The City That Smells of Chocolate and Smoke: Days in Oaxaca

The air in Oaxaca is never empty. In the mornings it carries the sweetness of chocolate whisked into milk, the grind of maize on a stone slab, the metallic song of church bells echoing against terracotta walls. By night it is thick with woodsmoke and the faint, steady beat of drums from some square you haven’t yet discovered.

I didn’t come to Oaxaca with a plan. The city seemed to promise that plans weren’t necessary. It’s a place that lives through its markets, its kitchens, its plazas, its people—each corner as alive as the next.

I spent my first morning at Mercado de la Merced, a labyrinth of stalls painted with colors that don’t exist in northern skies. Women in embroidered blouses sold chilies piled like burning embers, their hands moving with the grace of people who have known repetition since childhood. A man offered me chapulines—grasshoppers toasted with lime and chili. He smiled at my hesitation, then shrugged as if to say, the city will not wait for your courage. I ate them. Crunch, spice, tang. A lesson disguised as a snack.

Later, under the stone arches of the Zócalo, children chased pigeons while a brass band played a tune equal parts sorrow and joy. I found a bench and sat long enough to see the light change on the cathedral façade. A woman beside me was braiding palm leaves into tiny crosses. She sold me one for five pesos, then asked where I was from. When I told her, she nodded as if she had already known, and went back to her weaving.

One evening I followed the sound of drums into a narrow street. There was no sign, no flyer, no stage. Just a group of dancers circling a bonfire, skirts spinning like painted smoke. The rhythm grew louder, faster, until strangers were invited into the circle. Someone grabbed my hand, and suddenly I was dancing, badly, laughing, alive. I remember the smell of mezcal and roasted corn in the air, the way firelight bent across the dancers’ faces. No camera could have held it.

Food here isn’t just nourishment—it’s biography. Each dish tells you where the people come from, what the land gives, what the ancestors remembered. Mole negro, as dark as midnight, carries more ingredients than I could count—chilies, chocolate, spices that read like a poem. A single bite demanded patience; it unfolded in chapters. Tlayudas—giant tortillas loaded with beans, cheese, meat—were eaten with both hands, unapologetic and generous. Even a simple cup of tejate, a frothy maize-and-cacao drink, felt like an inheritance handed down in clay.

In Oaxaca, meals are never solitary. Even alone at a table, you are accompanied by the history on the plate, the voices around you, the music leaking from the street.

The city doesn’t end at its streets. Outside, the mountains rise, dry and jagged, holding villages where traditions feel untouched by time. In Teotitlán del Valle, I watched weavers work on looms that groaned like old instruments. They showed me rugs dyed with cochineal, the red so vibrant it seemed impossible that it came from an insect crushed into powder. A boy explained the process in careful English. “It is not just color,” he said. “It is memory.”

On my final night, I walked up to Cerro del Fortín, where the city spread beneath me like a lantern. Smoke curled from rooftops, dogs barked, fireworks cracked in the distance—unexplained, as if celebration here didn’t need a reason. I thought of the woman with her palm crosses, the boy with his dyes, the band in the square, the dancers circling fire. Oaxaca had not given me a checklist. It had given me stories that would follow me long after the smoke cleared.

This is what travel is for—not to conquer a place, but to let it rearrange the furniture of your memory. Oaxaca doesn’t whisper or shout. It sings. And if you stay long enough, you find yourself singing back.