Spiritual Oaxaca: A Personal Journey and Photoessay
Something pulled me back to Mexico's indigenous state
In early 2018, when I was living in Mexico City to study Spanish and culture, the matriarch of my host family recommended I take a spontaneous weekend trip to Oaxaca, the capital city of the eponymous state in central Mexico. I did, and it was a quick 48 hours to race through all the touristy spots and dine at all the touristy restaurants before taking an overnight bus back to Mexico City.
After leaving Mexico City, I traveled and lived around the world for several years, but didn’t encounter many places that I wanted to return to for a second time. For some reason, however, Oaxaca began to call my name.
“Oaxaca is a spiritual place,” I would hear every now and then.
In the middle of 2022, a 3-week vacancy popped up in my schedule, and I decided to book a flight to Oaxaca.
Unsettled
I was quite unsettled during my first week in Oaxaca. Although Mother Ayahuasca had shown me deep spirituality just a month prior, various factors had disrupted my contentment and integration, and I found myself slipping back into unhealthy addictions and cravings, including alcohol, casual sex, gaming, NFT trading, and overeating.
I joined a guided group hike in Oaxaca’s beautiful Sierra Madre mountain range, but initially found it difficult to slow down and enjoy the natural beauty. I was annoyed at how the other hikers kept slowing us down by stopping to look at mushrooms, even though this group hike was intended to be a mushroom foraging trip.
Towards the latter half of the hike, however, I started to feel more present. I became aware of the breathtakingly beautiful nature all around us.
Let’s bring it back with Psilocybe.
My second weekend in Oaxaca, I planned a trip to the state’s cloud forests, a sparsely populated region deep in the mountains. It’s famous for its incredible biodiversity (Oaxaca state contains 50% of species found in Mexico, a top 10 country by biodiversity), including many endemic species of Psilocybe, commonly known as psychedelic mushrooms, and locally as hongos.
Many of the villages in this area are independent of the Mexican government, and mushrooms are openly gathered, consumed, and sold. The local indigenous peoples have incorporated psychedelic mushrooms into their traditions for many generations.
San José del Pacífico, a tiny village in and of itself, is the primary entry point and accommodation hub for foreign tourists, and there are many places in town to buy mushrooms.
The entire area is extremely remote. It’s surrounded by dense pine forests, and the clouds and rain are omnipresent, coming and going as Mother Nature pleases.
June through October is the rainy season in Mexico, and psychedelic mushrooms can be gathered fresh during these months. Because they carry water weight, fresh mushrooms are typically consumed in a larger dose (10-20 grams) than the dried one which are eaten around the world.
A dose in San José del Pacífico costs anywhere from $20-40. “Have your kids ever eaten the hongos?” I asked a friendly storeowner as I saw young children running around her shop.
“Yes. My son has been taking the medicine since he was three years old. They have helped him a lot,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Taking the medicine in the beautiful cloud forests was exactly what I needed.
The mushrooms brought back some suppressed memories from my Ayahuasca ceremonies. I vividly remembered sounds, visions, and feelings from the Amazon, and I felt momentary tendrils of fear.
I saw an area in the forest where the local villagers seemed to have mined stones before abandoning the site. I thought of the massive gold mining operations in Papua, and the irreparable environmental damage and violent human fatalities surrounding the extraction of Mother Nature’s resources.
At my lodge’s restaurant, I met two travelers from Los Angeles. As it turns out, they were amateur botanists and mycologists, and were visiting Oaxaca to geek out on local biodiversity. They had deep knowledge of psychedelic mushrooms, but minimal interest in consuming them.
“Psychedelic plants are everywhere once you learn to recognize them. Psilocybe, San Pedro cactus - you can find them growing on UC campuses, in public parks, on sidewalk planters,” they explained to me.
I shared about my Ayahuasca experience, and we had a thoughtful discussion on whether laboratory-synthesized 5-MeO DMT would be a good solution to alleviate farming pressures on Bufo Alvarius, a common supply of natural 5-MeO DMT. “Mentally, I think I wouldn’t enjoy it as much,” I replied.
One of them, Wilson, grabbed the diary and pen of a Parisian girl sitting next to us and drew out the chemical structures for DMT, 5-MeO DMT, and Psilocybin. “Look how similar they are!” his face beamed with passion.
For how remote San José del Pacífico is, the food there is surprisingly good. Either that, or I was just hungry.
“Oaxaca is a spiritual place.”
After our weekend, Raúl drove onwards to Puerto Escondido, and I took a public bus back to Oaxaca City. Upon my return, everything had changed. I remembered the beauty of the world that Ayahuasca had originally shown me.
I slowed down, breathed, and appreciated the beauty in the day-to-day of Oaxacan life.
Craving a little taste of home, I stopped by a Chinese buffet that Raúl had pointed out to me the previous week as we were walking around town.
Turns out, the owner is Chinese (Cantonese), and I chatted with her for quite some time in Mandarin. She and her husband have lived in Mexico for 19 years, 6 years in Tijuana and 13 years in Oaxaca. She wasn’t happy, nor was she unhappy. She was content. “This is my life now,” she said simply.
I returned once more for lunch a week later, on Mid-Autumn Festival and my late mother’s birthday. The owner reminded me of my mom, if only that she cooked Chinese food for me and imparted some maternal energy.
She asked the chef to custom-stir-fry green beans for me, and she insisted on undercharging me for my meal. I overpaid her anyways, and she accepted.
Oaxaca is known as the cradle of Mexican cuisine. Local specialties include chapulines (grasshoppers), tlayudas (like a tostada and quesadilla combined), tasojo tacos (to this day I haven’t been able to get a straight answer for what kind of meat tasojo is), and all types of moles (a national dish, although typically associated with Oaxaca).
I didn’t go for any of the local brand-name restaurants (Criollo, by Enrique Olvera of Pujol fame; Pitiona, ranked #96 on the 2021 edition of LatAm’s Top 100; Casa Oaxaca, ranked #63). I’d eaten at Criollo and Pitiona the last time I came to Oaxaca.
One restaurant that caught my eye but that I didn’t end up trying is Crudo, a reservation-only Mexican-Japanese fine-dining fusion. I’ll surely return to Oaxaca in the future; hopefully this restaurant is still around then.
I did try Tierra del Sol, which I enjoyed very much.
Oaxaca has an amazing café scene with high standards for design, food, ambience, and service. My favorites include Marito & Moglie, Kiyo Café, and Sorbo Café.
I took a day trip to nearby villages Teotitlán del Valle and Tlacolula de Matamoros. I traveled like a local: taking a multi-leg journey consisting of informal buses, cooperativos (shared taxis, 4 in the back and 2 squeezed in the driver’s passenger seat), and hyper-local “tuk-tuks” whose sole purpose is to move people to the main highway, from which they can catch a cooperativo or bus.
At the informal bus terminal in Oaxaca, I felt an enormous déjà vu. It was exactly where I had been dropped off by an overnight bus from Mexico City 4.5 years prior.
On the bus from Teotitlán back to Oaxaca, I met a Chinese-American girl. It’s uncommon to meet Asians traveling in the places I go, and especially Asian-Americans (like myself). We struck up conversation. I mentioned that I was going to Brazil after Oaxaca. Completely unprompted, she asked, “Are you going to do ayahuasca?”
She had been living in Oaxaca for a couple of months, working remotely as a somatic therapist and exploring spiritual healing locally herself. I invited her to come to San José del Pacífico with me, but she already had plans to do mushrooms herself that weekend in a small grove she had found in Teotitlán.
In Oaxaca, I spent a lot of my time in Jardín El Llano, a park measuring 1x2 city blocks. The park is a living ecosystem, and the center of its local community.
In the mornings, groups of adults partake in exercise and yoga classes, and food stalls sell tostadas and agua de jamaica. In the evenings, the park comes alive with bikers and skateboarders, kids taking roller blading classes, and couples holding hands on benches in front of the fountain. The tostada sellers are replaced by coffee stalls and elote carts.
In this park is my favorite spot for tacos in all of Oaxaca. This taco stand only appears in late night (after 10pm), and on seemingly random days. I’m often disappointed when I go to the park, hungry, and the taco stand isn’t there. I could ask which days they’re present, but that would spoil the magic of its serendipity. It’s like Narnia. I’m not sure if the taco stand exists outside of my imagination.
There are other good tacos in Oaxaca, my second favorite being Taqueria Tacomer. Unfortunately, Tacomer is also open only at late night and on random nights.
I’ve noticed Oaxaca also has a slightly different definition of a “taco”. Sometimes, it’s a rolled tortilla resembling a flauta, especially if the filling is barbacoa.
Oaxaca’s spirituality is evident in its local art scene. As Viktor Frankl describes in Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the ways in which we find meaning in life is in experiencing beauty, such as art. Accordingly, I felt a spiritual peace when walking through some of Oaxaca’s numerous art galleries.
Thank you, Oaxaca, for taking care of me for three weeks. You’ve healed me in just the way I needed, at the right time.