(Post 19 of 189. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

From Monte Albán, we headed down sandy, twisty roads past many houses made of wood (!) to the community of Arrazola, home of Alebrijes, wooden painted decorative objects.

There, we got a brief demonstration of how the wood is shaped using a machete (sorry for the blur).

Then we saw how every piece is hand painted and, thus, unique. I have seen so much of this stuff in the city and never appreciated it!

The paleta vendor was doing brisk business. I went with passionfruit!

I fell in love hard with this one. Thankfully, it was too expensive and difficult to get on a plane. 🙂

Ah, more in my budget at 250 pesos (still a lot for me for a purely decorative object). It was the decision of the decade which one of these two to adopt. Can you guess which one is coming home with me?

These reminded me of the earrings I picked up on my, appropriately enough, Mexican themed day in Belgrade.

Yes, this was a shopping stop, but not in a way I found offensive. We got a really good demonstration about this art form, there were no pushy vendors, and the prices were reasonable for the quality of the workmanship — I even got $25 off at the till for paying cash. I’m really glad that I came out here on a tour as I think would have been a lot of work to get myself out here otherwise and not really worth the time to do just that stop unless I was really there to shop, so to visit many studios.

Next stop was going to be lunch. We were all curious about where we would end up!