San Cristobal de las casas

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Hola,
San Cristobal is a very pretty town in the hills of the state of Chiapas, 2000m above sea level. It has a few pretty churches and a cathedral and lots of small one way streets with colourful doorways and buildings. The people here are mostly of Mayan descent with a mix of hispanic in there as well... so most people are a full head shorter than me or more which is unusual.
We arrived here at night and were wearing thongs and swimmers and only one layer of clothing on as we had just come up from swimming in aqua azul... the temperature here was about 5 degrees centigrade! needless to say we were pretty cold and shared a taxi with 2 british backpackers to a hostel asap. But we moved on from there pretty quick and almost ran around the corner (as it was freezing) to another hostel, cheaper and very pretty called La gize de la sol. It is run by a guy originally from france... he speaks a lot of languages. There is a main building on a corner which as private rooms that include a private bathroom, and the building we stayed in just 3 doors down owned by him too that has shared bathrooms and is cheaper... we went with this option. The street we are on is one small block from the main road of this town called Real de Guadelupe. Tonight (1212) is the big fiesta where all the pilgrims would have arrived and made their offerings. Many many pilgrims are running into the city and have been for days, usually in groups up to 20 people, and they can be very young, running in bare feet, chanting to their virgin. The past 3 nights we have been here the main street has been steadily filling up with taco standsmini makeshift restaurants, stands selling sweetsbaked goods (all very colourful with icing) and many other things including games and rides for the kids, there are even stands with a dozen fusball tables!
it culminates in masses of people tonight with lots of music and dancing, so we will go and be involved. we thought it was busy last night but apparently thats nothing.
anyway, back to our first day here. We got up and had our best complimentary b´fast yet! choice of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast, 4 pices of toast with jam, yummy fruit salad with granola and yogurt or corn flakes. We walked all around the main part of town. We were told the outer areas are kind of safe in the day but definately dont venture there after dark. we climbed a large number of steps to the top of a hill where there is a beautiful little church... next to the church we thought we saw play equipment but on closer inspection they were pieces of workout equipment! things for situps, chinups etc, very funny.
From there we made our way to a museum called Na Bolom, or House of the Tiger. The museum is set in a house that was bought by a dutch couple, the Bloms, in the early part of last century. The Bloms dedicated their lives to the conservation of the Mayan Culture, in particular the Lacandones, a people who until the 1950's lived in the Lacandon jungle and had no contact with the outside world. The Lacandones were the only Mayan people never to be conquered by the Spanish.
The museum is quite well done, beggining with a short video and has pieces on display that the Bloms had originally bartered. Today the house, apart from being a museum is also a safe house for Lacandones should they choose to visit San Cristóbal and it runs a nursery that gives out free saplings of local trees as part of a revegetation program. Lots of forest has been lost to agriculture and logging and the local maya population lives with the forest and have a want to bring it back.
We wandered on from there to the local artesan market for a quick look. Lots of the same colourful and intereting textiles you find in a lot of places and lots of the local women (often carrying a bub) trying to sell their woven belts and other goods. A lot of the people here still wear a basic traditional dress, and ,any women have their hair in 2 plaits down their back.
From there we went to the municipal market where EVERYTHING can be found, including fresh chicken... blood still coming from the neck as they lie on a table... yummy! I finally found my patch we´ve looked for everywhere! A patch of the mexican flag that i can add to my bag that is. And Dario bought a new tshirt (he was wearing my long white moroccon shirt with embroidery on it all day under his jumper coz he had no clean shirts). We also tried to find some shoes to play football in, but noone sold any shoes above a size 7 so neither of us could find anything lol.
We found a lot of travel agents for tours. we wanted to do a tour of the local canyon which is amazing and a tour of the local mayan towns nearby. We booked a tour to the canyon for around $18 each which isnt bad when its a 5 hour tour including all transport and a 2 hour boat trip.
That night we had tacos in the street and checked out the going on on teh main road with lots of people and food and music. We wandered up to the big big church at the top of the street and saw lots of pilgrims waiting their turn to go in. It was so cold that Dario actually wore a plastic poncho under his clothes to rey and stay warm. I had enough layers but he did not! so funny! he sounded like a shopping bag all night.
We tried something called Pox, which is fermented sugar cane... very alcoholic! you drink it in a hot fruit drink called ponche. It kept us warm!

Next morning we were picked up at 9.30 and headed to the rio grijalva (1 hours drive) where we got in a boat and set off to the canyon. It is BEAUTIFUL! the highest point above us was 1000m high and apparently the river was 300m deep at some points. We were told that when the conquistadores came through this way, upto 15,000 mayan men, women and children jumped of these cliffs to avoid becoming slaves. THere are many water birds and vultures (suprisingly they are everywhere!) here including brown pelicans and herrons (much like the ones in qld). There are also.... CROCODILES! so i got excited when we got to within 10m of about a dozen of them, including hte biggest in the river, 4m or so. They recently did a census and there are around 400 of them in this river. they look a bit like a salty from QLD but with a skinnier head and a bit uglier i think 😊 The point where we turned back was when we came to the chicoasen dam. There was a huge monument to the engineer who built it and to the people who died building it. On the other side of the dam its a 230m drop to the water level. The dam is one of 4 on this river and it generates electiricity that is sold throughout central america.
From the river we then drove to a nearby town called Chiapa de corso and it was the first spanish town in the state if Chiapas. We saw the old nunnery there which had a museum dedicated to the art of laquering and an old pagoda in the park with the history of the town written on it. We ate lunch here, tacos with a strange drink that the women of the stand introduced us to, Pozol. It is fermented maize mixed with cocoa served chilled, we really like it!
We headed back to San Cristobal and arrived around 3pm. We wandered around a bit and dumped our stuff at the hostel before heading up to dinner again after Dario and I did some spanish revision. We ate quite a lot for dinner, but it cost us abour $8AUS... it included a serve of tacos each (4 each) but they arent as big as the ones at home, palm sized approximately, a big biscuit with colourful icing each (we had to try them), a packet of freshly fried potato crisps (they shave them into the oil and fry them in front of u, so crispy!), a small bag of lollies (a guy was selling them from a wheel barrow, things like gummy bears etc.) inc a weird type of lollies that is coated in chilli which we didnt expect!, and we shared a giant cup of pinapple smoothie. all in all we went to bed full 😊
Today the 12th, we headed out on another tour, to the local town of Chamula. This place was exciting! we had a guide Frederico who was also our driver, he spoke both english and spanish, but since the other 6 passengers (argentinian, italian, french and german ) all spoke spanish and not much english, most of the tour was in spanish, so i caught as much as i could and Dario translated everything else. We wandered into the town and immediately were surrounded by girls giving us a gift of a woven bracelet and then promptly they wanted us to buy other goods off them (eventually we did because we wanted a belt anyway). Today we were lucky, its a special day where the sacred women come to pray for the town, they sit in front of 3 crosses and a band plays while they pray. They have a band of men making sure that noone walks in between them and the crosses... if you do you get whacked and yelled at, so we made sure to keep our distance. Photos here were forbidden, the locals let tourists in but had strict rules. There were also lots of fireworks going off as it was a big ceremony. At the other side of the square is the church of the town, we were allowed in because we were a small group. there was a huge amount of noise as there was a band playing inside, with lots of people carrying flags and huge idols of jesus and many other saint etc, 4 people carried each. the preists all had white cloths on their heads. The large procession with much smoke and incense left the church, walked outside, around the square a few times and eventually back inside. lots of drums and trumpets and lots of onlookers. In the middle of the square there were men filling chunks of round iron (like the shape of a round glass we drink out of but solid) that had a hole the size of pencil in the top with lots of gunpowder!! and as an offering were lighting this while in their hand and it would make a huge bang as the explosion was forced out the top. The fireworks were all being lit and let go in their hands as well... seemed crazy to us! and was so loud!
we had half an hour to wander around on our own before moving on but our guide said to notice what the people do and copy them so we dont do anything that will get us in trouble.
He also explained that the cross existed here before christianity, but the crosses here have a circle on the end of each side and the top. These circles represent morning, noon and night and also time, the bottom half of the cross represents life and the base represents death. THe mayan already had this and a belief that life is about cause and effect, so an ultimate god did not make sense to them. Apparently to appease the christians they kept their beliefs but adapted them to make it look like christianity. Our guide said that you ask their priests if they are catholic and they say yes of course, but if you look at their belief system you will find no similiarity at all.
We lft the town and headed to another called Zinacantan where we stopped at a place where the women make textiles, we saw the loom and the way they make them and i bought a pretty scarf made by one of the younger women. We ate lunch here as well, they made us tacos! yum!
Back in town now and writing the blog funnily enough. We will write again of the festivities tonight.
x

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