San Cristobal de las Casas

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So here I am, back in Mexico, with my backpack on my back (all 15kgs of it) and the wind blowing the wrong way for the sun to shine at me! I hate the cold! Brr its like September in England when I have to control myself against putting on my scarf and gloves 2 months too early! Athough saying that the sun is actually shining as I type! Woohoo!

I managed to do absolutely nothing at all interesting or cultural in Mexico city on Monday except use the internet for 2 hours in 2 seperate internet cafes, for fear of being ridiculed as a computer geek, both of which charged 3x the amount I´m used to paying! How rude! Although...whilst I was on a wild goose chase for the first internet cafe I´d been told about I met a South African guy and when we both gave up the will to live he invited me for a coffee. So ok...cool, I like coffee nowadays (finally I have become mature and sophisticated..!) we were chatting about what we´d been doing in Mexico and he said he´d been travelling and working as a volunteer on a farm/orphanage for a month. Interested, having worked on a KIND OF farm/orphanage type place myself I asked where it was and it was in TEPOZTLAN! I was amazed! Just around the corner and up the hill from where I myself have spent the past 5 months.

At about 6 I set off to meet Samba from the airport, having heard he was very worried and nervous that I wouldn´t be there to meet him. What a lack of faith! I have decided I hate airport arrival gates, they make me feel so confused and emotional and I want to cry. For no real reason, just because everyone´s so happy to see their friends and families again after a few days or years and they´re all hugging and crying and I feel left out! Haha! Hugh Grant was spot on. What a wise man.

I had decided that the nice kind thing to do would be to give Sam a few hours respite from his 12 hour plane journey, and 24 hour day, and that also I didn´t want to have to carry my bag around all day so we stayed the night in a hostel by the zocalo before catching the bus for 14 hours down to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. The bus journey passed uneventfully apart from Sam managing to get his iPod stolen from his pocket at some point in the night and I brushed up my Hannah Montana and James Bond knowledge.

We got here at about 6:30 yesterday and found a place to live, slept a while and then went out to explore the town. It really is very pretty and a generally nice place to be! It´s really touristy and has more than it´s fair share or Lebanese, French, Italian and Israeli restaurants, which are an unusual sight in Mexico! As well as blonde people. Wow. We attempted to register the iPod as stolen but having walked about 4 miles and being sent from building to building I decided to give up when the nice man at the 4th building said he could do it but it´d take 24 hours to be processed, then we had to come back but to another place and fill in a form and pay $300 for a certificate and blah blah! Stupid beurocracy!!!

To be cultural and interesting we went to the Mayan Medicine Museum which was on the other side of town to the police and governmental buildings. They seem to believe really strongly in the healing properties of different candles, and different winds and things....I´m not quite sure how successful it really is! There was also a bit about pregnancy and giving birth. The pregnant woman gives birth kneeling in front of her husband (or parent or parent-in-law) with the midwife behind her pushing down on her stomach to make the baby come out. Ouch! And then she can´t eat onions or avacado for 3 months or the babies´penis will swell up. I´m really quite glad I´m not a follower of these beliefs!

Today we went to an ecological reserve in the cloud forest and walked in the forest there. Sam was being really annoying everytime I misplaced my foot or anything and going "Are you alright?!?!?!?! OH my God!" So I got annoyed at him and then I really did fall on my bum! Hahaha! Whoops!

So that´s about it for now...we´ve bought tickets to go to Palenque and visit some waterfalls tomorrow and will hopefully be meeting up with Sarah and Angie in a couple of days to go to Guatemala.

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Comments

[Daddy]

Nice to know family love is all around the world!!!