Travels Around The World

San Cristobal de Las Casas

After a long 13 hour bus ride full of smelly people, bad movies with spanish subtitles, windy turns, and a blinding morning sun I arrived in San Cristobal del Las Casas. San Cristobal is located in the political stormy state of Chaipas, located about half way between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Back in 1994 many of the local indiginous people who make up this area stormed the goverment buildings in an attempt to start a revolution. While initially succeding they were eventually driving out by the military. Several masacarers occured and tensions still remain high among the local indiginious people and those of mixed decent.

San Cristobal is a beautiful colonial town surrounded by vast mountains and rolling hills filled with corn fields and other vegatibles. The streets are narrow, and the pace of life is noticably slower. The people here look different than in the rest of Mexico. Nearly 1/5 of the people are descendants of the ancient Mayans. These people wear colorful clothing and are often selling hand woven goods on the street. Even the normal Mexicans are noticably shorter and darker than the ones in the DF, Puebla, and Oaxaca. If I didn't look like a giant before here in Mexico, I definitately do now. Honestely I've seen full grown women who can't be even 4 feet tall.

After arriving in town I was immediately swarmed by hawkers trying to get me to their hostel or hotel. This is something rather unusal for Mexico. I've never experienced this so far. It reminds me of being in Europe or parts of Thailand. The minute you step off a boat or bus you get hounded by each guesthouse. It turned out to be ok as I stayed at one of the places that was being hyped. For 40 pesos a night its hard to resist.

After getting everything set at the hostel I spent the rest of the morning walking around the city and eating tacos along the way. San Cristibol has the cheapest tacos in Mexico so far. At 1 peso per taco its hard not to eat tacos. These tacos are pretty good size too. I wish they were this cheap and good in the states. Yum!

The town's main cathredal

Walking down Insurgents

A view from the Cerro de Guadalupe

In the afternoon I headed out to the town of San Juan Chamula. Chamula is unique in that it is made up almost entirely of the Tzotzil ethnic group. To get there I had to jump in an old VW bus that was crammed full of people. But when everyone is like 5 feet tall (or shorter) its not hard to cram a lot of people inside. The town itself was a complete dump. Its obvious that the locals here are pretty darn poor. The town did have a cool market and lots of neat handycrafts.

The main market and church at San Juan Chamula

Walking around was rather interesting. Every ten feet or so I'd get hounded by some little kid to either buy a bracelet or give them some pesos. If it wasn't that then it would be a group of teenagers who wanted to record my voice talking english. They had a list of questions they asked me and then recorded my answers on cassett tape. There were very few foreigners in this town, making it even harder to blend in.

After a few hours I made my way back to San Cristobal. The one interesting thing here in San Cristobal is how cold it gets at night. Once the sun set the place got really cold. Man, I mean cold. It wasn't below freezing, but the dry and crisp mountain air sends shivers down your bones. I was so cold that I spent most of the night walking from coffee shop to coffee shop. Not being a coffee drinker, I just had mexican hot chocalate. They even have the stuff in selfserve vending machines. What a great country, i just wish it could be a little warmer at night.

Completely bored out of my mind I stumbled upon a bar playing salsa music. Again to my dismay no one here actually dances salsa but at least they had a live band. The band was kicken and the dancers were really funny. But I quickly tired of not being able to dance salsa so I went back to the hostel. Now if only the hostel had heat, that would be great.

Posted by todd at November 25, 2005 04:35 PM