings, and often hosted live bands and other events. I invited Laure, another girl I’d met over Facebook, to come to one of the events with me, not really expecting much but figuring it’d be a nice chilled way to spend an evening.
It completely exceeded my expectations. We’d gone to see Tollotzin Brass Band, which I thought would be a sit-down kind of affair. It wasn’t – they were absolutely raucous and we danced like we were in a cheesy 80s movie.
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This was actually the first time I’d gone out dancing since I’d left San Francisco. I’d tried to go out dancing many times before, but it was so hard to organise and to find people to come with me – or even if people came, to actually get them to dance.
But a lot of people danced at Convivio. And Convivio was the kind of place you could go to entirely alone and people would just start talking to you. It kind of had a house party-like vibe in how welcoming and open it felt. And everyone tended to dance together, rather than in little groups.
So, obviously, I went back there a lot more. It was nice knowing that I didn’t have to plan ahead or find people to come with me. I could go when I wanted, dance if I felt like it, and leave when I was done. It also didn’t hurt that going to Convivio usually meant getting to hang out with Gary, Brooks, and Anna (the owner, one of the bartenders, and an awesome photographer who sometimes worked door shifts, respectively), who were awesome and lovely – and often also with Ian and Chris, two other regulars who were also great company.
Convivio had a great range of live bands and DJs – usually Mexicans, but playing things like disco-cumbia or funk or some other experimental or unusual mix of genres. It was a good place to discover new and interesting music. I had one of the best nights out of my entire 2019 there, dancing with this Dutch girl to a swing/jazz/balkan band from Ixtapaluca called Los Kamer.
I’m so happy I ended up getting a job – if I hadn’t, I’d never have ended up at Convivio, probably would have continued not going out dancing, would never have learned to appreciate mezcal, and would have missed out on meeting a bunch of pretty cool people.
There were so many other little wonderful moments and experiences that I had in Oaxaca. Like going to La Cosecha, the Organic Harvest Market, on the weekends with Celina, this Mexican woman who grew up in New Jersey before moving back and who now works as a Spanish-English translator. Or going to a bike party with Celina and Allison, and the way this stray dog with a limp would follow the bike party the entire way, helping keep pedestrians out of our path. It was such a friendly and vibrant and very walkable little town, and I loved being there.
It’s not, of course, perfect. The Zocalo has protestors camped out there almost permanently, and there are frequent water shortages. Outside of the city, the state of Oaxaca is one of the poorest in Mexico, with immense inequality, a deficient education system, and a high incidence of child brides and human trafficking. Christian told me that his uncle, who would go to rural communities to fix their antennas, would often get locals trying to sell him their young daughters.
But in Oaxaca de Juarez, so much of the art is about resistance and women’s rights. There’s so many wonderful organisations – like Fundacion En Via and Oaxaca Street Children – working on changing things in the villages and the streets. There’s independent bookstores and restaurants where everything is locally sourced and fair trade, and where a lot of the profits go back to helping people in the local communities. It’s a city where you can find lots of activism and hope and where things are changing. I felt happier, safer, and more hopeful there than I had anywhere in the United States. I’m so glad I got to experience it.
The Way of the Potato 
This was such a fun post! The title is perfect, too!
Having spent some time in Oaxaca City, I’m always fascinated to hear others’ experiences. I completely agree about the food! It’s definitely some of the best I’ve ever had. I had a similar experience, and I made so many beautiful connections with travelers AND locals alike, while I was there. It’s what I miss the most about Oaxaca City. :)
Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks Evan :D
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