Zaachila and Cuilapam

This Thursday our friend Sonia, my intercambio partner, took us to two of her favorite places just south of Oaxaca. We met her at the Catedral in the Zocalo at 9 am, which is early for us. Finally traveling with someone who lives here, we had no trouble picking up a colectivo (shared taxi) out to Zaachila. Along the way Sonia pointed out the neighborhood Xoxo (pronounced hoho) where she is starting an education consulting agency and where we will be joining her for a party October 31st. (Just a quick aside about Sonia: she is 22 and just finished her college degree. She comes from a village about 4 hours north with a population of 250 people. She is the first woman to leave and get her college degree and she is, she thinks, the oldest unmarried woman from her village. Among her many responsibilities she is the director of the Learning Center, overseeing the provision of services to over 80 students. She is pretty amazing.)

We arrived into the hubbub of Zaachila's big weekly market. As we have been to various markets at this point, and busy ones at that, we just took a leisurely stroll through some of the stalls. Sonia stopped to point out a couple different kinds of fruit that we didn't know the names of in English. What was most striking to us was the amount of live turkeys in the market. We literally walked down a narrow path for about 20 yards lined on both sides with people selling turkeys: turkeys in wheelbarrows, turkeys hanging upside down and slung over arms, turkeys sitting calmly on the ground. It was nuts. After with burst through the other side of turkey-row Sonia filled us in that the time was ripe for turkeys because many folks like to have turkey on the table for Dia de los Muertos, coming up October 31 - November 2.

Then we walked up past the church in the town toward an archeological site. One of the things that makes Zaachila special is that it is a Mixtec area while most of the surrounding indigenous groups in the valley are Zapotec. The tombs that we saw were apparently from a time when there was some Zapotec and Mixtec mixing going on. These tombs were a little more decorated than the ones that we had seen a Mitla. Also, from some of the pictures you can imagine why people set up around this area - it seems to be one of the only relatively high spots in the valley.




















From Zaachila we caught the bus to Cuilapam, a small town a little closer in to Oaxaca, in order to see the ex-covent/one-time prison/roofless church. I have heard Sonia talk about this place before and how she loves how calm and quiet it is. As we approached the massive building she told me the legend of how there came to be this roofless church. According to the story a priest long ago wanted to build a ginormous church so he made a pact with the devil to get the work done. The devil said that he would work until the rooster crowed, and the priest would have his church. The priest got cold feet about the whole consorting with the devil so he got a rooster to crow early. The devil stopped his work, but it the construction was not complete - there wasn't a roof on a large part of the church. (Inside you learn that there were just lots of different stages of construction, money issues, leadership issues, etc.) Whichever story you believe, it is pretty breathtaking.





Sonia pointed out that there is an accessible pulpit so clearly we had to give that a try.




Sonia also directed us toward the part of the complex that does have a roof, and we proceeded to sit out on the roof for quite a bit. Rory used Sonia's hat for a bit of sun protection. Sonia told us that she likes to sit in the sun like a lizard, and we were quite pleased to join her. We headed home not long after our sun bath.