It's only a one-hour flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca, a UNESCO World Heritage colonial city. Ellen Hoobler of Art-Adventure Tours has agreed to show me around. A native New Yorker and graduate student in pre-Columbian art, she speaks Spanish, Portuguese and French and is learning Zapotec. She and her business partner, Oaxacan native Nimcy Arellanes Cancino, started the business in 2000, offering two to three tours a year, often during festivals, such as November's famous Day of the Dead celebration.

I settle into my charming, centrally located hotel in an old colonial home, Casa Cid de Leon. Hoobler picks me up at my hotel and we walk to the zocalo, or city square, where the annual teacher's strike has commandeered the area. It's been going on for 11 days and an estimated 200,000 people are camping in the zocalo and the adjoining streets.

Merchants with makeshift booths hawk everything from tortillas and soft drinks to candy and toys to clothing and music to the protesters and their families. Both locals and tourists shrug their shoulders, duck under the stringed tarps and get on with their business.

Out of the fracas at La Biznaga, we sample delectable hoja santa leaves stuffed with Oaxacan string cheese, washing it down with a tart mojito.

The following day is dedicated to visiting artists. Oaxaca is internationally known as a haven for talented artisans and Hoobler has forged relationships with some of the most notable, willing to open their workshops to patrons who are curious about the creative process. "This small region has a disproportionate abundance of artists making black and green pottery, tinwork, wood carvings and rugs," she says.

We hop in a collective taxi, where we pay the equivalent of $1 for the 20-minute drive to Santa María Atzompa, on the outskirts of Oaxaca. Hoobler, an energetic, blue-eyed blonde, speaks flawless Spanish; everyone from taxi drivers to waiters to artists embraces her as one of their own. For today's excursion, we've decided to focus on carvings and clay figurines.

First, we pay a visit to sculptor Dona Teordora Blanco, a petite and personable woman who learned to make terracotta pottery from her mother-in-law. With a broad smile, we watch as, in minutes, she shapes wet clay into a sirena, a mermaid. Hoobler translates Dona's comments as Dona's clay-smeared hands deftly sculpt the figure. Dona has four teenage and college age children, three of whom we meet during our visit; all of them are attending college on the proceeds of their mother's art. Still, the 18-inch figure I buy costs just $15.

Next, we visit the workshop of 27-year old woodcarver Vicente Hernandez Vasquez. On the grounds of the compound where he lives with his parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, he fashions amazing figures from copal wood. With his chocolate skin, sparkling eyes and beaming smile, he's a charmer. While a middle-aged couple from Columbus, Ohio, is amassing items for their gift shop, he talks about how the branches inspire him and how he is planting trees to replace those he uses, to replenish his materials. "I look at the wood and it knows what it wants to be," he says, as he offers us a Coke before he demonstrates hacking away the bark with a machete.

It takes 15-20 days to make a piece from start to finish, including carving, drying, sanding and painting. His creations range in price from $20 to $1,000 or more and are displayed at a number of museums and galleries in the U.S. As I study the kaleidoscope of colors, the menageries of creatures (many a fanciful mixture of animal and human characteristics) including armadillos, dogs, cats, mermaids, dragons, peacocks, owls and porcupines. I agonize over what to buy—everything is wildly appealing. Finally, I select three small pieces: a cat, an iguana and a lizard, for about $50. As we leave, I say goodbye to his grandparents, who are sorting maize in the afternoon sun, on a bench in the courtyard.

On our final stop, we visit the workshop of the Aguilar sisters of Ocotlan. Unlike Dona Blanco's work, the sassy figures, many of "fallen women," are finely painted. I select a jaunty-looking female calvera, a skeleton draped in calla lilies and marigolds symbolizing the Day of the Dead.

Back in town, we have a drink at Tapas y Pistos, a rooftop bar with a stunning view of the dome of the Santo Domingo church that Aldous Huxley dubbed one of the most extravagantly gorgeous churches in the world. Strolling to dinner, we pass through the church's plaza, where peddlers sell turquoise necklaces and straw baskets. Another day, we come back walk the paths of the splendid ethno botanical gardens. Glancing inside doorways, I see colorful cut paper strung across entrances; Hoobler tells me it is papel picado, used both as decoration and as celebration.

We eat luscious trout sautéed in butter, with hibiscus petals and capers in the courtyard at Los Danzantes while musicians serenade us.

The following day, we head to Monte Alban, the magnificent ceremonial center of the Zapotec culture. These picturesque ruins sit on a green mountaintop that rises from the middle of a valley floor, providing panoramic views of the distant range. Wandering through the collection of buildings, ball courts and plazas, I note how different the design is from the Mayan cities I've seen.

In the evening, we attend the guelaguetza, a spectacularly costumed dance show and lavish buffet in the courtyard of the swanky Camino Real Hotel. Afterwards, walking in the quiet cobblestone streets, past buildings in shades of cobalt, ocher, pineapple, teal and sienna snuggled up next to each other, I am reminded of gentler New Orleans. I see women standing in small groups on a street corner, selling bundled gardenias from flat baskets perched on their heads. The intoxicating fragrance softens the night air.

The next day we head to the Benito Juarez market and the 20 de Noviembre Market (so named for the date of the call to arms against the dictator Porfirio Diaz that started the 1910 Mexican revolution), where a profusion of goods are for sale. Each vendor's stall offers something tempting: bright plastic bags and huge piñatas, mole Negro and rioja, softball-sized white cheese, flowers in every hue you can imagine. A young woman sells tortillas that are nearly 12 inches in diameter stacked in a huge, aqua plastic bag; people clamber to buy the freshly baked stacks, sold by the dozen.

No trip to Oaxaca is complete without a stop at Chocolate Mayordomo to buy blocks of cinnamon-infused chocolate, for making mole or hot chocolate; I stock up.

We splurge on lunch at El Naranjo, esteemed chef Ilia Vega's restaurant. We sample a number of dishes: chile plano relleno is filled with calabaza (my new favorite food); refreshing jicama salad with Jamaica flower dressing; delicate white fish with cilantro baked in banana leaf; bracing gazpacho; rich mole Amarillo, with its yellow-orange sauce; and nut and chocolate cakes. No wonder the town is known as much for its culinary arts as its traditional arts; we don't eat again until the next day.

After spending a final day wandering the compact town, Hoobler brings along Antonio, her Zapotec teacher, to dinner at Maria Bonita, a local favorite. Seated at a wooden table near the open door, we tuck into the giant tortillas known as a tlayuda topped with tomatoes, beans and chorizo and outstanding chicken mole Negro (nearly every restaurant offers mole; there are eight kinds) and toast each other with small glasses of tequila.

"Tremendas," says Antonio, referring to us with a wide grin, as we gab excitedly about our visit. Tremendous, is right.

A former Navy brat who traveled and lived abroad extensively, Suzanne Wright is a fulltime, freelance writer based in Atlanta. She has written numerous travel, food and decor features for numerous international, national and regional publications. Her articles have appeared in Elite Traveler, Wine & Spirits, Veranda, Atlanta Magazine, The Tennessean, Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles, Piedmont Review, Charlotte Place, Where, On Magazine and others. A suitcase is always packed and her passport always up to date.

© 2004