How to Visit The Archaeological Site of Mitla - Oaxaca using public transport

April 23 2021

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Visiting The Archaeological Site of Mitla 40km from Oaxaca using public transportation makes a great half-day trip.

If you are good with logistics, you can easily combine Mitla with a visit to Tule, where I visited and blogged about back in January. You might need to walk a bit as the Mitla bus takes the highway, by-passing Tule town.

The Archaeological site of Mitla, located in the modern municipality of San Pablo Villa de Mitla is the second most important archaeological site in Oaxaca State after Monte Alban and the most important site of the Zapotec culture.

The Zapotec name is Lyobáa, identified as 'resting place' or 'grave'. In Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica, it means 'place of the dead'.

The Templo Católico de San Pablo Villa de Mitla built in the late 16th Century on a pre-Hispanic platform using materials from the temples they destroyed:

Zona Arqueológica Mitla - Read in depth on Wikipedia:

Patio de las Grecas (images 1, 2 & 3):

Patio de las Columnas (images 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8):

Entrance to the tombs, sadly off limits just now:

Patio de las Tumbas (images 10, 11 & 12 exterior view):

How to get to Mitla from Oaxaca using public transportation:

This is very easy. There is no need to take a tour. And there is one blog post I found, that even before I visited, I could see that the blogger did not actually go there.

The site is NOT as they quoted, 3 miles to the west of the town, nor near the junction with the main highway and said blogger enclosed no photos. What a twat! Why do they even bother? Anyone with a pea-sized brain can see they wrote bollocks by just having a look at Google Maps.

NomadicBackpacker is the site you need to be using. I only blog about places I have visited. Period.

The best place to catch the Mitla bound bus in Oaxaca is on the highway, about 500 metres east of the ADO Bus terminal, just before McDs.

Here is my bus to Mitla:

Fare @April 2021, 20MXN. Journey time, 54 minutes. Pay the driver. Distance is 40km +/-.

For the Zona Arqueológica de Mitla, it is best to get off at a spot as shown below, from where you walk north, past the Municipio de San Pablo Villa Mitla and continue to the Zona Arqueológica.