San Cristobal de las Casas

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  San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
Monday, September 18, 2006

Alex: San Cristobal de las Casas is a very pretty town with lots of nice churches, pretty streets and plazas. It is also home to lots of indigenous people who still wear their traditional dress (or at least the women) which is interesting to see, each group has a slightly different outfit but generally the women wear mid length full skirts (some of them oddly hairy) held up with a brightly coloured scarf, an embroidered blouse that just sits on the shoulders and lots of scarves, here lots of the women also have their hair plaited with ribbon into two plaits. We went to one of the markets aimed at tourists (which are numerous, as this is billed as the prettiest town in Mexico) and there were lots of people selling handmade goods at ridiculously cheap prices, I bought an embroidered skirt for about $5. We got back to the hotel, checked our emails and wished we hadn't - the souviners we had bought in Teotihuacān and DHL-ed home at great expense so they would be safe had been opened at customs, not packed up properly again and broken in transit, these weren't little delicate things so they must have been thrown about a bit. Most of the rest of our first day was spent trying to sort it out and get DHL to pay for them and the postage (still a work in progress).

Our second day we decided to take one of the numerous day trips to Palenque, some Mayan ruins about 100 miles away. If you are thinking of doing this don't, it is far too much for one day, 100 miles may not be too bad on good roads but these aren't good roads they are windy, with lots of speed bumps and pot holes. We set out at 6.30 and stopped about 2 hours later for some breakfast, an hour or so later we stopped at the Agua Azul falls, 7km of falls and rapids, which were very pretty but somewhat lacking in the Azul (blue), more of a muddy brown colour really, I read in the guidebook later that they are only blue in the dry season and the colour we saw in the wet season. They were surrounded by the required street sellers offering, coconuts, fresh juice, empanadas, jewelry, t-shirts, paintings and any other kind of knick knack you could ever desire! About 45 minutes later we stopped at the Miso Ha waterfalls which were spectacular. They were like every jungle waterfall you have ever seen in a film, we had a wander around them (including behind them) but didn't have time for a swim in the tempting looking pool at the foot of the falls. Back on the bus and on the road for another couple of hours and we were finally at Palenque the reason we took the trip. However on getting out of the nice air-conditioned bus we didn't really want to wander around hot and humid jungle to look at ruins for 2 hours. The ruins were pretty impressive, the jungle setting was amazing, and you could see the influence of the older ruins we had visited in Mexico City plus some of the details that had been lost with age there. What I couldn't understand is why anyone wold want to build a city in that heat and humidity, it didn't help that we had been told that the mosquitos would be out in force so make to sure we were covered up (we are in Malaria and Dengue Fever country now), in actually fact we didn't see a single mozzie but there were lots of dragonflies (who are our friends because they eat mozzies). After dropping some sensible people off who weren't returning to San Cristobal in Palenque town the mostly empty bus set back off for the 5 hour non-stop journey back. We reminisced for a few minutes with the other passengers (who, bar one, were all English) about what food we were missing (Walkers salt and vinegar crisps, good chips and variety in general if you are interested) and were then shut up by the drivers Mexican music which continued the whole way and just got more and more annoying. It was like been subjected to Cliff Richard (sorry Janet) and Barry Manilow for 5 hours but WORSE, there was no way to avoid it either; I couldn't sleep because the roads were to windy and I was being thrown around, you couldn't talk over it because it was too loud, I am surprised we all survived it intact and sane. On interesting part of the ride back was some of the road side signs saying "You are now entering Zapatista Territory", Chiapas, the Mexican state we were in, was at the centre of the Zapatista uprising in the ´90s, when the Zapatis´ took control of some Chiapas towns for a short while.

Our plan was to head straight into Guatemala to Antigua the next day but we were both knackered from all the travelling and couldn't really face another bus journey (or risk the possibility of bad Mexican music), Dean was still not 100% and we didn't have any Guatemalean Queztals so we decided to postpone for a day and just chill out a bit and do a few jobs and enjoy our last full day in Mexico!

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