After yesterday’s exuberant introduction to Oaxaca, and a week’s worth of gluttonous indulgence, I start the day with an early morning run through Oaxaca’s now empty streets, followed by a quick yoga session. All the good work is rapidly undone however with the Mexican breakfast we’re served in the hotel and the fact we’re about to start yet another street food tour. 

Tania, the guide who meets us, is a philosophy teacher at the university during the week and a tour guide at weekends. She loves to show tourists a more up, close and personal experience of her Zapotec heritage, and is delighted to have visitors from London as she saved up for a holiday there a few years ago, with side trips to Oxford and Sheffield. When we express surprise at the latter choice she laughs and says tourists from the UK often question that choice. It transpires she’s a huge fan of Pulp, and was keen to see where Jarvis Cocker and the band were from!

We’re due to see the main sights with her but as we’re staying for a few days and can do them ourselves she suggests we do something a bit more left-field instead, and go to some cool places tourists don’t normally go. What the hell, we’re on an adventure so, why not?!

We start with Mercado de La Merced, a food market that the descendants of pre-Hispanic people use. We check out various stalls and Tania buys us a sticky, sweet tamale; corn flour wrapped in a leaf. To go with it she gets a cup of champurrado which is hot chocolate thickened with cornflour. 

Down another aisle we stop at a bustling pop-up style restaurant called La Guerita where we have memelas, very thin open tortillas cooked on a blistering hot plate and topped with huitlacoche, beans and cheese. However, just before we tuck in Tania gasps and pulls them away from us with huge apologies. She can tell just from the look of them that they’ve been brushed with boiling pig fat, so she quickly requests a fresh, vegetarian-friendly batch. When we eventually tuck in she shares with us some great stories and legends from Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past. 

Leaving the market we walk to the Jalatlaco barrio which used to be where wealthy people lived, but is now more of a hipster, artist neighbourhood. It’s incredibly colourful with street art everywhere including lots of skull designs, particularly of extravagantly be-hatted women. We learn that these female skull representations are known as Catrinas, and alongside the regular calaveras (skeletons) are very much an intrinsic part of El Día Del Muerte celebrations. And Oaxaca is renowned throughout Mexico for taking Day of the Dead to its greatest heights, with Jalatlaco being at the very centre of festivities. 

Once we’ve finally stopped taking photos she leads us to a little building where a lady called  Gloria sells bowls of tejate, a traditional drink made with mami seeds, rose flowers, cacao, corn flour and vanilla. It’s absolutely delicious but reminds us we’d really like a coffee so we visit a nearby coffee shop called Blasón whose owners grow and roast their own coffee just outside Oaxaca. It’s amongst the best we’ve ever tasted.  

We leave Jalatlaco and return to the main part of town as Tania is keen for us to experience something rather different to the usual mezcal tastings most tourists request, especially as we’re heading to an actual mezcal distillery tomorrow. She takes us instead to a cool little ice cream parlour called Pop! where she buys us a chocolate mezcal lollipop and a mezcalite, which is mango ice cream with chamoy (tamarind and chilli sauce), mezcal, dried mango and hibiscus salt powder, topped off with a chilli powder straw. 

It’s magnificent, and the experience is enhanced even further when, to our surprise, she produces an entire bottle of mezcal from her handbag along with some glasses. It’s a brand called Chinga Quedito and she tells us that good mezcal should always have a few bubbles in the glass when it’s poured, which is a true sign of high quality. Her mezcal definitely does, but who knows, it could be a sign that it’s extra fermented. We’re definitely slightly high when we skip out of Pop!

Our last stop is due to be a couple of historic markets beyond the Zocalo, but Tania suggests we also get a chocolate milk shake from a well known store called Mayordomo. Chocolate is sacred to Mexicans, especially in this area, and we can see a little of how it’s produced. We really don’t need to consume anything else but it seems rude not to.

We’re relieved when we can buy some fresh fruit at the sprawling Benito Juarez market next to the chocolate store, but stink of charred meat by the time we’ve walked through the Pasillo Del Humo (Hall of Smoke) which marks the entrance to the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, with huge racks of raw meat hanging from the walls and being grilled on dozens of barbecues. 

This malodorous, carnivorous hell marks the end of our tour, and one which even Tania had decided to miss, so we head back to the hotel to chill out for the rest of the afternoon by the little rooftop pool. When we venture out again later than night we keep it very simple and, finding a lovely restaurant called Norte a Sur next to Santo Domingo, with an upstairs terrace, just order a veggie burger and sparkling water whilst people watching in the square below. 

The stars are twinkling above us and, seemingly like all the cool restaurants in Oaxaca, a great playlist is drifting out of the speakers. Coman is delighted, shazaming the tracks and adding them to his very own Mexico collection on Spotify. It’ll be a great way to bring back memories of this trip in the years to come, and tonight sends us dreamily to bed.