Oaxaca, seven moles and a valley of workshops

Oaxaca de Juárez is a low city of green volcanic stone in a wide valley, and almost everything worth doing there involves something made by hand. The Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán gives you the extremes at once: a plain fortress outside, then an interior where white and gold stucco covers every surface, and next door, in the former convent, the Museo de las Culturas holds the gold, jade and rock crystal recovered from Tomb 7 at Monte Albán. Monte Albán itself is ten kilometres away and four hundred metres up, a Zapotec capital raised on a hilltop that was levelled by hand around 500 BC; the carved Danzantes slabs and the sightlines down all three arms of the valley repay the climb. Mitla, an hour east, is covered in geometric stone mosaic, thousands of cut pieces fitted without mortar. Between the sites lie the villages that supply the markets. Teotitlán del Valle weaves wool rugs dyed with cochineal and indigo, San Bartolo Coyotepec fires black burnished pottery, San Martín Tilcajete carves and paints wooden alebrijes, and Santiago Matatlán distils mezcal in small palenques where you can watch agave hearts roast in an earth pit. Sunday is market day in Tlacolula. Many people extend the stay for the food: tlayudas the size of a bicycle wheel, quesillo pulled into ribbons, chapulines with lime and chilli, and the seven moles, of which the near-black one built on chilhuacle chillies and chocolate is the one everyone argues about. July brings the Guelaguetza, when delegations from the eight regions dance in the hillside auditorium; late October and early November fill the cemetery at Xoxocotlán with candles and marigolds. Rain falls hard and briefly from June to September; the rest of the year is warm by day and cool once the sun drops behind the hills.