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Oaxaca (i): I was so excited about the ethnobotanical garden when visiting Oaxaca for a conference in 2017. Ethnobotany has become one of my academic side interests, so I was enthusiastically looking forward to visiting this place. And then I arrived, and realised the only way to enter is to take a guided tour. In Spanish, because none of the three English tours a week fit with my conference schedule. No planlessly wandering around, no solitary exploring. Such a disappointment. Well. I went for the Spanish one-hour tour, and by the end of it my disappointment had waned. Apparently, they used to allow visitors to wander around freely in the garden, but had so many plants stolen that they had to restrict the visits to guided tours (or so I understood the guide – my Spanish is far from fluent). And to be fair, there is definitely a point to having a guide explain things in the garden. There were no signs, but the guide was incredibly knowledgeable and explained all about the wild and the cultivated. The garden was small, but dense, and there was much to learn. It is definitely worth visiting. I would have liked it better, though, if I’d been allowed to wander around on my own after the tour, to marvel at the cacti in a little bit more intimate and slow detail.
Photo: Jardín Ethnobotánico de Oaxaca, Mexico, November 2017. Posted on Instagram April 12, 2020.
Katja Malmborg 