Ocotlan

Today we drove to the village of Ocotlan, about 30 miles from where we are staying. Unlike the area we live in, where all the cities bleed into each other, once you leave Oaxaca, there are very few buildings or homes around, just rolling hills. The villages are separated by miles of nothing but land.

Our first stop in Ocotlan was their big Friday market. Unlike some of the markets in Oaxaca city, in the villages only one day a week is market day, and families come from the countryside to sell and buy just about anything under the sun. The vendors take over the zocalo and streets, and string up tarps and set up tables. There are so many vendors that we frequently had to walk single file through the market.

I was overwhelmed by the quantity of just about everything: rows and rows of gorgeous red plum tomatoes (which sold for 5 pesos – about $0.35 – for a bag of eight tomatoes); truckloads full of oranges; stall after stall of white, sweet-smelling onions; tables piled high with mangoes. I can’t imagine that everything gets sold.

In addition to fruits and vegetables, there were animals. We saw goats, cows, bulls, fish, chickens and turkeys. One woman, with a baby in a sling on her back, bought four turkeys, and casually lifted them up by their tied legs and walked off.

Just look at this bread! Selso is buying pan dulce for breakfast tomorrow morning.

And of course there were clothes, crafts, tools, shoes... There were hundreds of pairs of shoes all displayed on their boxes – and keep in mind this is a temporary display. The vendors arrived early in the morning to set up and had to take everything down by the end of the day.

We were ready to check out the village’s church, but had no idea where it was. We asked an old man walking by and he kindly walked us to the church.

The 16th century ex-convent and Dominican temple was gorgeously restored with the financial help of Rodolfo Morales. Morales, a native of Ocotlan, was an internationally known artist who died in 2001. He created a foundation which has done a lot of restoration work and helped his community in other ways as well. Incidentally, one of the books we bought earlier this week for the kids was illustrated by Rodolfo Morales. It is called Angel's Kite and was written by Alberto Blanco.

Stunning, isn't it?

After a tour of the beautiful church, we returned to the market, where we bought lunch. We decided to head back to the car to return to Oaxaca, but unfortunately, we were lost! The sprawling market took over blocks of the village, and so much of it looked the same! We kept winding our way through only to end up on a street we didn’t recognize. Finally we made our way back to our car and Oaxaca.

We spent the afternoon reading, playing games, and watching TV (Rafael doesn’t mind that all the cartoons are in Spanish!).