Food of the Gods Chocolate + Maize Sessions

Via pre-hispanic cacao drinks, local seeds, chocolate tastings, very rare types of chocolate, and heirloom maize foods we endeavour to learn about the mysterious paths of the humble cacao bean and the corn cob from their beginnings to its modern incarnations today. Guests are challenged to consider their approach to the vast differences in taste, textures, and context that root Oaxacan and Western chocolate traditions and how all of this might inform our relations to money, death, time, and ceremony.

The Spirits of Agave Session

Through a flight or tasting of three distinct maguey/agave beverages, we endeavour to learn about the mysterious path of maguey, the Goddess Mayahuel, and the moon. Guests are challenged to consider their approach to the vast differences in taste, textures, and context that root Oaxacan and Western traditions and how all of this might inform our relations to farming, elderhood, sacrifice, myth, and food.

Earth, Fire, Food

Over the course of a full day we will visit a family of three generations of potters actively engaged in the collective rememberance of their craft.

We will explore the process of turning clay into ceramics, each step being undertaken and taught together, the use of stone in traditional chocolate preparation, and the ceremony behind the work.

Finally, we will be getting our hands dirty learning the living alchemy of earth and fire, listening to master storytellers, and discovering the old relationships between the fire that cooks our pottery that cooks our food.

Responsible Travel 101

The seminar is not a how-to guide, there are no easy answers, or ten-step solutions that can remedy the issues facing us today. In lieu of the wonton reach for simple solutions, we delve deeper into the nature of travel as tourists and as foreigners. Endeavouring to ask questions that tend to survive attempts to answer them, we invite you to join us so that your travel might be couched in wonderings bigger and deeper than “sustainable” and “regenerative.” Some of the themes we focus on, which vary from session to session, include the history, language, and nature of travel; the roots of hospitality; the difference between travel and tourism; approaching other cultures; language itself, the spells of the west, belonging & transience, and the costs and responsibility of travelling.

Blood of the Gods in the Sierra Norte

Over the course of a full day we will climb into the fertile Oaxacan mountains to experience a delicious, ceremonial chocolate drink. The day consists of an extended workshop and demonstration of the drink-making process, a delicious, organic home-cooked meal, and of course an opportunity to taste one of the rare ceremonial cacao drinks of the Oaxacan people.

Cacao Food Forest Field Trip (2 Days)

This is a special 2-day, 1-night session that focuses on the cacao tree, its fruit, its sweet pulp, its beautiful flowers, its ecosystem, and its survival. We will make our way to Oaxaca’s coast by road to visit a beautiful and lush cacao forest garden in the middle of an indigenous community. From there we will visit the farmers’ workshop facility where we will make fresh chocolate from their cacao and of course, eat it! Finish off the day at the beach with a swim in the ocean!

Cost: 5000p per person

Minimum 2 people

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