Oaxaca (day 1)

I"m already starting to really like the town of Oaxaca and I"ve hardly been here an afternoon! This is the first week of my spring break and rather than stay in Puebla I decided to travel to Oaxaca City, the capital of the Oaxaca region and a 4 hour bus ride south of Puebla. Oaxaca is most renown for its mole and chocolate, but I also came to experience la Semana Santa, the religious week leading up to Easter. Today outside of the main cathedral of Oaxaca women and children were selling braided palm leaves for Palm Sunday. Adjacent to the cathedral in an ex convent is the museum of Oaxacan culture, spanning from the Olmecs to the conquest. I stayed until closing and will probably return another day to see the rest of the museum. It"s one of the few museums with excellent explanations of not only the artifacts but also of the historical context, well deserving of a second visit. Both the museum and cathedral are along a pedestrian walkway, the only street closed off to cars in Oaxaca. Like any other street in Mexico, it is filled with vendors selling nieves (something between a flavored ice and an ice cream), alote (corn on a stick) and other small bites. I spent the evening browsing craft stalls, eating atole flavored nieve, and enjoying 3 free outdoor music concerts. The first was a spontaneous gathering of Mexican youth wearing luchador (wrestler) masks, beating African drums and dancing in circles with tambourines. Around the corner was a rock concert on a stage then another block down was a contemporary Catholic acapella group. It has been a rich evening of quite a variety of music and I"m excited to see what other unexpected surprises I"ll encounter this week in Oaxaca!