Overview
Duration: 9 days / 9 nights
Start & End point: Mexico City
Group size: Max 16 participants
Languages: English & Spanish
Difficulty: Easy
Physical condition: (good is required).
Places we will visit: Mexico city, Xochimilco, Puebla city, Oaxaca City, Monte Alban archeological site, Mitla archeological site, Deep immersion in the Cloud forest of Sierra Oaxaca.
The Bushman Philosophy
At Bushman, we believe travel is not about movement. It’s about awareness.
Each expedition is a living dialogue between art, nature, and spirit.
A chance to witness how beauty, community, and consciousness emerge when humans live in harmony with their environment.
A TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCE EXPLORING THE WONDERS OF DEEP MEXICO
This is not a trip about distance but depth.
It’s a return to the essential, a conversation between humanity and the living world.
Because every step we take outward is also a step inward — toward art, earth, and spirit.
IN COLLABORATION WITH LOCAL COMMUNITIES
HIGHLIGHTS
THE ESSENCE OF THE JOURNEY
WHERE CULTURE BREATHES
Boutique stay in La Roma, Mexico City’s creative heart.
WHERE WATER REMEMBERS
Xochimilco’s canals drifting among floating gardens and ancestral wisdom. Farm to table.
WHERE FLAVOR TELLS HISTORY
Baroque Puebla, talavera streets, and the sacred taste of mole poblano.
WHERE THE EARTH SPEAKS IN STONE
Monte Albán, El Tule, Mitla and Oaxaca’s timeless valley.
WHERE COMMUNITIES LIVE IN HARMONY
Days spent with Zapotec guardians of the cloud forest learning from their hands, their rituals, their way of belonging.
WHERE SILENCE BECOMES LANGUAGE
Nights in wooden eco-cabins surrounded by mist and pine.
WHERE ART KEEPS MEMORY ALIVE
Oaxacan printmakers, carving stories into wood and time.
WHERE TRAVEL BECOMES TRANSFORMATION
Presence. Connection. Beauty.A journey not to escape life but to return to it.
Day 1
On Day 1, Each traveler will arrive independently and make their way to our boutique hotel in Colonia Roma, one of the city’s most artistic and culturally alive neighborhoods. Once a residential enclave for early 20th-century visionaries, today La Roma hums with creativity, art galleries, leafy boulevards, and restored houses that echo with both nostalgia and innovation.
In the afternoon, we’ll meet for our welcome gathering at the hotel, where we’ll connect as a group and set the tone for the days ahead. This first circle is about presence, sharing intentions, stories, and a quiet sense of beginning.
La Roma, today it stands as a living canvas of art, architecture, and counterculture. A neighborhood where history whispers through the stucco walls, and where every corner café or design store feels part of an ongoing conversation between past and present.
As evening falls, we gather for our first shared table at a traditional Mexican cantina, where contemporary chefs reinterpret ancestral flavors with a modern sensibility.
Over mezcal, conversation, and laughter, we’ll celebrate our arrival not just to Mexico, but to a journey that invites us to look deeper, listen closer, and begin seeing through different eyes.
Day 2
Xochimilco: Floating Roots & Hidden Histories
After breakfast at the hotel, we’ll head south to Xochimilco, a UNESCO World Heritage site where water, land, and culture intertwine.
Drifting along its tranquil canals aboard a private trajinera, we’ll explore the ancient chinampas floating gardens built by the Aztecs that still sustain local life today.
Guided by local farmers, we’ll learn about their ecological practices and how this centuries-old agricultural system continues to nurture biodiversity.
Lunch will be a farm-to-table experience on one of these islands, prepared with seasonal ingredients and native plants. A celebration of Mexico’s living culinary heritage.
In the afternoon, we’ll return to the city and uncover its deeper layers with a private walking tour led by a historian, exploring the hidden stories and sacred corners of the Centro Histórico, from colonial facades to the ruins of the Templo Mayor, once the heart of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán.
As evening falls, we’ll dine at a beautiful historic restaurant overlooking the Metropolitan Cathedral, enjoying dinner on a terrace bathed in soft city light a moment suspended between past and present.
After dinner, we return to our hotel in Colonia Roma for the night.
Day 3
Puebla to Oaxaca: The Flavor of History
This morning, we journey east toward Puebla, a UNESCO World Heritage city framed by volcanoes and steeped in color and spice.
We’ll walk its historic center with a local historian, uncovering baroque architecture, Talavera-tiled facades, and bustling markets filled with artisans and aromas of cacao and cinnamon.
Lunch will pay homage to Puebla’s culinary icon. Mole poblano, a complex and sacred dish said to have been created by Dominican nuns in the 17th century as an offering fit for angels.
After lunch, our route turns south through the mountains toward Oaxaca. By late afternoon, we’ll arrive in the city and take a gentle walking tour of its historic center, once again guided by a local historian who will bring its temples, courtyards, and colonial charm to life.
As the sun sets, we’ll share an unforgettable dinner at El Criollo, one of Oaxaca’s most exceptional restaurants where tradition and innovation meet under the guidance of celebrated chef Luis Arellano.
During the evening, we’ll enjoy a mezcal tasting led by local experts, learning to recognize its delicate notes and the deep connection between agave, land, and ritual.
Day 4
Ancient Stones & Living Traditions
This day is an encounter between past and present.
We’ll begin at Monte Albán, one of the most important Zapotec archaeological sites, set high on a mountaintop overlooking the valley.
Among temples, tombs, and observatories, we’ll feel how geometry and ritual once shaped the human relationship with the cosmos.
Then, we visit the Tree of Tule, a living being more than 2,000 years old, a reminder of endurance and sacred connection.
In the afternoon, we explore Oaxaca’s central market, tasting local chocolate, mole, and mezcal.
In the evening, we’ll gather for dinner at one of the city’s most iconic restaurants, a temple to Oaxacan gastronomy where ancestral ingredients and contemporary vision come together to tell the story of the region through flavor and fire.
Into the Sierra Norte: The Living Forest
After breakfast, we’ll travel east toward the Valle de Mitla, home to one of the most enigmatic and beautiful archaeological sites in Mexico.
The ancient Zapotec city of Mitla, meaning “Place of the Dead” was not a city of rulers, but of priests. It served as a spiritual center where death was understood as transformation, not ending.
Its palaces and temples are adorned with more than 100,000 perfectly fitted stone mosaics, forming intricate geometric patterns that symbolize the eternal cycles of life and spirit.
After exploring the site and its quiet surroundings, we’ll continue our journey into the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s most breathtaking and powerful regions, a land of oak, fir, and ocote forests, cascading waterfalls, fresh springs, and ancestral Zapotec communities.
This is the México profundo. Remote, pristine, and vital. Where people still live in deep, reciprocal relationship with their environment.
We’ll arrive by evening to a Zapotec village surrounded by mist and pine, settling into wooden eco-cabins nestled in the cloud forest.
A place of silence, freshness, and vitality where community and nature still breathe as one.
This land holds some of the oldest and most enduring Zapotec communities in Mexico, keepers of stories that flow like water through the forest and time.
Day 6 - 7
Living with the Forest
Over these two days, we’ll walk, learn, and share life alongside Zapotec families who have inherited an ancient wisdom. Not only about the forest, but about coexistence itself.
Here, we’ll come to understand that culture is not a human phenomenon in isolation; it’s what emerges when a community lives in deep, reciprocal relationship with its environment.
We’ll take part in a hands-on cooking workshop to learn how to prepare mole using local ingredients and ancestral techniques, a gesture of gratitude and continuity.
We’ll also spend time with a traditional healer (curandero) who will introduce us to the medicinal plants of the region, explaining how, through their relationship with the land, the people of the Sierra have found their own medicine. Physical, emotional, and spiritual. Amid misty trails, waterfalls, and communal hearths, we’ll witness how simplicity can hold the essence of abundance.
The Sierra Norte stands as a living example of sustainable forest management and collective harmony. Here, through the eyes, the hands, and the presence of its people, we’ll begin to understand how abundance arises from balance rather than excess.
The art of Memory
After returning to Oaxaca city, we’ll visit a traditional printmaking workshop, where artisans craft the famous Oaxacan engravings, bold, mythic expressions of identity and resistance.
As the smell of ink and wood fills the air, we’ll see how art here is not decoration but storytelling. A dialogue between generations. This final encounter ties together the threads of everything we’ve lived: creation, earth, and spirit.
Day 9
Return to Mexico City
Before leaving Oaxaca, we’ll stroll once more through the Botanical Garden, reflecting quietly on the textures and teachings of the journey, where desert plants and tropical trees coexist in harmony.
On our way back to Mexico City, we’ll stop again in Puebla for a final shared meal, celebrating the flavors, colors, and friendships that have emerged along the way.
By evening, we’ll arrive at our boutique hotel in Colonia Roma, returning to the place where our circle began.
That night, as the city hums softly outside, we’ll understand that the true destination was never a place, but a state of awareness.
What began as a journey across landscapes ends as an awakening within:
“A quiet reminder that the world’s beauty is also our own.”
By the end of the expedition
By the end of the expedition, you'll receive a collection of incredible photographs, Professionally edited and ready to share with family and friends or cherish as keepsakes.
One of your tour leaders is a professional photographer that ensures that your visit is not only educational and immersive but also visually stunning, providing memories you'll treasure forever.
Gallery
Feel the Soul of Mexico.
Where the sacred still breathes in every color and sound.
If you feel the call — reach out.