Day of the Dead Ofrendas 2022

The Día de los Muertos ofrendas at the National Museum of Mexican Art focused on victims of COVID as well as gun violence, including the students and teachers killed in Uvalde.

Día de los Inocentes (Holy Innocents Day) by Claudia Álvarez, 2010. The sculpture represents the story in the New Testament where King Herod orders the massacre of all children under the age of 2 in an attempt to kill the baby Jesus.

The Mexican tradition of honoring loved ones with an ofrenda is something every family should adopt. These homemade altars are typically adorned with marigolds, photos, and items the deceased person would appreciate, including their favorite foods and beverages (empanadas and a margarita on mine, por favor). But even if you don’t create one at home, you can see artistic interpretations if you’re in Chicago.

Sometime around mid-October, Duke and I head to the Pilsen neighborhood to see the Day of the Dead ofrendas at the National Museum of Mexican Art. 

The original concept of the exhibit was to honor people in the USA who had been murdered. 

“In the last decade, we have been overwhelmed with the amount of mass shootings on an annual basis that there have been far too many for this exhibition,” reads the sign at the start of the exhibit, proclaiming, “Enough is enough!”

This year, the 36th Day of the Dead installation, covers not only senseless gun violence — including a moving memorial to the victims of the Uvalde school massacre — but Mexican actors who passed away and those lost to COVID and suicide.

Ofrenda to artisans who died of COVID

A photo of one of the artists memorialized in the ofrenda, Tiburcio Soteno Fernandez, with the tools of his trade and his iconic mermaid alebrije.

An ofrenda to Mexican cinema by the Puerto Rican Antonio Martorell

La muerte allá donde la vida no vale nada (Death, Where Life Has No Worth) by Alejandro Cortés, Dolores Gómez Navarro and Jorje Negrete. Note the upside-down ofrenda, pointing to Mictlan, the underworld of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples.

An ofrenda to the Latinx victims of the Uvalde, Texas shooting at Robb Elementary School. It was created by students at Bernard Moos Elementary School in Chicago.

Ofrenda a los Arrancados (Ofrenda to the Uprooted) by Carlos Flores. He used “bandit signs” to pay tribute to the working-class people of color who disproportionally lost their lives to COVID.

This ofrenda, created by the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, pays homage to weavers of the war-torn country.

Ofrenda to Nieves Orozco Field, an indigenous dancer who modeled for Diego Rivera

Molds used to make sugar skulls for Day of the Dead

Skeletons go hand in hand with Day of the Dead, as do sugar skulls.

Año de los Muertos (Year of the Dead) by Eric Romero, 2020

A Tree of Life with Mexican rites and rituals by Israel Soteno, 2007

If you’re in Chicago in the fall, you should definitely stop into the National Museum of Mexican Art (it’s free!) to see their ofrendas. ¡Feliz Día de los Muertos! –Wally

Preserving the Magic of the Amazon

The largest rainforest on Earth cleans our air and water. But it’s rapidly being destroyed. Here are 3 ways you can help save the Amazon Rainforest — including an ethical visit. 

The largest rainforest on the planet helps keep our air and water clean.

As the world’s biggest rainforest, the Amazon has several functions crucial to our planet’s environmental health. Alarmingly, it’s also one of the foremost victims of the climate crisis. In 2022 alone, 430 square kilometers of the Amazon was destroyed. That’s over 126 times the size of Central Park in New York City.

The Amazon, which produces one-fifth of the Earth’s oxygen, is being cut down at an alarming rate.

Why We Need the Amazon Rainforest

While it comprises only 2% of the world’s landmass, the Amazon is responsible for producing 20% of the oxygen on the planet. One of its primary functions is to sequester carbon — or, in other words, gather large amounts of carbon dioxide and convert them to oxygen. Carbon sequestration benefits us by cleaning air and water sources. The process can even control flooding. This is why the Amazon is rightfully known by the moniker “the Lungs of the Earth.”

Unfortunately, the forest and its inhabitants continue to struggle against several issues. The foremost challenge it faces today is rapid deforestation due to agriculture, mining, logging and construction. 

Ultimately, assertive legislation is key to reversing the damage done to the Amazon. This was made clear when Brazil’s deforestation policies in the mid-2000s eased the rate of destruction in the rainforest, according to a study by the University of Arizona. 

Yet, while policies play a crucial role in saving the Amazon, there are many ways for you as an individual to contribute to its preservation.

A satellite image that shows the deforestation of the Amazon — the same image from less than a decade ago would have been all dark green.

3 Ways to Help Save the Amazon

In Brazil, beef is raised for consumption on land that was once part of the Amazon.

1. Practice mindful consumption. 

The majority of deforestation efforts come about due to the production of items like paper, wood and beef. 

Minimize your use of paper to help reduce the demand for its production. You can also check for an FSC label to find out if your paper was sourced ethically and doesn’t threaten endangered animals that rely on trees for survival.

Brazil, where 60% of the Amazon is located, is also a major producer of beef. The biggest beef producer in the region, JBS S.A., raises cattle from deforested Amazon land. On the whole, around 70% of the Amazon is deforested to raise cattle for beef. While not everyone wants to be a vegetarian, you can reduce consumption to help decrease the demand for beef production.

Consider volunteering for groups like the Rainforest Action Network that protest against the stealing of indigenous lands and the deforestation of the Amazon.

2. Connect with advocates and organizations. 

There are countless grassroots organizations and initiatives dedicated to preserving the Amazon. For instance, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) successfully pushed Burger King to stop using rainforest beef. 

You can join local groups in your area or support larger ones like the RAN or Amazon Watch. They can use your help in their efforts to call out and boycott businesses that support deforestation in the region.

If you want to visit the Amazon, make sure you go through a group that focuses on preservation of this valuable natural resource.

3. Make an ethical trip to the Amazon. 

If you want to see Amazon for yourself, be sure to do so in an ethical and respectful manner. After all, just like the Daintree Forest in Australia, the Amazon is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To visit the Amazon ethically, look for accommodations that work with environmental preservation initiatives. These providers offer guides and activities that immerse you in the Amazon’s biodiversity. And you might even end up lending a hand to their preservation efforts!

These adorable critters, known as squirrel monkeys, are just some of the wildlife you could see in the Amazon.

The paper and beef industries are destroying the largest rainforest on Earth. Do your part to help stop these atrocities.

The Amazon and its rapid degradation is of urgent concern. As it is responsible for several processes that keep the environment in good health, everyone should be involved in helping preserve it. –Alyson Yesha Corbett

Agave Mythology and Pulque Folk Tales

Mesomaerican legends, including Mayahuel and Ehécatl’s doomed love, drunk Tlacuache the possum and 400 rabbits suckled on pulque.

Mesoamerican myths are pretty crazy. Take the fertility goddess Mayahuel, who lactated pulque, which intoxicated the 400 rabbits she gave birth to.

Aside from being a source of sustenance, the agave, or maguey as it’s referred to in Mexico, was revered and respected as a sacred plant by the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica. 

The desert succulent is distinguished by a rosette of strong fleshy leaves that radiate from the center of the plant. Fibers from its tough spiny leaves were used to make rope or fabric for clothing, and the barbed tips made excellent sewing needles. Devotees and priests would pierce their earlobes, tongues or genitals with the thorns and collect the blood as an offering to the gods. An antiseptic poultice of maguey sap and salt was used in traditional medicine and applied to wounds. The plant is also the source of pulque, a beverage made from its fermented sap, and many years later, distilled as mezcal and tequila. 

Agave being used to treat a head wound

As a final act, the maguey poetically blooms in the final throes of its life cycle. A mutant asparagus-like stalk emerges from the center of the plant, reaching 25 to 40 feet high before it flowers and dies. 

Drink of the Gods

In Aztec times, the milky and sour mildly alcoholic beverage was highly prized and strictly limited to consumption by a select few, including priests, pregnant women, the elderly and tributes offered up for ritual sacrifice. The priests believed that the resulting intoxication put them in an altered state and allowed them to communicate directly with the gods. The consequences of illegally imbibing outside of this group were so serious that the convicted faced death by strangulation. 

So what are the myths and folklore stories about agave and pulque? As with myths around the world, there are multiple variations, and while researching stories about agave I found myself falling down a rabbit hole. I couldn’t quite decide what the definitive versions were, so here are my interpretations.

The gorgeous (personally we don’t see it) Mayahuel was rescued from her evil grandmother, then torn apart and fed to demons, before eventually becoming the first agave.

The Legend of Mayahuel, Whose Lovely Bones Became the First Agave

When the universe as we know it was formed, so too was a ferocious and bloodthirsty race of light-devouring demons known as tzitzimime. It was said that life ebbed from their fleshless female forms. They were easily recognizable by their shiny black hair, skeletal limbs ending in clawed hands, and blood red tongues resembling a sacrificial knife wagging from their gaping maws. Their wide-open starry eyes allowed them to see through the darkness. 

The tzitzimime were ferocious demons who sucked light and life from this world.

These monstrous beings ruled over the night sky and wore gruesome necklaces loaded with severed human hands and hearts — trophies from the steady diet of human sacrifices required to appease them. 

The tzitzimime cloaked the earth in darkness, and in return for ritual bloodshed, permitted the sun to rise and move across the sky. It’s a fair guess to say that a large number of lives were lost, as the Aztecs believed that if darkness won, the sun would be lost forever, the world would end, and the tzitzimime would descend from the skies and gobble up humankind. 

The tzitzimime demons were insatiable for sacrifices of human blood.

Hidden in the sky among the tzitzimime was a beautiful young maiden by the name of Mayahuel. Mayahuel was imprisoned by her grandmother, Tzitzímitl, the oldest and most malevolent demoness of the brood.

Tzitzímitl’s insatiable desire for human sacrifice angered Ehécatl, the god of wind and rain. 

One evening he rose up into the night sky to confront her, but instead discovered Mayahuel. Struck by her beauty, he immediately fell in love and convinced her to descend from the heavens to become his paramour. 

Ehécatl, god of wind and rain, tried his best to save poor Mayahuel from Tzitzimitl.

When Tzitzímitl discovered that Mayahuel was missing, she exploded into a violent rage and commanded her demon servants to find her granddaughter. The pair assumed the form of trees and stood side by side so that their leaves would caress one another whenever the wind blew.

Time passed, but their disguise was no match for the furious Tzitzímitl. The sky turned gray with clouds that heralded a major storm, followed by lightning and thunder. When the evil spirit finally found Mayahuel, she tore her from the ground and fed her to her legions of tzitzimime. 

The skeletal demoness Tzitzímitl with her necklace of severed human hearts and hands

Ehécatl was unharmed. He avenged Mayahuel’s death by killing Tzitzímitl and returned light to the world. Still overcome with grief, he gathered the bones of his beloved and buried them in a field. As his tears saturated the arid soil, Mayahuel’s remains transformed and emerged from the earth as the first agave. After getting a taste of the elixir that came from the plant, Ehécatl decided to share his creation with humankind. 

For some reason, the possum god Tlacuache was responsible for creating the course of rivers. They’re curvy because he got drunk on pulque.

The Tale of Tlacuache: Why a River Runs Its Course

Another Mesoamerican tale connects pulque with the creation of rivers. According to the story, Tlacuache, a possum god, was responsible for assigning the course of rivers. While going about his day foraging for food, he happened upon an agave. Using his human-like hands, he dug into one of its leathery leaves. A sweet honeyed sap oozed from the cuts, and Tlacuache stuck his snout into the maguey and lapped up the liquid with glee. 

After having his fill, he returned to his den and dreamt of returning to the plant the next day. Tlacuache had a remarkable talent for finding food and remembering exactly where it was found. What he didn’t know, though, is that the nectar had fermented overnight and now contained alcohol. The marsupial accidentally overindulged and became intoxicated. Finding himself disoriented, he stumbled and wandered this way and that, until he eventually found his way home. 

Over time, Tlacuache’s circuitous meandering was reflected in his work. Any river in Mexico that bends or doesn’t follow a straight line was due to Tlacuache drinking pulque and plotting the river’s course while he was tipsy. In fact, some say he was the very first drunk.

Suck on this: The fertility goddess Mayahuel didn’t have milk in her breasts — she had pulque.

Pulque Breast Milk and being drunk as 400 Rabbits

Last but not least is the fantastical story of the mythical 400 drunken rabbits whose behavior even Beatrix Potter would have found excessive. 

In Aztec mythology, Patecatl was the Lord of 13 Days and the credited discoverer of the squat psychedelic peyote cactus. One evening, he and Mayahuel, who in this story is a fertility goddess, had a no-strings-attached tryst, resulting in an unusual pregnancy. Months later, the proud mother bore a litter of 400 fluffy little bunnies. 

Naturally, being the goddess of the agave, Mayahuel’s multiple breasts lactated pulque, which she used to nourish her children. It’s safe to say that her divine offspring didn’t understand the concept of moderation and were frequently found in various states of inebriation. 

Mayahuel had a one-night stand with the Lord of 13 Days — and ended up having a litter of 400 rabbits!

The 400 rabbits each depict a different stage of inebriation.

The siblings were known as the Centzon Totochtin and represented the varying degrees of intoxication one can attain while under the influence of alcohol. One of the children, Ometochtli (Two Rabbit), a god who represented duality, was associated with that initial burst of courage that comes after a couple of drinks. Conversations feel more important, and everyone around you becomes more attractive. His brother Macuiltochtli (Five Rabbit) was one of the gods of excess — the equivalent of having too much of a good thing, and waking up the next day with a pounding headache. 

Ometochtli, or Two Rabbit, was the god of the courage you get after a couple of drinks — and the start of beer-goggling.

This fellow is going to regret being like Macuiltochtli, or Five Rabbit, and drinking to excess. He’s gonna be hungover tomorrow.

If you’re drunk as 400 rabbits, you’re beyond wasted.

For the Aztecs, the concept of infinity started at 400. A couple of drinks is OK; consuming your body weight in booze not so much. Moral of the story: If you drink more than you can handle, whether you’re a small animal or otherwise, you’ll be carried away by a colony of 400 rabbits. –Duke

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Learn How Mezcal Gets Made

Another drink made from the agave, mezcal is much more artisanal than tequila, with numerous factors influencing the taste of each batch — and that’s what makes it so interesting.

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Who Really Wrote the New Testament?

Many, if not most, of the Scriptures were written by people falsely claiming to be the apostles or other leaders of the early Christian church, says biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman. That means a lot of books of the Bible are actually forgeries.

The book of Mark, like the rest of the Gospels, was written anonymously. Why, then, do we believe they were products of the men that bear their names?

If your answer to any conundrum is, “It’s one of God’s miracles,” then this article is not for you. I seek the truth in facts — fully admitting that as we gain more and more knowledge, our previous beliefs can shift. 

I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that blind faith can solve any mystery. I think about what is scientifically feasible, what archaeology and history research reveals, and base my judgments from there. Virgins do not give birth; men are not raised from the dead; and illiterate peasants do not write well-argued religious tracts.

“Most of the apostles were illiterate and could not in fact write.

They could not have left an authoritative writing if their souls depended on it.”

— Bart D. Ehrman, “Forged”

All that being said, this post is not about my beliefs. These are the findings of Bart D. Ehrman in his 2011 work, Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. 

“Most of the apostles were illiterate and could not in fact write,” Ehrman declares. “They could not have left an authoritative writing if their souls depended on it.” 

Bart D. Ehrman was once an evangelical Christian who took everything in the Bible literally. Now he’s a biblical scholar whose works, like Forged, offer shocking truths about the supposed word of God.

So who wrote the New Testament, then? Most of the texts were composed by people with extensive schooling — that is, undoubtedly, members of the upper class elite.

Why would someone lie about writing these works? “Quite simply, it was to get a hearing for their views,” Ehrman explains. “If you were an unknown person, but had something really important to say and wanted people to hear you — not so they could praise you, but so they could learn the truth — one way to make that happen was to pretend you were someone else, a well-known author, a famous figure, an authority.”

Here are four shocking revelations about who actually wrote the New Testament (or, perhaps I should say who didn’t write it):

Peter and Paul had differing views of Christianity, but both were chosen as the “authors” of forged books in the Bible to lend authority to the writings.

1. Ancient writers forged writings to address infighting among early Christian groups.

Many people think of Christianity as always having been a well-defined, cohesive religion — as if the books of the New Testament were handed down from on high like the tablets of the 10 Commandments Moses received. But the truth is, the fledgling religion was a big old mess for hundreds of years.

“Christians in the early centuries of the church were in constant conflict and felt under attack from all sides,” Ehrman writes. “They were at odds with Jews, who considered their views to be an aberrant and upstart perversion of the ancestral traditions of Israel. They were at odds with pagan peoples and governments, who considered them a secretive and unauthorized religion that posed a danger to the state. And they were virulently at odds with each other, as different Christian teachers and groups argued that they and they alone had a corner on the truth and other Christian teachers and groups flat-out misunderstood the truths that Christ had proclaimed during his time on earth.” 

So, numerous writers turned to forgery to give more weight to their arguments — and nowhere was that more prevalent than among varying factions of early Christians. Those works favored by church leaders centuries after Jesus were chosen to become the New Testament. Those that were deemed heretical (such as, say, the Gnostic Gospel of Judas), were not only left out but hunted down and destroyed in an effort to totally obliterate their teachings.

The book of Jude was written too late to have been authored by Jesus’ brother.

The New Testament book of Jude, for example, claims to be written by Jesus’ brother. But the author is talking about false teachers (which he strangely calls “waterless souls” and “fruitless trees, twice dead, uprooted”) who have infiltrated the religion and need to be rooted out — something that didn't happen until much later than Jude’s lifetime.

James was the head of the first Christian church, but couldn’t have written the book of the New Testament that bears his name.

And the book of James was supposedly penned by another of Jesus’ brothers, this one the head of the first Christian church, in Jerusalem. But not only was this book written after James’ death, the author is fluent in Greek and its rhetoric. Even if the timing worked out, the historical James, Ehrman says, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant who almost certainly never learned to read.

The New Testament itself declares that Peter was illiterate — so how the heck could he have written all those Bible books?

2. Peter was an illiterate fisherman who died years before 1 and 2 Peter were written.

Like the book of James, the book of 1 Peter was written by someone who was very well educated, spoke Greek and practiced rhetoric. 

What do we know of Peter from the Bible? He was a fisherman from the town of Capernaum in Galilee. Archeological and historical records reveal that “Peter’s town was a backwoods Jewish village made up of hand-to-mouth laborers who did not have an education,” Ehrman writes. “Everyone spoke Aramic. Nothing suggests that anyone could speak Greek. Nothing suggests that anyone in town could write. As a lower-class fisherman, Peter would have started work as a young boy and never attended school.”

In fact, in Acts 4:13, Peter and his companion John are described as agrammatoi, a Greek word meaning “unlettered” — that is, illiterate.

There’s also the issue of timing. Tradition holds that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero in 64 CE. But the author of 1 Peter alludes to Rome as “Babylon” — that is, the destroyer of Jerusalem and the Temple. The Romans didn’t destroy Jerusalem until 70 CE, six years after Peter died. 

Peter, like all of the apostles, believed that Jesus’ Second Coming would take place during his lifetime.

In addition, the author of 2 Peter comes up with a defense as to why Jesus hasn’t returned as the Messiah. To God, “one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day.” So time is relative and just be patient.

But such an argument wouldn’t have been necessary for a disciple writing so soon after Jesus’ crucifixion. The Second Coming was predicted “within this generation” (Mark 13:30) and before the disciples “tasted death” (Mark 9:1). At the time Peter lived, Jesus could have still been right on schedule.

Paul actually did write some of the books of the New Testament — well, seven of the 13 attributed to him.

3. Good news! More than half of the letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament are authentic.

That means, of course, that six of the 13 are forgeries, though. Almost all biblical scholars agree that these seven letters were indeed written by the apostle Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. 

In the other books of the Bible attributed to Paul, there are words and phrases and writing styles not found in those that have been verified. And there are points made about Paul’s religious philosophy that just don’t jibe with what we know about his beliefs. For instance, the man was anti-marriage (even though he himself got hitched). In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul preaches that people should remain single. Why worry about procreation when the Rapture is going to happen any day?

But in the Pastorals (as 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are referred to), “Paul” is insisting that church leaders be married. Side note: Why has this not become an argument to end the tradition of priests being celibate?

Scholars agree that at least a couple of the letters Paul wrote while under house arrest in Rome were actually penned by him.

Which brings us to another problem of timing: When Paul was alive, there weren’t any church leaders. His view was that every Christian was endowed with a supernatural gift (healing, say, or speaking in tongues) and all were equal: “In Christ there is neither slave nor free, neither male nor female,” he declares in Galatians 3:28.

Paul believed Jesus’ Second Coming would happen unexpectedly, “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2), and he would be around to experience it. It wasn’t until a generation or more later, when people were still waiting, that some found it necessary to think more long term and offer up excuses. 

“The author of 2 Thessalonians, claiming to be Paul, argues that the end is not, in fact, coming right away,” Ehrman explains. “There will be some kind of political or religious uprising and rebellion, and an Antichrist-like figure will appear who will take his seat in the Temple of Jerusalem and declare himself to be God.” 

How could the same Paul declare in 1 Thessalonians that Jesus’ return would happen soon and suddenly, and then in 2 Thessalonians renege on that and state that a whole series of events had to take place first? 

And in Ephesians, there’s also an issue with Paul’s biography. The writer includes himself as someone who, before meeting Jesus, was guilty of “doing the will of the flesh and senses.” But that doesn’t fit with the man who says, in undisputed letters, he had been “blameless” when it came to the “righteousness of the law” (Philippians 3:4-5).

An angel is said to have whispered the words of the Gospel to St. Matthew. But it turns out there’s evidence Matthew didn’t actually write the book of the Bible named for him.

4. One-third of the authors of the books of the New Testament — including the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — were actually anonymous. 

In fact, those texts remained anonymous for about a century. It wasn’t until around 180-185 CE that the Gospels were definitely named for the first time, by a church father and heresy hunter named Irenaeus. 

And how did those authors get chosen? To lend the Gospels authority (and help assure they made the cut when choosing what would go into the New Testament), the writers were declared to be two disciples and two close associates of disciples. 

Matthew, for instance, was a Jew, and tradition held that he had written a Gospel. So the first was assigned to him since it was deemed the most “Jewish.” 

Church leaders ascribed authors of the Gospels about 100 years after they were written — anonymously, no less. There’s no evidence Mark actually wrote the book that bears his name, for example.

The second Gospel was determined to be by Mark on the scantest of evidence; he seems to have been chosen because of his connection to Peter. 

When you hear the reasons the Gospels were assigned authors, like the book of Luke, you’ll realize how flimsy the evidence really is.

The author of Luke also wrote the book of Acts, where he proclaims to be a companion of Paul’s. “Because Acts stresses that Christianity succeeded principally among Gentiles, the author himself may have been a Gentile,” Ehrman writes. “Since there was thought to be a Gentile named Luke among Paul’s companions, he was assigned the Third Gospel.” So it goes.

John, the son of Zebedee, was assigned the Gospel with his name by process of elimination.

John, meanwhile, was supposed to be written by “the Beloved Disciple” it mentions (John 20: 20-24). In early tradition, the closest apostles to Jesus were Peter, James and John. Peter was named elsewhere in the book, and James had already been martyred. So that left John, the son Zebedee, as the author of the fourth Gospel.

Not the most convincing of evidence — but the Gospels couldn’t remain anonymous if they were going to become part of the Bible.

But wait — there’s more. In addition, Ehrman writes, “The anonymous book of Hebrews was assigned to Paul, even though numbers of early Christian scholars realized that Paul did not write it, as scholars today agree. And three short anonymous writings with some similarities to the Fourth Gospel were assigned to the same author, and so were called 1, 2 and 3 John. None of these books claims to be written by the authors to whom they were ultimately assigned.”

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For biblical literalists, this evidence must be disturbing. Not only does it show that the New Testament contains lies, it makes us question the very beliefs at the core of what we know as Christianity. 

That’s something to take up with God — or, perhaps, Ehrman. As he writes, “The use of deception to promote the truth may well be considered one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian traditions.” –Wally

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48 Hours in Cairns, Australia’s Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef

In addition to the marine wonderland of the Great Barrier Reef, there’s so much to do in the Cairns area — including the Kuranda Scenic Railway, Trinity Inlet and the Cairns Museum — that you’ll have to plan your visit, especially if you’ve only got a couple of days.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches over an area of 134,634 square miles (344,400 square kilometers) — not surprisingly, it’s the largest coral reef in the world.

Considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, is home to an incredible diversity of marine life, and a visit to the reef is an unforgettable experience. 

The best jumping-off point to see the largest coral reef on the planet is the city of Cairns, on Australia’s northeast coast. 

“With its clear waters and abundance of marine life, the Great Barrier Reef is a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. ”

But as impressive as the Great Barrier Reef is, it’s not the only thing to see in the area. Here’s a guide to making the most of a couple of days in Cairns. 

Snorkeling or diving the reef is an experience you’ll never forget.

Start with a snorkeling or diving tour of the Great Barrier Reef. 

If you only have 48 hours in Cairns, be sure to book a snorkeling or diving tour of the reef. The Great Barrier Reef is home to an astonishing variety of marine life, and there’s no better way to see it than up close.

A snorkeling or diving tour will give you the chance to explore the reef at your own pace, but a qualified guide can point out the best bits. With its clear waters and abundance of marine life, the Great Barrier Reef is a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

If you want to be close to the water but not in it, take a glass-bottom boat tour of the reef instead.

See the reef on a glass-bottom boat tour — or a helicopter ride. 

If snorkeling or diving isn’t your thing, a glass-bottom boat tour is a must if you’re looking for an unforgettable way to experience the Great Barrier Reef. You’ll have the chance to see the reef up close — while staying dry — as you glide over the colorful coral and fish. Be sure to keep an eye out for turtles, manta rays and sharks. If you’re short on time, plenty of tour operators offer half-day or even three-hour tours.

And there’s nothing quite like a helicopter ride for a bird’s-eye view of the reef. You’ll marvel at the size and scale of the reef as you soar over its vast expanse. Helicopter rides typically last around 30 minutes, so they’re perfect if you’re pressed for time. Just be sure to book in advance, as spaces fill up fast.

The Skyrail Rainforest Cableway takes you through lush greenery, where you can see rainbow lorikeets, koalas and cassowaries.

Admire the flora and fauna along the Kuranda Scenic Railway and Rainforest Cableway. 

There’s no time to waste when you only have 48 hours in Cairns. Make the most of your limited time by taking a walk through the rainforest via the Kuranda Scenic Railway. This popular tourist operation offers breathtaking views of the lush rainforest canopy, as well as opportunities to spot some of the area’s wildlife, including koalas, rainbow lorikeets (parrots as colorful as their name suggests) and even a large flightless bird called the cassowary (if you stop off at Birdworld).

The railway is also a great way to learn about the local Aboriginal culture, with guided tours available in several languages. 

And if you’re feeling adventurous, you can even take a dip in one of the many natural swimming holes along the way.

Go for a swim in the Esplanade Lagoon, then explore the CBD, the central business district.

Spend the day exploring Cairns CBD. 

To explore the city, start with a visit to the Esplanade Lagoon, where you can take a dip or simply relax on the beach. Then, head to the Cairns Museum to learn about the city’s history and culture.

Visit a local history museum, the botanic gardens or zipline over a crocodile at Cairns Zoom and Wildlife Dome.

Finish up your day with a walk through the botanic gardens, where you can admire the diverse plant life of Tropical North Queensland. With so much to see and do, you’re sure to have an unforgettable experience when you spend a day exploring Cairns CBD.

The patio at the hip Chambers café, known for its brunch and cocktail bar.

Enjoy a meal at one of the city’s many restaurants or food trucks. 

There’s no denying that food is an important part of the travel experience. Trying new dishes and sampling local specialties is a great way to get a taste for the culture of a place. If you’re short on time but big on appetite, make sure to check out some of Cairns’ best restaurants. 

From casual cafés like Caffiend and the Chambers to fine dining establishments like the French restaurant C’est Bon and Tamarind at the Reef Hotel Casino, there’s something to suit every taste and budget.

For a quick bite, head to one of the city’s many food trucks or grab a slice of pizza from a pizzeria. 

Whether you’re looking for a quick snack or a gourmet meal, Cairns’ restaurants won’t disappoint.

A gorgeous sunrise over Trinity Inlet

Head to the lookout for views of Cairns and Trinity Inlet. 

If you find yourself in Port Douglas (about an hour up the coast), make sure you stop at the Trinity Bay Lookout. It’s just a short walk from Four Mile Beach, and from here you'll be able to see the city skyline, including the iconic palm trees that line the waterfront.

Climb to the top of the Trinity Bay Lookout for views of Four Mile Beach.

On a clear day, you may even be able to see as far as Double Island off the coast. The lookout also offers stunning views of Mount Whitfield, which is worth hiking to the top of for another vantage point.

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You might not find Nemo (or any other clownfish) with only two days in Cairns. But plan your itinerary — and make sure you include the Great Barrier Reef.

So there you have it: 48 hours in Cairns doesn’t have to be rushed. By following these tips, you can make sure you have a truly memorable experience, even when time is limited. –Charlie Btallent

 

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How Is Mezcal Made?

What is mezcal? Here’s the process to create this artisanal alcohol that’s gaining in popularity — and giving tequila a run for its dinero.

A horse, agave and giant barrels are all used to make the popular beverage mezcal.

I can’t quite remember the first time I tried mezcal. It was most likely mixed into a cocktail at a restaurant somewhere in Chicago. I vividly recall it being intense. In fact, when I recounted this memory to Alvin Starkman of Mezcal Educational Tours, I believe my exact words were, “It was like sitting in front of a campfire blowing smoke in my face.” 

It wasn’t until our first trip to Mexico City in 2018 at Los Danzantes, a restaurant in Coyoacán, that I drank a joven espadín, an unaged mezcal, from a veladora, a clear fluted glass with a cross engraved on its bottom, that it all changed for me.

“As strange as it may seem, mold is a part of the process — and a factor in mezcal’s taste. ”

Wally had learned about Alvin in the useful travel guide Viva Oaxaca by Robert Adler and Jo Ann Wexler. He reached out to Alvin to arrange a day trip for us.

When Alvin picked us up at our hotel, he started our education by sharing his backstory. Oaxaca, which began as a favorite destination in 1991, drew him and his wife back, until they bought a parcel of land in the Sierra Madre mountains, built a house and relocated permanently from Canada in 2004. Like my father, Alvin enjoys scotch and found a similar appreciation in mezcal. 

Authenticity is of utmost importance for Alvin when he gives his tours. “The day is not pre-planned for the tourist trade, meaning I never know who will be at what stage of production where and when — the objective being to illustrate as much as possible as it is happening,” he says. 

Palenqueros (mezcal artisans) often grow their own agave, though many supplement it from other farms.

The word “mezcal” is the generic term for spirits made from the roasted heart of the agave (referred to locally as maguey) — the same plant used to make Mexico’s biggest export, tequila. It derives from the indiginous Náhuatl words metl (agave) and ixcalli (baked). However, unlike tequila, the agave must be roasted to be made into mezcal. It can be produced from a dozen different varieties of agave, each with its own character and subspecies, including but not limited to espadín, arroqueño, madrecuixe, tepeztate, tobasiche and tobala. 

A tour with Alvin Starkman of Mezcal Educational Tours will show you the various steps of the mezcal-making process in action at a variety of family-run palenques, or distilleries.

Harvesting Piñas: The Heart of the Matter

Oaxaca’s Central Valleys currently have the highest concentration of traditional producers, known as palenqueros, who distill the spirit in palenques alongside their other crops and farm animals. 

After eight to 30 years — the period of time it takes for an agave to reach maturity, farmers known as jimadors use machetes to cut away the sword-like pencas (leaves) and use a coa, a specialized tool to extract the piña, or heart of the maguey. The leafless piña looks like an overgrown pineapple. 

The heart of the agave plant, the piña, is a key ingredient in making mezcal and often looks like a giant pineapple or pinecone.

Baking the Piñas: Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

Once the piñas have been harvested and taken to the palenque, a deep earthen pit is filled with firewood and lit. A layer of rocks is placed on top of the burning wood, and after about five or six hours, are as hot as they’re going to get. 

The piñas are piled into the pit oven by size, the largest at the bottom and the smallest on top. A layer of bagasse, the damp fibrous byproduct that remains after the piñas have been crushed and had their liquid extracted (but more on that later), gets added to insulate the piñas from the hot rocks.

Mezcal’s smoky flavor should come from slow-roasting piñas in a pit like this.

According to our guide, Alvin, “If you’re a good Catholic, you’re going to stick a cross on top of the mound to ensure your piñas produce a good yield and good flavor.”

The hearts are covered with agave leaves, straw mats, grain sacks and dirt piled high to form a kind of volcano. Water is then poured into the opening at the top of the mound to release the smoke trapped inside the oven, and the piñas are left to slowly roast underground for several days. This allows the heat to convert the carbohydrates into sugars.

A roasted piña, before it’s chopped up and mashed

Mashing the Piñas: Beaten to a Pulp

After they’re caramelized, the pit-roasted piñas are removed and left to cool.

As strange as it may seem, mold is a part of the process — and a factor in mezcal’s taste. “The longer it stays out, the moldier it’s going to get,” Alvin tells us. “Sometimes the mold is green, sometimes it’s yellow, sometimes it’s orange. So the mold is also going to impact the flavor.” They are left to rest between eight days to a month. 

A man chops up roasted piñas to get crushed. Alvin says farmers from Oaxaca practically grow up with a machete in their hands.

Roasted piñas sit around for up to a month to get a nice flavorful mold on them.

The palenquero hacks the roasted piñas into smaller pieces, which are transferred to a stone pit, where they are laboriously crushed by hand using a cartoonishly large wooden mallet, or by a tahona, a large stone wheel pulled around a circular pit by a donkey or horse. 

Alvin holds a large wooden tool used to crush roasted piñas.

Another option to crush piñas is to lead a horse attached to a massive stone tahona around and around a setup like this.

Palenques are family-run affairs — and they start the kids young. This adorable fella helped encourage the horse to walk the giant tahona around.

Once the piñas are sufficiently pulverized to a mash, the roasted pulp and nectar are transferred into a wood vat. The dry, fibrous leftovers (the bagasse previously mentioned) can be used to make adobe, fuel or mulch — or to insulate roasting piñas for another batch of mezcal.

Large wooden vats hold the mashed piñas and the extracted juices as they ferment.

Fermentation: Yeasty Beasties 

The sweet mash and its juices are shoveled into large open-air wooden tubs or vats. Water is slowly added, and as the mixture interacts with naturally occurring airborne wild yeasts and bacteria, fermentation starts. 

“Traditional mezcal makers use river water, mountain spring water or well water,” Alvin explains. “A well is fed by underground streams that come from different directions at different times of the year. So the water quality with traditionally made mezcal is always different and is integral to the final product’s quality.”

The vats are topped with bagasse, fibrous straw-like leftovers from agave cultivation, and left to ferment naturally over the course of three days to two weeks.

As the sugars break down the mash, the brew begins to bubble. The palenquero stirs it, and eventually the bubbling subsides, leaving a brown crust that looks like maple sugar candy on the surface of the vat. Depending on the season, the altitude and the temperature, this can take anywhere from three days to two weeks fully ferment. Once it has 3% to 5% alcohol content and looks, smells and tastes like apple cider vinegar, it’s ready to be distilled. 

Water pours into a pot sealed atop a larger container to distill the alcohol that will become mezcal.

Distillation: Good to the Last Drop 

Distillation is the process in which alcohol is concentrated via evaporation under heat and pressure. The goal of distillation is to separate the desirable elements (alcohol) from water as they recondense into liquid. 

Mexico’s pre-Hispanic society was already familiar with a variety of fermented beverages, including the maguey-based pulque. The arrival of Filipino sailors in the 16th century introduced the indigenous peoples to the clay still, while the Spanish colonizers brought with them the knowledge of copper alembic stills in the 17th century. 

Maestro Felix Ángeles Arellanes’ palenque in action

The first stop on our tour with Alvin was Santa Catarina Minas, south of Oaxaca de Juárez, at the palenque of Maestro Felix Ángeles Arellanes. It was a great glimpse into the process. There the fermented liquid and mash is added to a barro de olla, a cauldron-like clay pot that has been fitted into a masonry oven. A second pot, which is open at the top and bottom, is placed over the mash-filled olla and sealed with the maple candy-like goo and bagasse to prevent any steam from escaping. Above and behind all this is a pipe with a spigot. 

Embers glowed in the stone masonry ovens beneath, as tendrils of smoke plumed above the tops of the clay pot stills. This step needs to be closely monitored, as the temperature the spirit is distilled at directly impacts the quality and flavor of the mezcal.

A fire is lit below, the spigot is turned on, and a running stream of cold water fills a metal cooling pan fitted into the mouth of the top pot. In the bottom pot, the fermented mash slowly boils. The alcohol vapors rise, and when they come into contact with the cool bottom of the pan, they condense and form droplets. These fall into a carrizo cane, a hollow reed tube, and are collected in a container. This is the first distillation, often referred to as shishe or común. 

Wally and I sampled the distillate directly from the still in a jicara, a hollowed-out gourd bowl traditionally used to serve mezcal. Alvin explained that this was the punta, or the head. Suffice to say, it was potent, at 70% alcohol by volume. 

Another technique to distill mezcal is to use copper instead of olla pots.

Traditionally made mezcal is distilled twice, and occasionally three times, until the ABV is reduced to 40% to 50%. 

When they’re not in use, Maestro Felix Ángeles Arellanes typically tops the ollas with old metal discs from retired plows. He doesn’t want his chickens laying eggs inside. 

We would go on to sample 18 unique variations at Arellanes’ palenque. The spirits were stored in a variety of large plastic containers, garafones, with their names handwritten on masking tape. 

Be warned! You could be sampling over 12 types of mezcal at each stop!

Experiencing this process in person was an eye-opening experience and gave me incredible appreciation for the amount of work involved in producing mezcal. It’s made by hardworking human hands, and the maker wants every batch to be as good as he can make it. He might not understand all the reasons, but he understands that inevitably no two are the same. Sure, there are some smoky types, but there are also ones with herbaceous, savory or woody notes. 

For that, you see, is one of the beauties of mezcal — and why Alvin says it’s akin to scotch — there’s always a variability from batch to batch. –Duke

A Tour of the Quinta Real Oaxaca Hotel and Its Gorgeous Gardens

Learn this UNESCO site’s colorful past, from convent to cinema, from prison to palace — and even a Masonic lodge still in use — and explore its beautiful grounds. 

A tour of the grounds of the Quinta Real Oaxaca hotel yields unexpected delights, like this glimpse of a lush interior courtyard.

It’s undeniably one of the most popular hotels in Oaxaca, and even though we weren’t staying there, we read that we simply had to have a drink there and admire the gardens, which rivaled those at the Alhambra in Spain. (They’re perfectly delightful, but that’s a bit of a stretch.)

Duke and I popped into the Quinta Real on our last day in Oaxaca. We wanted to get a drink and enjoy it in one of their courtyards — but we couldn’t find an actual bar at the hotel; you have to sit at a table to get served. Not sure if we’d be able to get a drink and wander around, we opted to forgo the booze and just wander the grounds on our own. 

“In the late 1800s, a buyer purchased the northeast section of the property to use as a Masonic lodge — which still operates to this day!”

One of the highlights of an exploration of the grounds is the stone gazebo and fountain in the Los Lavaderos Courtyard, so named because it was once used for laundry by the nuns.

Repurposed a Seemingly Endless Number of Times

The hotel began as property of the Roman Catholic Church, much like the Ex Convento de San Pablo, about another historic building in town, now home to the Casa Antonieta boutique hotel, the Textile Museum of Oaxaca and the Centro Cultural de San Pablo. 

The Quinta Real is housed in the former Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena, which was built in 1577. The nuns lived a life of seclusion and quiet meditation there for centuries — until 1859, when they were booted out by Benito Juárez’s Reform laws, which nationalized the church and seized its property. 

“The monument would then begin a long history of deterioration, monstrous construction work and atrocious transformations,” reads a sign out front. 

You can see part of the original convent exterior in the gorgeous pool area.

Not a bad spot to catch some rays

The ex-convent was put to a crazy amount of uses by the state government. In addition to a stint as a prison from 1862 to 1958, the structure also housed, at varying times, the civil registry office, the weights and measures office, the state printing press, a police precinct, the craftsman’s society, criminal courts, a night school and the Abraham Castellano Primary School from 1956 to 1962. 

What was the convent’s atrium even became the municipal palace for almost a century, from 1873 to 1970. 

Cantera stone, used in the façade of the convent, which is now a hotel, has a distinctive greenish color.

The Quinta Real is succulent — in more ways than one.

The sprawling grounds have undergone numerous and varied uses over the years, including a police precinct, printing press, school — even a municipal palace!

The Quinta Real is housed in the former Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena, which was built in 1577.

The Quinta Real property takes up an entire city block and has lots of nooks to discover. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the late 1800s, a private buyer purchased the northeast section of the property to use it as a Masonic lodge — which still operates there to this day!

The onsite chapel has its own storied past: It was first converted to a municipal warehouse, but in the 1930s it became an art school, and then a movie theater from 1950 to 1960. Then, in 1972 the chapel was finally restored, along with the rest of the estate, when it was reconceptualized as a hotel. 

Paintings and statues can be found throughout the hotel.

Be sure to check out the faded fresco on the wall of the gift shop.

The old chapel was empty when we explored the hotel but would make a good event space. It was once used as a cinema.

The Quinta Real has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s worth a visit, even if you’re not staying there, to wander and admire the grounds. Try to figure out a way to have a drink in the gardens — and don’t set your bag down (thankfully empty of everything but the chocolate bars we bought at Mamá Pacha) to take pictures and leave it like I did. –Wally

Orange trees give the restaurant, Los Naranjos, its name.

This dining area, Los Cántaros, has an interesting art installation. Those ceramic containers, cántaros, were unearthed during the renovation and were once used to as pitchers or to hold oil.

Quinta Real Oaxaca

5 de Mayo 300
Ruta Independencia
Centro
68000 Oaxaca de Juárez
Oaxaca
Mexico

 

Fascinating Food Plants of the Oaxaca Botanical Garden

Maize, squash, chili peppers, amaranth: Many food plants were domesticated in Mexico. Learn more on a tour at the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca.

The first part of our tour of the Oaxaca Botanical Garden covered the many food plants grown there.

“I will show you plants that are edible,” said Carol, our guide extraordinaire at the Oaxaca Botanical Garden. “I hope you try them someplace. But not here.” 

“Corn was very likely domesticated here in Oaxaca. It’s the most widely planted cereal grain today in the world — more than wheat or rice.”

The first part of our tour of the Oaxaca Botanical Garden covered food plants. Here Carol, immensely knowledgeable and quite funny, explains them in her own words:

What was the first domesticated food plant in the Americas? All signs point to squash.

The Beginning of Food Domestication: Squash

Corn, beans and squash — that famous trio that everybody knows, those plants domesticated here in the Americas that have been so important for so many thousands of years.

The earliest evidence that so far has been discovered for a domesticated food plant in the Americas is squash. The evidence comes from right here, from an archaeological site located here in the valleys of Oaxaca. It’s a site called Guilá Naquitz. Archaeologists found clear evidence of domestication of food squash dated about 8000 BC. 

When we think of squash as a food, we usually think of the fruit — but it seems likely that the initial interest in squash as a food plant was for its runners and for its flowers. And, subsequently, as the plants got bigger, the seeds were important and toasted — and then the fruits themselves. 

Yup, that bowl of mush is actually a popular drink in Mexico called tejate.

Cocoa Flower Tree, Mamey and That Strange Beverage, Tejate

While it doesn’t look like a food plant, one tree makes a small white flower that’s edible. 

The tree is called, popularly, flor de cacao, or cocoa flower tree. It is not a cacao tree. The flower, however, is an important ingredient in a traditional Oaxacan beverage called tejate. And if you have been walking along the street in Oaxaca or or been to our markets, you have seen tejate — it’s so common here. 

It’s a beverage the color of café au lait, and it’s usually kept in a big shallow pottery bowl and it’s got foam or froth on the top — it’s really hard to miss. It’s rather unique looking. 

Tejate is a drink made on a maize base. Corn-based beverages are typically pre-Hispanic. So to make the tejate, women prepare the corn in a particular way first. They add real cacao to that — but not a heavy chocolate.

It does have cacao, but it also has the seed of an American tropical fruit that many people don’t know: the mamey. They’re about the size of a large avocado. They’re dark brown on the outside and slightly fibrous. But when you cut them open, they’re gorgeous. They have a soft flesh the color of salmon or peach; they’re lovely looking and delicious. Makes great desserts — look for tarte de mamey or mousse, and they often make it into sorbet, nieve.

Wally and Duke have yet to try a mamey, which they learned about from Linda — but they’re on the hunt for one.

But for the drink, they toast the seed, plus the dried flowers. Grind all that together into a doughy or pasty mixture. If you want, you can add water right away and make the drink, but usually they just let that mixture dry and it crumbles into powder form, dehydrated. In powder form, for hundreds of hundreds of years here, people have had an instant beverage that’s storable, it’s portable. You just add water to drink.

So many peppers, so little time. There are 60 types grown in Mexico alone!

Chili Peppers and Their Healing Properties

Peppers are an American domesticated food plant. All the peppers, and I repeat, all the peppers, were originally domesticated here in the Americas. If you can imagine so many cuisines of Africa and Asia and Europe without peppers. But historically speaking, peppers are relatively recent introductions to those regions. 

Peppers botanically are classified in a genus called capsicum. There were five species of capsicum domesticated. Three species were domesticated in South America, one species indeterminate still, and one species definitely here in Mesoamerica. Of those five, it’s the Mesoamerican species that dominates the world. This is called capsicum annuum. It has hundreds of varieties and just about every pepper you know anywhere in the world, regardless of the size and shape, how picante or not — they are all capsicum peppers. 

Not surprisingly, Mexico cultivates a greater diversity of peppers than anyplace else. There are 60 named varieties of peppers that are grown here in Mexico. The state of Oaxaca grows more varieties of peppers than in any other part of Mexico. It is no doubt this diversity of peppers used here in Oaxaca that accounts in large part for the richness of Oaxacan cuisine.

Loaded with vitamin C and capsaicin, peppers should be a part of everyone’s diet. Wally and Duke add them to most meals they prepare — and double the amount suggested.

Peppers are very nutritious. I hope everybody’s eating lots of them — they are really good for you. They’re very rich in vitamin C. Going back to pre-Hispanic times, peppers have had medicinal use, and that continues today into the pharmaceutical industry. Modern pharmaceutical companies are using the substance of the pepper that makes it hot. It’s an alkaloid called capsaicin. Everybody knows capsaicin burns your lips and your eyes. I’m sure you’ve all had unfortunate meetings with peppers. But capsaicin also blocks pain signals to the brain. It has analgesic qualities, and it permits greater blood flow to the skin surface. So there’s lots of new products: patches to treat your back and you can get all kinds of new products to treat muscle injuries, muscle aches, to treat arthritis made from capsaicin. Many of those products are over the counter, so do look for them.

Amaranth are super nutritious and are becoming all the rage — though it’s been popular in Mexico since Aztec times.

Amaranth and Alegrías, or “Happiness Bars”

Turning to another food plant, with greenish leaves and red stalks. That is a food plant that I’m sure many of you have heard of but may not recognize: That’s amaranth. It’s becoming very popular again. Amaranth was actually domesticated independently in Asia and here in the Americas. The Asian amaranths are known as leaf amaranths, because the part of the plant that people eat are the leaves. So think spinach — whatever you can do with spinach, you can do with leaf amaranth. And in fact, amaranth and spinach are botanically related. 

The species that were domesticated here in the Americas are called seed amaranths. You can certainly eat the leaves when they’re young and tender, but those feathery flower stalks make thousands — who knows? I’ve never counted them — of tiny little black seeds that are edible. 

You can eat the seeds as you harvest them. Or you can toast amaranth seeds. And when you toast it, it turns into what looks like tiny little popcorns. This is what we call pop amaranth. You can eat it in this form. You can sprinkle it on top of your cereal, your salad, whatever. Or you can grind it into flour.

The seed amaranths of the Americas are one of those incredibly nutritious food plants — among the most nutritious in the world. There is absolutely nothing bad about amaranth and every good quality to a food you imagine. It was probably the single most nutritious food plant in the diet. Pre-Hispanically, huge quantities were consumed. Huge quantities we know flowed into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan as tax or tribute paid by conquered areas.

Shortly after conquest, it disappeared as a major food plant. It survived here as a candy. And you can still buy the candy here. Lots of people think they’re sesame bars, but they’re not. They’re toasted amaranth bars. Some are squares, some are round, some are long and rectangular, whatever, but it is amaranth. They have the happy name of happiness bars. They’re called alegrías, and alegría means happiness. My personal opinion is that amaranth’s major flaw is it doesn’t have a lot of flavor. But that’s good because you can add it to so many dishes. But that means that alegrías don’t have a lot of flavor other than the sweetness of the honey that holds them together. So look for the alegrías with chocolate added to them. Those are happier.

Alegrías look much too healthy to be named “happiness” bars.

Twenty years ago, maybe 25 now, NGOs came into Oaxaca to reintroduce amaranth as a cash crop, but also to reintroduce it into the diet, where it could certainly make a significant difference, especially for children — it’s very high in protein.

Restaurants are going back to traditional foods, so look at menus, they sometimes feature dishes with amaranth. And it’s been used in commercial food production — a lot of new products being made with amaranth to increase the nutritional quality.

There are over 60 types of corn grown in Mexico, and the crop is more widespread than wheat and rice.

The Evolution of Corn and the Amazing Spread of Maíz Criollo

We have a young crop there and a more mature crop of corn or maize. That kind of corn is called Creole corn, or maíz criollo, and that refers to the kinds of corn that farmers throughout Mexico and here in the state of Oaxaca grow principally for home use.

To plant a new field of my maíz criollo, households just save some seeds from a previous harvest and replant them.

I grew up in Canada, where corn was yellow. That was it. So all I knew was yellow corn. I sort of had a vague notion there were other colors because at Halloween or Thanksgiving, we bought those bunches of what we call Indian corn, multicolored dried corn. You didn’t eat it; you just hung it on your doors as an ornament. Then as an adult, I learned there was white corn, as well. Ooh! A big addition to my knowledge!

And then I came to Mexico and discovered an absolutely incredible richness that I certainly was not aware of: well over 60 varieties of maíz criollo grown traditionally here in Mexico — different colors, shapes, sizes, growing conditions, flavors, you name it. It’s just an incredible richness.

The state of Oaxaca grows more varieties of maíz criollo than any other part of Mexico. Thirty-seven varieties of maíz criollo are grown here in the state of Oaxaca.

How did we get corn? Where did it all start? Everyone now seems to agree the ancestor is the wild grass called teosinte. It is genetically very closely related to domesticated corn but morphologically very different. 

I think everybody knows how to plant corn. You stick a seed in the ground and up comes one stalk. And then you get an ear of corn per stalk, and if you’re really lucky, maybe you’ll get two ears of corn per stalk.

Teosinte is completely different. It’s a multi-stalk plant and it doesn’t grow ears of corn at all — it makes tiny little seed pods. At every node along the stalk, you get seed pods. There’s just a single row of very small little seeds inside, the size of baby teeth. 

There is an edible kernel buried at the center of the seed. But to get at the editable kernel, you have to remove the outer seed first. You have to expend a lot of time, a lot of labor, to get very little to eat in return. Why bother? 

Moreover, teosinte is a wild grass. When the pod is mature, it just breaks open. There’s no structure in there to hold the seeds. So they just separate and fall out on the ground. And the big question is, why the early peoples began to pay attention to teosinte as a potential food plant? And there’s no good answer to that.

Geneticists suggest that the beginning of domestication, if you will, goes back at least to 7000 BC, or 9,000 years ago. One hypothesis is that early people were not actually interested in the seeds at first, but rather than fermentable sugars in the green stalks. There were other sources here of fermentable sugars that are easier to attain, so who knows?

But the earliest clear physical evidence that we have found for domesticated corn dates to about 4000 BC, and that evidence comes from Guilá Naquitz again, where they found the early fruit squash. Archaeologists found clear evidence that corn has been domesticated by that date. What they found at Guilá Naquitz are little structures, little proto-cobs. So instead of this single row of seeds, there is a structure with several rows of kernels around it. And by this date, the terminals have lost the hard outer seed coating and become fully edible. 

Domesticated corn cannot reseed itself. In order for you to reseed it, you have to pick the ears of corn off the stalks, pull down the corn husk, pull the kernels off and replant it. Corn is the only nature of domesticated plants that is incapable of self-reproduction. And by 4000 BC, it had shifted from this self-seeding wild grass to a fruit plant totally dependent on human intervention for reproduction.

Teosinte doesn’t grow wild here in the valleys, but it grows up in the sierra, up in the mountains around the valleys, which is where corn was probably domesticated — a domestication that has been spread rapidly and extensively through the Americas. And because corn is such a malleable plant, it took on the many forms of corn that were found growing here when Europeans arrived, and then quickly introduced to the rest of the world after contact, and again adapted to wherever it was introduced. Corn, for sure domesticated here in Mexico, and very likely here in Oaxaca, is the most widely planted cereal grain today in the world. There’s more corn planted than wheat, than rice.

While the pre-Hispanic peoples of Mexico knew how delicious tomatoes were, the silly Europeans thought they were poisonous!

Tomatoes and Other Plants Domesticated in Mexico

Let me remind you of some other food plants that have changed diets worldwide. And the first that comes to mind are tomatoes. Domesticated here in Mesoamerica. Very important in the pre-Hispanic diet, and quickly introduced to Europe. And for a long time, Europeans refused to eat tomatoes. They considered them poisonous. They bred them as ornamentals; they used them as fodder for animals — but wouldn’t eat them. Imagine! 

Avocados — domesticated here. No guacamole without avocados from here. Vanilla and cacao were also domesticated here. By the end of the 1500s, just about every major food plant had gone east and west. They were very quickly introduced and adopted. 

Avocados, not surprisingly, were also domesticated in Mexico. Wally shudders to think of a life without guacamole.

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Now, that’s a lot to digest about food plants. But it’s astounding how many different domesticated food plants come from the Oaxaca region, with its great biodiversity. ¡Buen provecho!

If you’re staying in Oaxaca, be sure to add the botanical garden to your itinerary. Tours in English are Monday through Saturday at 11 a.m. They’re a steal at 100 pesos (about $5) and last about two hours. The garden entrance is at the corner of Reforma and Constitución. Get there about half an hour early to play it safe; groups are limited to 25 people and fill up quickly. –Wally

Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca

Reforma Sur
Ruta Independencia
Centro
68000 Oaxaca de Juárez
Oaxaca
México

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Sampling the 7 Moles of Oaxaca

Holy mole! The restaurant Hierba Dulce focuses on plant-based fare and takes traditional Oaxacan cuisine to the next level. 

Most Americans are only familiar with mole negro and don’t even realize there are many varieties of the Mexican sauce.

Mole (pronounced moh-lay) is one of Mexico’s most complex and versatile sauces. And nowhere is that more in evidence than in the southcentral state of Oaxaca, famous for seven distinct types of moles. 

If you’ve ever tried mole in the U.S., chances are it’s mole negro (black mole). This velvety, umber-colored sauce is a savory-sweet combination of dark chocolate, spicy chiles, nuts and spices usually served over enchiladas. Don’t get me wrong — I love me some chocolate, but mole can be so much more than that. There are numerous variations containing dozens of different ingredients, including chiles, garlic, spices, nuts and pepitas (pumpkin seeds), pulverized to a paste in a molcajete (a volcanic stone mortar and pestle). Tomatoes, tomatillos and water or broth are sometimes added, and many are slow-cooked to allow flavors to meld.

“ Don’t get me wrong — I love me some chocolate, but mole can be so much more than that. ”

The lightwood tables and modern chairs (not to mention that wall of cacti) take the Oaxacan restaurant Hierba Dulce up a notch.

Hierba Dulce’s Local, Organic Ingredients 

On our trip to Oaxaca, we knew we wanted to try the seven different types of mole, and we had heard that there was no better place to do so than at Hierba Dulce. The women-run establishment opened in 2017 and was the first in Oaxaca de Juárez to feature an entirely plant-based menu. Using traditional cooking and fermentation methods as a foundation, the restaurant began as a conversation among the founders of its sister project, Pochote Press. Their goal was to create a welcoming, inclusive culinary concept where they could offer accessible, nutritious, unprocessed fare to the local community. 

As Hierba Dulce began to flourish, Pochote Press moved out of the space. The restaurant uses organic ingredients, working strictly with small local farmers, and its dishes are made without processed oils, refined sugars or animal byproducts like asiento (lard). This setup helps provide a lifeline for these producers, who value genetic diversity over mass production. 

The restaurant is run by chef Mayora Georgina Cruz, and is tucked away in the open-air walled courtyard of a colonial-era house not far from the city center of Oaxaca de Juárez. Its name is the Spanish version of tzopelic xihuitl in Náhuatl, an indigenous language of the region, translating to  “sweet herb.”

This was the first place we dined at during our stay in Oaxaca. We arrived around 6 and were seated shortly after. The centerpiece of the courtyard was a tiled fountain with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This was adorned with strands of brightly colored woven palm leaf garland anchored by a straw flower arrangement that put me in a festive mood. 

The gorgeous fountain at Hierba Dulce, with the Virgin of Guadalupe, colorful garlands and bright straw flowers

Hierba Dulce is women-run and focuses on unprocessed, local ingredients. The dinnerware, with its distinctive blackened spots, are from the nearby village of Santa María Atzompa and were handmade by Maestra Josefina Zárate.

To start, we each ordered Oaxaqueños, a cocktail made with the restaurant’s tepache and cachaça, a distilled spirit made from fermented sugarcane juice. At first, neither one of us thought it was that strong — until we finished it. They packed a surprisingly strong punch, and neither of us needed to order a second. 

The Oaxaqueño, a cocktail made with tepache and cachaça, packed a surprising punch.

Wally and I opted for the mole tasting for two, which featured the seven most famous types of Oaxacan moles. 

Dinner kicked off with a salsa verde and a roja.

As an appetizer, we were served a complimentary pair of salsas: a green one made with miltomate (tomatillo), serranos, avocado and cilantro, and a red one with smoked pasilla, morita and chile de árbol with miltomate. These were accompanied by housemade tostadas, crisp corn tortillas made with heirloom maíz, on a comal (a round, flat griddle). 

Try a sampler of the seven moles of Oaxaca and rate them as you go. Our fave was rojo, while verde came in last.

The 7 Moles of Oaxaca

Mole comes from the Nahuatl word molli, or “sauce.” This traditional, multilayered sauce typically begins with a base of dried or fresh chiles, seasoned with wild endemic herbs, vegetables and other ingredients. Cooking times vary by type; some come together quickly and can take as little as a few hours, while others take days to prepare. 

No two moles are alike. Recipes vary from region to region, from village to village, from family to family. All are slightly different, depending on who’s making it. The ones served at Hierba Dulce are Cruz’s recipes, adapted and tweaked into versions made without oil or refined sugar. 

We found that tortillas weren’t the best vehicle to serve with these moles — the sauce oozed out and made for a messy meal.

1. Amarillo / Yellow

Yellow chilhuacle, costeño and smoky-sweet guajillo chiles, spices, hoja santa (literally “sacred leaf” — a heart-shaped leaf with a slight peppery taste) combine with white beans to make an ochre-colored, mildly spicy mole. 

2. Verde / Green

This was the only mole of the seven that didn’t contain dried chilis (perhaps that’s why it was our least favorite). Its bright green color comes from miltomates, serranos, cilantro and epazote (a pungent herb with a flavor between tarragon and anise). 

3. Almendrado / Almond

This mole is made with guajillo and ancho chiles, heirloom tomatoes, almonds, oregano and cinnamon. 

4. Chichilo 

Intense and smoky, with pasila, mulato, guajillo and black chilhuacle chiles, garlic and onion, the addition of dry-roasted avocado leaves lend a subtle licorice flavor. 

5. Estufado

Olives, almonds, miltomates, tomatoes, onion, capers, perejil (parsley) and cinnamon combine in this version.  

6. Rojo / Red

This thick, brick-red sauce was the spiciest of the seven moles and used ancho chiles, pasilla chiles, garlic, onion, tomatoes, peanuts and dark chocolate. It was our fave. 

7. Negro / Black

The most labor-intensive of the moles, this one contains chilhuacle negro, mulato, pasilla, ancho, guajillo and chipotle chiles, plantains, and dark, bitter chocolate. The charred seeds of the chilhuacle negro give this mole its signature depth of color and flavor. Wally thought it was so sweet compared to the others, it practically worked as a dessert course. 

Most moles are made with chiles, herbs, tomatoes — and some even have chocolate.

Getting Sauced 

Moles are often served over rice, chicken or pork. Ours came with corn tortillas that were made moments before on a nearby comal in the corner of the courtyard. Most of the sauces were soupy, resulting in a messy dining experience. Perhaps we should have tried the mole sampling that comes with mushrooms. And after trying a few different varieties, it was difficult to really appreciate the subtle differences between the seven — though maybe that was because of the buzz we felt from the Oaxaqueños. 

Either way, we admired how Cruz has reinterpreted traditional ingredients in a sophisticated way. –Duke

Wally and Duke pose by the back wall of the Hierbe Dulce courtyard, which is lined with cacti known as Mexican fence posts.

Hierba Dulce

Calle Porfirio Díaz 311
Ruta Independencia
Centro
68000 Oaxaca de Juárez
Oxaca
Mexico

 

Continue Your Culinary Tour of Mexico

5 Tips for Visiting Oaxaca From an Expat

What you need to know about public bathrooms, safety — and how to avoid getting thrown into a Mexican prison — before a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. 

If you’re out among other people, Oaxaca is a safe town. The later it gets, and the drunker people get, the higher chance someone might take advantage of them.

We can understand why our friend Kevin moved to Oaxaca and doesn’t have any plans on ever living anywhere else. Everyone, it seems, is an artisan here, creating colorful alebrijes, textiles or pottery. It’s a culinary hotspot, serving up everything from mole to mezcal. And there’s a laidback charm to this city of just over 250,000 — and yet there always seems to be something going on. As Kevin says, every day is a parade in Oaxaca. 

In fact, Travel + Leisure magazine readers named Oaxaca as the best city in the world. That’s quite a distinction! (As Duke and I have discovered, Mexico is where it’s at: San Miguel de Allende scored the 2nd spot, while Mexico City came in at number 6.)

“ It is just a good idea to not be so USA about your phone while walking down the street, making love to Google Maps, staring at Facebook, etc. ”

That being said, like any city, Oaxaca dances to its own rhythm, and can be  dangerous at times. Before our trip to Oaxcaa, Kevin offered these tips: 

Given his smile, you wouldn’t know that Wally had a close call earlier in the day, when he was getting in desperate need of a bathroom. Thank God he had 5 pesos with him!

1. Carry several 5-peso coins with you at all times.

They will be your ticket to enter a public restroom. I have yet to see one that is free unless you are in a restaurant. This goes for pueblos (villages) as well.

Wally’s take: The 5-peso tip is always a good one to follow anywhere in Mexico. You don’t want to need an emergency stop, only to find they won’t let you into a restroom without forking over a lousy 5 pesos (the equivalent of a quarter). 

2. Be very careful of the intersections.

Most intersections are what is called “uno a uno” — one by one. That means there is no stoplight, and whoever gets there first goes through. If there is a line of cars entering, it is one by one.

Sure, you won’t be driving, but you will need to cross intersections on foot. Here, pedestrians don’t have the right of way. Stay out of the car’s way. 

Most streets are one way, so it is a little easier.  But realize that it is legal to park in the opposite direction of traffic. So be very mindful when you look to the right and see a car’s hood pointed toward you that that might not be the real direction of traffic. Look left and right every time.

Wally’s take: We had some difficulty navigating Oaxaca, even though it’s not that big of a city. Read our post about getting around Oaxaca for more tips. 

3. Keep your passport on you when traveling outside the city.

In Centro, it is not so necessary. But all it takes is for a cop to pull over a car, do an immigration check, and if someone doesn’t have their passport on them, they can and have detained people until they can prove their tourist status. With the pandemic, the wait time can be weeks or months — and you do not want to go to one of their prisons.

You could keep your driver’s license in your room. You do not need it. A passport is best to carry. 

Wally’s take: When we traveled outside the city, we didn’t bother bringing along our passports. But we were either with Kevin or on a guided tour, and felt like they could help deal with any issues if the police became involved for whatever reason.

Maybe you shouldn’t take a selfie like this in Oaxaca. But Duke and Wally can’t help but stop to take a picture of street art like this.

4. Be mindful of your phone and do not wear expensive jewelry. 

Tourists have been mugged for their phones in broad daylight in Centro. It is just a good idea to not be so USA about your phone while walking down the street, making love to Google Maps, staring at Facebook, etc.  Pretend you are in France or Spain, where pickpocketing is normal. 

Just like this street art says: No More Violence!

Here they will hold you up at gunpoint or with a knife and rob you. Is it common? No. Does it happen? Yes. Some people bring a second phone from home and pop in a SIM card here for very cheap.  That way if it gets stolen, you have your master phone in your room.

Wally’s take: As for having our phones out in Centro, just try to stop me and Duke from taking photos every block or two. 

If you’re out late at night, play it safe and call a cab.

5. Take a taxi at night.

Yes, it’s usually safe. But again: Be very aware of your surroundings. If you’re walking through Centro at 1 a.m. after drinking, it’s best to take a cab.

Wally’s take: We weren’t out late at night (we’re getting too old for that nonsense), but we did hear about people getting mugged coming from the bars late at night. 

That being said, you’ll most likely find Oaxaca to be a safe and friendly city. But it never hurts to play it safe. Discover why it was voted best city in the world. ¡Disfruten! Enjoy yourselves! –Wally

Follow these tips and you’ll have as great a time in Oaxaca as Duke did.

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