Welcome to The Fungivore's MycoAdventures! If you have found yourself here, you probably have some interest in attending one of our week-long mushroom forays in Mexico in 2025. This is an archived page from our 2023 & '24 adventures.
What makes a perfect adventure?
We planned five adventures in 2023, spanning from July to October, two focusing on the culinary side of Oaxaca, and separately, two on the artisan and weaving side of Oaxaca, and NAMA_MX23, a separate privately arranged event for the North American Mycological Association. Each began in the city for a welcome dinner, and then head up into the mountains for foraging local mushrooms for three (or more) days.
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During our dyeing and weaving focused tours, we spent our time between the mountains and Valleys of Oaxaca, learned the art of dyeing with mushrooms and lichens with Alissa Allen of Mycopigments, and spent time in Teotitlan de Valle hosted by our dear artisan friends the Bautista-Lazo family; followed by a chance to try your hand at the foot treadle loom, culminating in participants weaving their own rugs to take home. |
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Our food focused tours were a little different, and covered everything from prix-fix (5-course or more) meals to all-night roasted barbacoa (that attendees helped prepare!) with the mountain communities, to market adventures, and meetings and meals with some of the chefs of Oaxaca, known for their expertise in preparing the locally eaten mushrooms, as well as exploring mezcal and the ancient art of distillation, medicinal herbs, traditional cooking classes, street food and more! See the two culinary tours below to understand the differences between them.
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ALL of our tours featured a guest mycologist, local nature guides or mycology experts or some combination thereof, as well as information exchange with the ancient and traditional knowledge holding indigenous cultures. Every trip had a little bit of everything, and no tour was the same as any other, each sold out tour left lasting memories for all of our attendees.
You can see more photos and videos from our previous trips on Instagram: Please follow along with @The_Fungivore and @TravelingTradersBazaar! |
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MyColores Artisan Adventures in the Sierra Sur, La Mixteca and Teotitlan del Valle
Spending time in the city, mountains, and Valleys of Oaxaca, we learned how to identify and dye with mushrooms, lichens, plants and insects, spent time with artisans creating a range of handmade crafts, and soaked up the diversity and richness of Zapotec culture dating back at least 12,000 years. Joining for her second year with us, Mycopigments master Alissa Allan of returned to explore new forests, environments and mushrooms! Alissa was with us again for the 2024 MyColores weeks!
Aug 16-24, 2023: Sierra Sur Mountains & Teotitlan de Valle
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Located halfway between Oaxaca City and the Pacific Coast, high up in the mountains, the mushroom-famous town of San Jose Del Pacifico sits on a ridge of mixed pine forest. The entire town is adorned with mushrooms, from the wool products to the murals, the wood carvings, art, food and more. We partnered with local hongueras to explore the many varieties of dyeing mushrooms, and our friend Chef Ariadne provides masterful dishes of edible mushrooms for our enjoyments over the two days/three nights in the mountains. Our remaining time was spent in Teotitlan del Valle, where we used our mushrooms to dye wool that we were then use to weave rugs on foot treadle looms under the tutelage of the Bautista-Lazo family. Each participant left with their own woven project to take home. Finally, we finished as we started, with a night and group dinner in Oaxaca City to reflect on the trip and ease re-entry after an incredible experience together. |
Aug 30-Sept 7, 2023: Mixteca Alta Mountains & Teotitlan de Valle
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The summer of 2023 saw the 2nd Fiesta de los Hongos Mixtecos, and was our first opportunity to explore the area during the rainy season. Here, we partner with the local community to explore the woods and culture of the Mixtec people, the Ñuu Savi. We three two days gathering and preparing mushrooms--dyers and edible, and explored the vast Mixteca Alta mountains, as well as the burgeoning folks markets in the mountain city of Tlaxiaco, and stayed in a quirky lodge with plenty of its own mushrooms to find!
Our remaining time was spent in Teotitlan del Valle, where we used our mushrooms to dye wool that we were then use to weave rugs on foot treadle looms under the tutelage of the Bautista-Lazo family. Each participant left with their own woven project to take home. Finally, we finished as we started, with a night and group dinner in Oaxaca City to reflect on the trip and ease re-entry after an incredible experience together. |
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MyComida Culinary Adventures in the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca City & beyond!
Oaxaca is already known for many things, and will continue to capture people’s imaginations well into the future as the true depth of culture and its global significance come more into focus, as the eyes of the world gaze toward her. Of those many things, one particular part stands out above the rest, and that, of course, is the food: many consider Oaxacan cuisine to be one of the most complex–yet somehow segregated–cuisines in the world. Of course Mexico is known for its corn–maize–which was genetically altered here in Oaxaca by the ancient people of the Central Valleys from a small grain called teosinte into the "corn" we know today over many millennia.
Viewing the cuisine through the bi-focal lens that is Oaxaca– 1) the story of the ancient Zapotec and Mixtec people that arrived in this valley well over 12,000 years ago, & 2) the modern wonder of preserved culture that Oaxaca has become–one gets a sense that while incredibly ancient, this cuisine is just now beginning to be understood by the foodies of the globe, as well as by the inheritors of tradition right here at home: the new, young and inspiring chefs taking Oaxacan food to the next level of competence and completeness.
Nowhere is this more visible than during mushroom season, Temporada de Hongos, or Temporada de Lluvia (rain), when the foraging and forest savvy mountain people of the clouds share their finds with the valley folk, and wild foraged mushrooms are found on just about every menu. Locally, the month of August, Agosto, is known colloquially as Hongosto-–the prix fixe dinners are fungi, the focus is fungi, and the world is wet. The 2023 MyComida (español MiComida) Culinary Adventures took advantage of this incredibly bountiful season to bring you two very different experiences!
Viewing the cuisine through the bi-focal lens that is Oaxaca– 1) the story of the ancient Zapotec and Mixtec people that arrived in this valley well over 12,000 years ago, & 2) the modern wonder of preserved culture that Oaxaca has become–one gets a sense that while incredibly ancient, this cuisine is just now beginning to be understood by the foodies of the globe, as well as by the inheritors of tradition right here at home: the new, young and inspiring chefs taking Oaxacan food to the next level of competence and completeness.
Nowhere is this more visible than during mushroom season, Temporada de Hongos, or Temporada de Lluvia (rain), when the foraging and forest savvy mountain people of the clouds share their finds with the valley folk, and wild foraged mushrooms are found on just about every menu. Locally, the month of August, Agosto, is known colloquially as Hongosto-–the prix fixe dinners are fungi, the focus is fungi, and the world is wet. The 2023 MyComida (español MiComida) Culinary Adventures took advantage of this incredibly bountiful season to bring you two very different experiences!
July 12-20, 2023: Cuajimoloyas & El Carrizal
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Our first tour was the inaugural tour of Oaxaca's Mushroom Season, after the first several weeks of intense rains, when the Porcini and Caesar Amanita are coming out in full bounty in the forests around mountain town of Cuajimoloyas; We timed it perfectly and joined in the Cuajimoloyas mushroom festival, and afterward, we continued in the mountains for three additional days in the breathtaking hamlet of El Carrizal--a small town on roughly 200 people--for some epic culinary adventuring! What a stunning and intense trip it was... so much so, that we are doing TWICE in 2024. (FYI: this was the only adventure of the five that we stayed in the mountains for 6 straight days... we loved it so much, that all of our adventures have extended mountain time in 2024!) |
Sept 13-21, 2023: Ixtlan & Oaxaca City
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Two months later, deep into mushrooms season and arguably the most bountiful times in the last two years of picking mushrooms in the Mountains of Oaxaca, we stayed three nights in the cabins of Ixtlan de Juarez, deep into the Sierra Norte where it was hard not to step on edible mushrooms right outside of your cabin! The last three years of September mushrooms in Ixtlan have been wet, incredible, and delicious. We recorded 27 species of edible mushrooms that we found in 2022 in just two days of foraging! We followed that with 24 edible species found in 2023. From there, we returned to Oaxaca City for two days of Mezcal tastings, fine dining and culinary classes with some of the most celebrated restaurants and chefs in the region. This trip was so inspiring that we are repeating it in 2024, extending the mountain portion, and decided to Christian Schwarz join us, because... can we make it better? Yes we can! |
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What past attendees are saying...
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So much more than a tour; this was the ultimate Oaxaca experience. Exploring ruins with local, knowledgeable guides; joining in on Guelaguetza in Oaxaca City; enjoying gourmet food; mushroom foraging with Zapotec people; dyeing with mushrooms & lichens; weaving the dyed wool under the tutelage of a Teotitlan weaving family. |
Touring with Zachary and Kim is a total blast. From the moment we first met, it felt like we had known each other for years! Our whole group felt like a little family during our trip. |
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