Wrong time of year

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Did I say the rains had arrived?

Yesterday (31st) it rained for just one hour in the middle of the day. But city roads all flooded to 6 inches depth, sweeping away children and grandmothers with them and the Hostel's courtyard drain started to back fire such that we started planning for the time when the water rose to above the level of the doorways and would have to move everything onto the top bunks. Serious.

Then it stopped, and within one hour knowone would know it had rained, far less dropped an entire ocean on one unsuspecting town. Evidently the Mexican drainage system was expecting that, but we weren't.

Back tracking. We decided, after our mildly dissapointing and expensive experience with Belize, to stick a few assorted fingers up to the Yucatan and instead check out Palenque and spend some days chilling in what is meant to be a town of Oaxacan proportions in terms of interest: San Cristobal. Oh did I just use a slightly negative form of past tense. Well San Cristi, just isn't another Oaxaca. Though we are staying in another 'Magic' hostel.

This is where the title comes in. San Cristi shuts when it rains. Monday we tried to visit all the designated 'touristy places of interest' not always a good plan at the best of times, but thought I'd give it a go. Every one of them shut, or not 'of interest'. So I thought I'd check out the Orchid museum expecting to be stunned by "five climates worth of Orchids" but they are flower AFTER the rainy season.

So we got drunk on homemade fruit cocktails with other disillusioned travellers. This never fails to disappoint.

But hold your horses (no pun intended, you'll see) we've had great time. On the 30th we booked ourselves in for an early morning tour, involving a two hour ride to a local village (San Juan Chamula for those with an atlas), which is nice. And this wasn't your average gentle little pony trot in the english country side. For complete novices, two hours of frantic galloping with little control over the beast subjecting your arse to such pain is right up there amongst the exciting things to do. The trip back took less than two thirds of the time, because we had realised that the scrawny beasts could gallop and even learnt how hard you could push the accelerator pedal. Two days later though, and I am still typing with frozen fingers and now a bruised arse.

31st - it rained.

And today. A late start got us to Canyon del Sumidero in the Sierra Norte mountains. An impressive canyon, something like 400m deep in some places that was flooded for a hydro dam but is still very deep, even to the raised water level. Towering cliffs, skimpily clad in a thin tree covering, dominate your canyon-vision and giving you a sense of proportion that belongs to Lord of the Rings films. Saw a croc slyly slipping its way effortlessly up stream. Impressively elegant creatures in the water, certainly not of jurassic clumsiness.

Wrong time of year? No, just a different time of year.

We are off tonight to Mexico D.F to clutter Pablo's floor again and prepare for the Andes.

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