How This Free Oaxaca Guide Works

A single rule runs through everything on this site: walking in or taking part costs nothing beyond what you later decide to give. That test built the centre of the site, 10 free walking tours hosted on GuruWalk, every one led by an independent local guide. Around that core sit pages on public ground with no ticket, among them the Zócalo, the Alameda de León, Andador Macedonio Alcalá, the central markets and the historic centre churches. No sale happens anywhere on these pages. A place on a walk is reserved where the walk lives, on GuruWalk.

The Reason For This Guide

Independent guides working out of Oaxaca own every walk shown here. The directory gathers their 10 free, pay what you want tours, all booked through GuruWalk and none sold directly from this site. They fall into three groups, Centro Histórico And Santo Domingo, Jalatlaco And The Street Murals and Xochimilco And The Markets, and every walk has a page of its own listing the meeting point, the operator or guide where one is named, the length, the languages and the rating. Free sights carry their catches in the same breath. The Zócalo, the Alameda de León and Andador Macedonio Alcalá cost nothing to walk, and the same holds for the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, while the ex-convent museum beside it sells tickets and the Jardín Etnobotánico admits visitors on its guided visits only. The Mercado Benito Juárez and the Mercado 20 de Noviembre take nothing to wander, though their food and goods are paid. At the Museo Textil de Oaxaca and at MUFI no admission charge is reported, and the central churches keep service hours. Monte Albán, Mitla, Yagul and Hierve el Agua sit outside the city and charge entry. A condition never walks away from the claim it limits.

Oaxaca Centro Histórico And Santo Domingo Jalatlaco And The Street Murals Xochimilco And The Markets

What A Walk Page Holds

Each walk page shows only what holds still: the GuruWalk platform, the operator, the meeting point, the neighbourhood, the languages and the duration. Every rating carries its scale and its platform, exactly as GuruWalk records it, so a walk reads rated 4.63 out of 5 across 1,165 GuruWalk reviews and nothing looser than that. Anything the GuruWalk page for the walk cannot support simply goes unwritten. Route order, packing advice and the rest live over there.

Pay What You Want

Each walk on this site is free, pay what you want, with no tier and no booking charge of any kind. Holding a spot means opening the walk's own page on GuruWalk. On the day, the walker comes to the Oaxaca meeting point listed on the walk's GuruWalk page and gives the guide whatever the walk felt worth when it ends.

How The Facts Are Chosen

Every figure on this site is copied, not massaged. A walk's rating appears as GuruWalk publishes it, with the out-of-5 scale and the review count attached, so the Free Walking Tour Oaxaca by locals shows as 4.63 across 1,165 GuruWalk reviews and the Around Oaxaca city walk shows as 4.99 across 496, nothing rounded up or down. Durations, languages and meeting points are taken from what each walk's own GuruWalk page states, word for word. For attractions, the rules belong to the operators, so a condition stays glued to its sight: the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán charges nothing while the ex-convent museum beside it sells tickets, and INAH Sunday entry is free only for Mexican nationals and residents of Mexico with ID. Where a place such as MUFI or the Museo Textil de Oaxaca simply has no admission charge reported, the page says that instead of calling it outright free. Anything that cannot be pinned down gets left out rather than guessed.

How This Site Earns

This site operates no tours and sells nothing itself. All 10 free walking tours belong to independent local guides, and booking happens on GuruWalk. When someone reserves a walk through a link from these pages, GuruWalk pays this site a referral fee and the reader pays nothing extra. Since every walk works on a pay-what-you-want basis, the only money that changes hands on the street is the amount the walker chooses to give the guide.

Page Map

• The home page opens onto the 10 free walking tours and the ticket-free ground of Oaxaca, among it the Cerro del Fortín, the Alameda de León, Andador Macedonio Alcalá and the Zócalo itself.
• Walk pages stick to a fixed fact set: operator, meeting point, languages, duration. Ratings print with their scale and count, out of 5 across the GuruWalk reviews a walk has drawn, so 4.91 across 636 GuruWalk reviews for the Street Art Of Jalatlaco appears exactly like that.
• The Centro Histórico And Santo Domingo walks all run in English, with Spanish offered on every one except the Oaxaca Free Walking Tour, History, Culture & Local Secrets, which is English only, and each departs from a mapped point in or beside the historic centre.

• Start points are street addresses you can locate before you leave the hotel. For the Centro Histórico And Santo Domingo category, walks set off from Cosijoeza 110A in the Centro, Jardín El Pañuelito, the Teatro Macedonio Alcalá, ARIPO next to the fountain, the Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, and the Plaza de la Cruz de Piedra in Xochimilco. The Jalatlaco category uses Cosijoeza 110A and the Iglesia de San Matías Jalatlaco. In Xochimilco, walkers gather either at the Plaza de la Cruz de Piedra or at Café Kapel Nana and Eden MiniGalería.
• GuruWalk stands alone behind every link this site offers, and the affiliate disclosure states that in plain words. Nothing named here is owned or run here: each walk belongs to the independent local guide leading it, and every reservation happens on GuruWalk.