Blogs from San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, North America - page 3

HE SAID... Today we were travelling southwest from Palenque to San Cristobal de las Casas. We woke early, as we had a 7:20am bus to San Cristobal. Depending on the activity of the Zapatistas, the trip was going to take between six to nine hours. We were more than happy to contribute to the movement’s support for indigenous Mexicans, but the decision was out of our hands. The bus company makes a daily decision on the safest route from Palenque to San Cristobal. We checked out of Hotel Xibalba, walked to the nearby bus station, had a quick coffee, loaded our packs into the baggage compartment and settled in our comfy seats. We were once again travelling on a luxurious ADO bus, this time with complimentary ear plugs for the movies (a welcome change from the ... read more

This morning was the most facinating part of the trip so far when we visited the communities of San Juan Chamula and San Lorenzo Zinacantan in the highlands of Chiapas, near San Cristobal. While both are Maya descendants they have very different mystic traditions and are immediately identifiable by the colour and style of their traditional clothing. Chamulans wear black & white while Zinacantans wear multi-coloured dress with intricate flower motifs. Zinacantans work as a collective selling arts & crafts, fruit & vegetables for 10% with the rest goes into a pool with the seller also getting a share of the pool whereas Chamulans don't share. The churches & customs are another point of difference but unfortunately no photos allowed. While the outsides are the same Spanish style construction & the inside include alters & statue's ... read more

Well, being up around 0500hrs has gotten unfortunately common. Today we were looking to head back into Mexico from Flores, Guatemala. Being up this early allowed us to catch up with Jon, a dutch guy doing a border run to reset his visa. We tagged along on his coat tails since it sounded like he'd done this before. We wanted originally to cross at near Bethel and do a river border crossing, but Jon was crossing at El Ceibo so we went along with it. During the long bus ride we learned Jon had opened a surf school on the pacific coast of Guatemala and it had only been open three weeks. It was cool hearing about all the stuff he had to go through to get it going. Anyways, we were able to take a ... read more

Distance driven today: none – instead we walked around the historical city center and got some exercise J Cumulative distance driven: 6,121 miles / 9,859km (11,000 miles to go) Today’s trip: Hotel in San Cristóbal de las Casas to central market place, to coffee shop, to lunch place, etc. Artisan masks bought for Christer’s collection: 1 After 3 weeks of continuous riding, and some 6,000 miles / 10,000km on the roads of the northern American continent, today was time for a rest day. What better place to do take a day off than picturesque San Cristóbal de las Casas, which is the main cultural center of the Chiapas district in the Mexican federation. San Cristóbal has a great historic city center, with many artisan shops, groovy coffee places, a huge variety of eateries, and a genuine ... read more

On tuesday we depart for Guatemala, aiming for the crossing at Ciudad Cuauhtémoc for a hopefully quick and quiet passage across the border from Mexico. It will mark the end of approximately three and a half months here, much of that in Oaxaca and Chiapas; before arriving we thought we would spend approximately six weeks in the entire country so it's been much longer than expexcted. And with good reason! Here are some things that I have really enjoyed about our time in Mexico. De la Semillas a la Nubes, Todo de la Natura From the desert sands of Sonora to the mountain forests of Chiapas, the landscape of Mexico is widely varied but always beautiful. Arriving into Tecate then hopping on a coach to Mexicali offered my first glimpse of actual desert, something we got ... read more