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Published: February 16th 2008
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It seems like common sense in hindsight not to wear a red t-shirt to a small village of indigenous Tzotzil people when the locals are going to be antagonising bulls in middle of the village plaze. I'd been warned in advance that there would be drunk locals riding bulls in the village of San Juan Chamula as part of the final day of the 5 day carnival in the Catholic calendar that immediately precedes Ash Wednesday (the same Carnival in Brazil that is famous throughout the world), but for some reason I didn't assume it would be just in the middle of the main plaza, with nothing really protecting the watching people in case a bull should take a sudden detour towards the crowd. That said, there were two long ropes attached to the bull, and 4 locals on the end of each rope, but if the bull changed directions suddenly and caught them off balance then there was cause for much shreiking and sudden running of the crowd.... And as for wearing a red t-shirt, well - living in North London just doesn't make one savvy to the more unsual and enigmatic characteristics of of our bovine friends.
However,
fate had it that I did wear the only bright red t-shirt I own to the village, and on the two occasions that the bull did break in the general direction of the part of the crowd I was in (and factoring in that being nosey I'd pushed my way to the front line of the crowd) it seemed to pick me out and head straight for me (none of the locals wearing red t-shirts that day might have had something to do with that) and I would have to turn and run with the rest of the thousands in the crowd from San Juan and a number of nearby Tzotzil villages in a pushing, shoving display where even elderly Tzotzil women got pushed to the ground and trodden on (not by me) as it was a case of "every man for himself" to get the hell out of the way until the 8 brave locals on the ends of the ropes had brought the beast under control again, and the Mexican on the back of the bull who'd just been thrown off onto the concrete was walking around dazed and confused looking for his cowboy hat. At first I
It's that man
Subcomandante Marcos is on posters for sale everywhere around San Cristobal. thought i was being paranoid wondering why the bull headed directly at me on both occasions, until a local laughed and pointed as he went past and said "rojo" (or "red") when the relevance of the colour of my t-shirt actually dawned on me. From that moment on I retreated from the front row of the wall-less bull ring, and went off to explore the food and booze stands of the Carnival instead. Half a BBQed chicken and two Coronas later I called it a day and went home.
The village was just out of San Christobal de las Casas, which (after an ardous 13 hour nightbus ride) was my next stop after I'd completed the week of language school in Oaxaca that I talked about in my last blog entry. SCdlC is a fairly pretty little town, although bloody cold at night and first thing in the morning due to the high altitude (over 2000 meters) and the fact that they kinda do have a winter here. I ended up spending nearly a week there, which was a little longer than I planned - i think that had something to do with the amount of nightlife in the
Lost in Translation
Sometimes the translations on warning signs leave a little to be desired. This is in a long cave and its supposed to to say that its prohibited to pass further. city and some pretty cool daytrips to do in the surrounding areas. San Christobal is in the state of Chiapas, which is famous for the
Zapatistas , who occasionally have rumbles with the Mexican army, and are led by
Subcomadante Marcos .
In addition to my daytrip out to San Juan Chamula, I did some other pretty cool excursions out of the town as well. My favourite was a guided 5-hour mountain bike ride through the hills and forests surrounding San Cristobal, and to a couple of tiny Tzotzil villages that are so remote they don't even have proper roads to them. Strangely enough the villages seemed to be populated exclusively by women and children, as all the men are either working on construction sites in touristic parts of Mexico like Cancun, or even north of the border in the USA working as seasonal farm labourers. As the average hotel worker in San Cristobal gets 45 pesos for an 8 hour shift (that's slightly over 2 quid) it's not difficult to understand why. The mountain bike ride was pretty strenuous at times, with lots of uphill and some quite technical downhill stuff on narrow tracks with rocks, fallen logs and protruding branches
to negotiate. They tour company actually sends two guides with each party, so that way if the group slowly breaks up into two groups (one faster and one slower) there is still at least one guide to cycle with each group. That's exactly what happened on the day I signed up, where the group of 8 would always seperate into two groups of 4 on the uphill parts - no points for guessing whether I was at the front with leaders, or helping to bring up the rear....!! I don't like going up steep hills....
I also made another interesting daytrip out to a nearby
national park with lots of pretty small lakes and indigenous forest, and also to an awesome waterfall called El Chiflon. I also spent time at the
Maya Medicine Museum, which displays the background and working of indigenous medicines using various herbs and plants, and the wider belief systems within which the locals view healthcare.
San Cristobal also has a fairly happening nightlife scene, with several live music venues which are always free to get into. The likes of Cafe Revolucion and El Zirco pack people in each night to live salsa/samba oriented bands, and me and
a crew of fairly socialble people from my backpackers took maximum advantage of the opportunity to stay out into the wee hours. I also tried a local variation on just drinking a plain beer, where they grind up fresh red chillies (or sometime chilli sauce) and mix them with salt and lime juice and maybe some soy or worcestshire sauce, and give your beer a heavy spiking of it before rimming the top of your pint glass with the same concoction. They call it a
Michelada. I will say that it was interesting, but don't think I'll be having too many more. One one occasion when we were out we ended up adopting a really short, fat Mexican who drank several of these and as he got more and more drunk he spat a lot as he spoke - and as he was short we all had to lean down to hear what he was saying in the noisy venues, and would usually end up with chilli and salt down one side my face.
Anyway, all of the above ended about a week ago, but as per usual I'm at least a week behind with my blog. Since then
I've been to the Mayan ruins of Palenque, left Mexico for Guatemala and see the Mayan ruins in Tikal, and left Guatemala for Belize and am currently in the small hill town of San Ignacio where I spent today missioning about some big caves - but more about all of those another day!
Hope everyone is happy and well. Till next time ;-)
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