The best-eating region of Mexico, taken slowly: Oaxaca city and its markets, the Zapotec sites of the central valleys, the mezcal palenques, the cloud-forest villages of the Sierra Norte, and a finish on the Pacific coast.
Oaxaca city
Land and walk. The zócalo, Santo Domingo with its gilded ceiling and the attached cultural centre, and the first of many meals — start with a tlayuda and a glass of something from a shelf of unlabelled bottles.
Markets and mole
Mercado Benito Juárez and 20 de Noviembre in the morning — the smoke hall where you buy meat by weight and have it grilled in front of you is the single best lunch in the city. Afternoon: a cooking class, which in Oaxaca is a genuine institution rather than a tourist gimmick.
Monte Albán
The Zapotec capital on a levelled mountaintop above the city, occupied for well over a thousand years, with a ball court, carved danzante stones and a view over three valleys. Go at opening. Afternoon in the Museo de las Culturas for the Tomb 7 treasure.
The Sunday circuit
If it is Sunday, Tlacolula: the valley’s biggest rotating market, Zapotec-speaking, unhurried and enormous. Combine with Teotitlán del Valle for natural-dye weaving and the Tule tree — a Montezuma cypress with the stoutest trunk of any tree on earth.
Mitla and the palenques
Mitla’s geometric stone mosaics are unlike anything else in Mesoamerica — no mortar, tens of thousands of cut pieces. Then out to Santiago Matatlán, the self-declared world capital of mezcal, to watch the pit roast and the tahona at a working palenque.
Hierve el Agua
Petrified mineral cascades over a cliff edge with spring-fed pools at the top, three hours from the city on a road that has been the subject of a long community access dispute — check that it is open before committing the day. It usually is; it occasionally is not.
Up to the Sierra Norte
Two hours into the cloud forest and the Pueblos Mancomunados — eight Zapotec villages that jointly run their own community tourism network, with trails, cabins and guides, and the revenue staying local. Cold at 3,000 m. Bring a fleece.
Village to village
Walk the old trail between villages — Cuajimoloyas to Latuvi is the classic, dropping through pine and oak into a warmer valley — with a local guide, as the network requires and as you would want anyway.
Down to the coast
The long descent to the Pacific: seven hours over the sierra by van, or a forty-minute flight from Oaxaca to Huatulco or Puerto Escondido. The road is beautiful, twisting and not for weak stomachs.
Turtles and the coast
Mazunte was a turtle-slaughtering village until the 1990 ban and reinvented itself around the national turtle centre. Swim at San Agustinillo, walk to Punta Cometa for the sunset, and take the dawn boat to see turtles and dolphins offshore.
A slow day
The Pacific here has serious rip currents and no lifeguards on most beaches — swim where locals swim and not elsewhere. Otherwise: hammock, fish, the lagoon at Ventanilla with its community-run mangrove tour.
Out
Back to Huatulco or Puerto Escondido for the flight north. Carry mezcal in checked baggage and buy it from a palenque rather than the airport.
Dobré vedieť
Time this around a Sunday for Tlacolula, and around late October if you want Day of the Dead — Oaxaca is one of the country’s great places for it and accommodation books out months ahead.
The Sierra Norte villages sit near 3,000 m and get genuinely cold at night year-round.
The sierra–coast road is spectacular and nauseating in equal measure. The short flight costs little more than the van and saves seven hours.
Kratšie či dlhšie?
City and central valleys only — markets, Monte Albán, Mitla and the palenques, with no coast leg.
Continue east to San Cristóbal de las Casas, Sumidero canyon and the Palenque ruins.
Bookend with three days in the capital: Teotihuacán, the Anthropology museum and Coyoacán.