Advertisement
Published: November 7th 2006
We went to San Cristobal de Las Casas with high expectations, having read reviews of the town, and hearing it was the place to spend Day of the Dead and to see local indigenous Mayan culture.
We quickly decided it wasnt really for us with coffee shops and boutiques on every corner. We went to a local indigenous town called San Juan de Chamula to see its church and the locals there. Apparently it is easier to do it as a tour, and not recommended to do it independently. It was interesting to learn about the Mayan religion with a Catholic sprinkle over the top, and going into the Church we saw locals offering chickens to the Gods and drinking their bottles of Coke in order to "expel the bad spirits" with one too many burps.
We also went on a day trip to the Canyon del Sumidero which is Mexicos largest canyon with cliffs over 1200 m high. Here we took a motorboat ride along the canyon to see the crocodiles, spider monkeys and 'christmas tree' waterfall. All went fantastically well untill they loaded the boat for departure and told us to sit next to another couple to
then only split us up seconds before departure. We ended up with Stacey at the front of the boat and me at the back, seperated by 10 people in between..... great! We spent the outward trip saying 'wow monkeys... so what' until we reached the end of the canyon and I decided I'd had enough and was going to mutiny! I figured what are they going to do? So I got up and with my best pidgeon spanish made my way through the other passengers to the front of the boat to my Stacey! I got to the front and we kissed to the 'aahhhhs' and giggles of all the other passengers. When the driver asked me to move back for the return journey I said no to which he decided there was nothing he could do and allowed us to sit next to each other the whole way back.... exactly where we had been before the whole palava! The canyon really IS stunning when you are sharing it with your love!
Once back in San Cristobal we decided to try to see if the place did have a soul so headed to the market, which was a lot
of fun and we bought pumpkins to carve, suger skulls and ghosts!We spent haloween evening being trick or treated by the local children which was fun.
We had planned to stay in San Cristobal for day of the dead on the 2nd of November but on the 1st we were told that the local rebels, the zapatistas, had set up road blocks in support of the Oaxaca protests. We rapidly headed to the bus station to see if the buses were still running with the thought that we wanted out incase things got worse (San Cristobal is something of a political town and surrounded by Zapatista strongholds). We had also spoken to a Belgium couple who hadn't seen their freinds who were supposed to arrive from Oaxaca 2 days previously. We decided to leave early, and got on a bus bound for Palenque so that we could travel on to Guatamala. The journey was not too delayed apart from in one place where we were boarded by balaclava clad, machete carrying Zapatistas... We were a little worried until we saw that they were only handing out pieces of paper and saying good day to everyone. When they got to
us they made a particular effort to say hello, so whilst Stacey was worrying about where the nearest laundry was to clean her knickers, i said hi back to them took their political message paper off them and wished them a good day. A very exciting bus journey indeed!
...as you can see everything is fine, as we are now in Guatemala......
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0527s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
ME!
non-member comment
Thats a big crocodile. Dont go putting any decorations on that Christmas tree keith. I bet the Sugar Ghosts were tasty Stacey. Take care and keep safe.