Asunción Ixtaltepec

Anyone looking for the pots, comals and water jars of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec ends up in Asunción Ixtaltepec, which bills itself as the "Pottery Capital of the Isthmus". The name is Nahuatl (ixtal and tepetl, "white hill"); in Zapotec the town is called Yaati. According to the Lienzo de Ixtaltepec, its origins go back to 1546: the first inhabitants came from a place on the bank of the Río de los Perros and moved because of floods. A priest pointed them toward a hill where they found clay good for pottery, and there they founded the town. Pottery was its main livelihood for centuries.

The municipality had 7,203 inhabitants in 2010 (the series peaked at 7,501 in 1995, against 3,815 in 1900), and lies at about 30 to 40 m above sea level. The climate is hot: the mean annual temperature is around 27.9 °C and the roughly 900 mm of rain is concentrated in September, while February is nearly dry. Wikipedia gives no verified source for the climate figures, so treat them as indicative.

The local food is part of the visit. Estofado, a beef stew with pineapple, tomato, guajillo chile, plantain and apple, is the wedding dish and takes a whole night to cook. There are tamales of chicken with mole, chipilín, corn or chile strips, wrapped in banana or corn leaf, and pozol, a cooked-corn drink served over ice and sometimes sweetened with sugar or piloncillo. In the centre stands the Church of the Asunción, with a white facade and two bell towers. Juchitán is about 10 km away and Ciudad Ixtepec about 6 km.