Viva Oaxaca now available on Amazon Kindle

The Kindle edition of our guidebook to Oaxaca, Viva Oaxaca: An Insider's Guide to Oaxaca's Charms, is now available on amazon.com, as is the print edition.

You can find the Kindle edition of Viva Oaxaca here.

You can find the print edition of Viva Oaxaca at this URL.

The print edition of Viva Oaxcaca has become Amazon's leading guidebook to Oaxaca.

Kindle edition of Viva Oaxaca about to appear

Viva Oaxaca, the leading guidebook to Oaxaca, will be available in a brand-new Kindle edition within a day or two, by the 10th of September, 2011. This special edition for Kindle users has all the information in the print edition, plus extra photos. The Kindle list price will be $7.50 U.S.

Free Concert for organ and trombone in Oaxaca's Cathedral

If you're going to be in Oaxaco on Friday, September 9, you might want to drop by the Cathedral at 8 p.m. There's going to be a concert featuring organ and tromobone, which should sound glorious in the Cathedral. It's put on by Oaxaca's Institute of Historic Organs, and it's free. It features works by Bach, Pergolesi, Handel, Albeniz, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Frescobaldi, and others.

The artists are:

MARGARITA M. SANTIAGO  RICARDEZ, ORGANISTA
DIEGO EZEQUIEL CALDERÓN CONTRERAS, TROMBONISTA

You can learn more about the Institute of Historic Organs at their website.

Oaxaca's 2011 Gueleguetza included a beautiful sound-and-light show

This year's Gueleguetza in Oaxaca included a graceful and colorful sound-and-light show projected onto Oaxaca's cathedral, just north of the central square, or zocalo. You can see what it was like at this YouTube site.

D.H. Lawrence in Oaxaca

There's a nice piece about Lawrence's time in Oaxaca, which led to his book, Mornings in Mexico, on A Word's Worth blog.

More on EnVia, Oaxaca's own micro-finance group

We recommend Fundación En Vía in our guidebook, Viva Oaxaca, and on our website, www.si-oaxaca.com. They are a grassroots micro-finance group who have been helping people in Oaxaca to start  upgrade small businesses for several years now. This isn't a cold, impersonal business. They prefer for donors to come out with them to meet potential micro-loan recipients and see what the group is actually accomplishing. You can read a good summary of their work on MexicoMySpace. If you would like to help people in Oaxaca, this is an excellent way to start.

Washington Post on is it safe to visit Mexico and Oaxaca

The Washington Post published an interesting interview with Mexico's tourism minister, who emphasized how much Mexico has to offer to visitors, and that the drug-gang violence that has given Mexico so much bad press in the last few years is localized to about five percent of the country.

Oaxaca's Santo Domingo church at dusk                     Credit: Robert Adler

You can read the full interview here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/mexicos-tourism-minister-wants-americans-back/2011/08/02/gIQA9dKawI_story.html

Staying up to date about Oaxaca

I just read a USA Today travel tip about Oaxaca.

The author relied on four references, three of which were from 2006 and 2007, and apparently had never been to Oaxaca. Her first food recommendation was for a restaurant that once was good but has been closed for several years. She described the town of La Crucecita and the Pacific coast beaches as "just outside Oaxaca." Actually, to get to them from the city, it's a six or seven hour car or bus ride over very winding roads, or an expensive 40-minute flight.

The moral of the story--things change aren't always as they sound in the guidebooks. Make sure that the travel information you rely on is first-hand and up to date.

Robert Adler
for Viva Oaxaca
and www.si-oaxaca.com

Viva Oaxaca on Amazon.com

The 2011-2012 edition of Viva Oaxaca is selling extremely well on amazon.com. The numbers vary from day to day, but so far the guidebook has made it to #18 on amazon's list of best-selling travel books about Mexico!

Viva Oaxaca now available through CreateSpace and Amazon.com

Our guidebook to Oaxaca is now available at Amate Books in Oaxaca, through our website, www.si-oaxaca.com, through our new U.S. publisher, CreateSpace, and through amazon.com.

New Edition of Viva Oaxaca now available

The 2011 edition of our guidebook to Oaxaca and its surroundings is now available. It's bigger and better than ever, with newly reviewed hotels, restaurants and attractions, plus a wealth of information to help visitors make the most of every minute in this fascinating colonial city. Viva Oaxaca: An Insider's Guide to Oaxaca's Charms can be purchased on our website, www.si-oaxaca.com; through our new U.S. publisher, CreateSpace, at https://www.createspace.com/3582145, and on amazon.com.

Window into Another World: The Weavers of Guadalupe Miramar, Mexico

Weaving Yarn, Weaving Cultures, Weaving Lives: A Circle of Women in Miramar, Oaxaca, Mexico,by Judith Lockhart-Radtke; photography by Tom Feher; Almadia, November, 2010, ISBN 978-607-411-059-3.


This beautifully written and illustrated book tells the story of ten years of cross-cultural cooperation between the Circle of Women, based in the U.S. and in the city of Oaxaca, and the isolated, impoverished women weavers of Guadalupe Miramar, a pueblo high in Mexico's Sierra Madre. It combines touching first-person stories of the individual weavers, an in-depth narrative of the years of intense face-to-face and side-by-side work it took to help these women move from poverty, illiteracy and dependency to self-sufficiency, being able to speak, read and write Spanish, and dignity.


You can read a full review at http://www.suite101.com/content/window-into-another-world-the-women-weavers-of-miramar-mexico-a353082.

Weaving Yarn, Weaving Cultures, Weaving Lives can be purchased online at http://www.thecircleofwomen.org/. All proceeds go to further the work of the Circle of Women.