From the hum and density of the capital, I landed somewhere that moves deliberately. Oaxaca doesn’t rush. Meals take time. And when the meal is finally finished, you are strongly encouraged to try the house mezcal. You discuss it. You debate which one is best. When you decide, you have another one for the road. I do oblige. Every time.  

The bill takes half an hour to arrive. Conversations stretch. Shops close when they need to. Time here feels pre-industrial in the best way. Not slow for effect, but slow because no one is trying to extract anything from it. There is less performative productivity. More attention to materiality. To gesture. To atmosphere. Oaxaca rewards wandering without agenda rather than checklist tourism. Google Maps off. Recommendations off. Eyes and ears on the ground. Let’s experience this properly.  

I went to a coworking space to send a few final emails before taking a full two-week break. That’s where I met Alex, a local Oaxaqueña whose last trip abroad was, believe it or not, Morocco. Not Marrakech-Morocco. Deep Sahara. Ouarzazate. Every time I meet someone who has gone that far into Morocco, I feel like they really know it. And she did. She spoke about the similarities between Mexico and Morocco not in a surface way, but structurally. Spiritually. She told me about Guelaguetza, Oaxaca’s great gathering. Every summer, on two Mondays in July, communities from across the regions come together to share dances, dress, music, food and gifts. Not as a performance for outsiders, but as an act of reciprocity. Guelaguetza means offering. Mutual aid. People bring what they have. After the celebrations, many climb Monte Albán, the ancient Zapotec site above the city, to purify themselves. To return something to the earth after all that giving. It made immediate sense to me. It’s like a Moussem. In Morocco, Moussems are also seasonal gatherings rooted in land, lineage and exchange. Different names. Same instinct.  

Just when I thought Mexico City had exhausted the possibilities of colour, Oaxaca proved me wrong at every turn. Here, colour doesn’t negotiate. All rules are out the door. Bright red façades with green trims. Violet walls with orange doors. Combinations that would never survive a design review in London, and yet feel completely resolved here. I’m now fully convinced minimalism as an aesthetic, never made it to the real Mexico. I scrapped every rug design I had been working on. Completely. I needed to sit with this new information before touching anything again.

 

 

If you ever visit Oaxaca centro, wander into side streets instead of staying on the main arteries. Look for shadow play on cantera stone, the pale green volcanic stone so many buildings here are made from. When you see it, you know the building matters. The main cathedral, Templo de Santo Domingo, is built from it. Solid. Porous. Quietly luminous in the sun. Look for inner courtyards. Doors left open. Let the city introduce itself without agenda. There is 4G here, technically, but only outdoors. Indoors, the signal disappears, blocked by thick stone walls. Many buildings are single-storey, organised around patios. Low. Grounded. Horizontal. The architecture keeps you close to the earth. Navigation becomes intuitive. Mountains instead of street names. Sun on façades telling you where you are. North. South. East. West. In my drifting in and out of open doors, I stumbled into an old convent converted into a hotel. No signage. No announcement. Just space. Stone. Air. The most magnificent place I’ve ever walked into.  

In shops, a familiar smell began to follow me. Wool. Raw, warm, slightly animal. The smell of my grandmother’s house. Of spun fibre and a rug on the loom. Some people dislike it. For me, it’s nostalgia. The warmth of her embrace translated into scent. Oaxaca feels almost like its own country. Multiple regions, each with their own food, mezcal, ceramics and textiles. The Valleys. The Sierra Norte. The Mixteca. The Coast. Each place carrying its own logic. Craft here isn’t a museum. It’s a living design ecosystem. There is deep pride in provenance, technique and lineage. No looms are set up for demonstration. Everything exists because it’s used.  

I was originally planning to visit Teotitlán del Valle (the land of wool textiles) on a weekend, then changed my mind. I wanted quieter. Monday felt right. Most organised tours happen on weekends, so I rented a small car and took myself on what turned out to be an epic road trip. The road reminded me instantly of Morocco. Of the route from Kenitra to Khemisset that I’ve taken countless times to visit our weavers. A national road, not a motorway. Dusty. Wide. Mountains appearing and disappearing as you turn corners. Bumps slowing you just enough to actually see the landscape. As you approach the village, crafts begin to appear. Rugs hanging from terraces. Hand-painted signs. Exactly the way Amazigh rugs announce themselves as you enter certain Moroccan towns.  

I remembered something my mother always says. Never stop at the first shop. Go all the way to the end first. You can always come back. Most people stop at the beginning and never realise how much more there is. So I kept driving. Down the narrowing road. Past where most people would stop. People looked surprised to see me. I was the only one with a car. A Monday visitor. I had caught them in the middle of real work. I started entering ateliers that double as homes, just like in Morocco. I said hello. Let my eyes wander. Rugs on walls. Rugs on looms. Small cushions. Coasters in colours that made no sense and all the sense at once. I’d tell them how beautiful I found the colours. Ask if they were the weaver. Most said yes, then returned quietly to their work. I never pushed. The flow matters.  

Toward the end of the first alley, opposite the village church, I saw an older woman trimming fringes on miniature rugs. Coasters. The most glorious acid green. I thought immediately of my mother. She would love this colour. I said hello. Told her I was looking for a gift for my mother, who loves coffee, and that this green felt perfect. She smiled. As if mentioning mother pulled me into something shared. Lineage. Ancestry. A knowing. Her name was Concha. Like the pastry. She spoke slowly, gently, sensing I wasn’t from here. I have more colours if you’d like to come inside. Yes, please. We walked down a narrow cobbled path lined with bright green plants and entered a courtyard. Stations everywhere. Wool dyeing. Three traditional horizontal looms. A table with baskets of grains. She was probably cleaning them for later. She asked if I’d eaten. I said yes, not wanting to be a burden. A lie. It was already 3pm and I hadn’t eaten since the day before. She saw straight through it and brought me a cold glass of tejate, a traditional Oaxacan drink made with maize, cacao and flowers. Earthy. Floral. Grounding.  

She disappeared and came back with a kaleidoscope of miniature rugs. And with her son. He spoke English. He must have been around my dad’s age. He sat at the loom and started weaving as we talked. He’d been weaving since he was ten. Where are you from? Why are you here? On a Monday? I told him I was from Morocco. That I wanted to see where Mexican rugs are born. His eyes widened. He told me in Morocco, women weave. In Mexico, mostly men. He asked about sheep wool. Yes, they work with that too. He showed me his original designs while his mother spun wool by hand beside us. He asked if I had designs to show him. I did. I showed him our rugs. Videos of our weavers. He noticed immediately that our looms are vertical, theirs horizontal. How do they know what they’re weaving if they can’t see the front? I said memory. Sometimes mirrors. Cheating, but allowed. He commented on how complex our motifs are. I told him his were too. We zoomed in on details. Compared symbols. Found identical shapes with different names. What they call the Eye of God, we call the Lion’s Paw. Their Tree of Life, our Fish Skeleton.

 

 

Same geometry. Different stories. It felt like discovering a language split across the Atlantic. Two cultures with almost nothing historically in common except Spanish colonisation, yet somehow carrying the same visual instincts. I was grateful he could meet me halfway in English. Duolingo did not prepare me for rug-technical vocabulary. At one point there was no signal at all, so I climbed onto the loom, picked up wool and demonstrated instead. Fadma would have been so proud. I smiled to myself.  

Concha showed me where she dyes wool. Crushing red powder. Lime. Orange. Something else I couldn’t name. Suddenly purple. All natural dyes. All done by hand.I briefly considered how overweight my suitcase already was and regretted every decision I’d ever made. I should have left more space for a rug. I settled instead for two cushions, a runner and coasters. My instinct went to cream backgrounds. Then I stopped myself. You came all this way to be basic? Absolutely not. I chose blues. Lime greens. The brightest yellow in the atelier. The same yellow splashed across buildings in Oaxaca centro. Artisans here, like in Morocco, struggle with resellers. Prices pushed down. Margins pulled apart. During the rainy months, floods stop work entirely, so they work relentlessly now to make up for it. If you take anything from this, take this. Ask for the story first. The price second. Always ask permission before taking photos. And when you can, go to the villages. Not just the shops in town.  

I’m now back in Oaxaca centro and don’t ask me how. Somewhere along the way, I joined a wedding celebration. I was introduced to Mexican beer. I left with the most generous recommendations, hand-curated for guests staying just the weekend. A friend from Mexico City connected me with another friend here. Dinner turned into hours. Laughter. Ease. Why does my social battery die so quickly in London? I keep asking myself. Everything costs. The weather fights you. And there’s this strange formality, as if you need credentials to share a meal. Since when did we need contracts to connect?  

I left Oaxaca by bus, heading toward the coast. A road cutting through mountains. Winding. Patient. It reminded me of Oued Laou in Morocco, a small Mediterranean beach village where my family spent a month every summer. The anticipation of salt. Of warmth. Of something lighter ahead. The conductor handed me a Coca-Cola for the road and warned me the Wi-Fi would only be strong enough to send a hi text. When he saw me opening my laptop, he laughed. No problemo, señor. Solo escribe una carta de amor a Oaxaca.  

I’m now in San Agustinillo, via Puerto. A very small beach village where nothing happens. I’ve been dreaming of this week of off-grid solitude for a year. The only thing I’m looking forward to is not missing a single sunrise. A sure way to reset my nervous system. As I’m writing this, it’s 7am on my first day here. My feet are in the sand, slightly cold, refreshing. Coffee in hand. Doing crosswords.

Four-letter word.

Work-shy.

Idle.  

Looking forward to a week of idling.  

 

Will write again soon,

 

 

This piece is part of In Moussem, our editorial publication. Subscribe here.