Blogs from San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, North America - page 16

After a 12 hour bus ride, that I think we managed to get some sleep on, we arrived in San Cristobal. It was gray and drizzly when we arrived at about 8:30am - bit of a shock after the heat of Mexico City! We found our hostel and dumped our bags, had a shower and some breakfast and headed out to explore. By this time the sun had come out, but we still had our jeans and fleece jackets on! Saw the cathedral, watched a local dancy thing in front of it. We went looking for malaria tablets as had read that Palenque, our next stop, had lots of mozzies and Lorna had only been given tablets for South America. While pharmacy hopping we saw most of San Cristobal, the churches here were a bit more ... read more

From Flores we had a gruelling 8 hour trip to cross the Guatemalan border into Mexico and to Palenque, a small town with some mayan ruins that had been recommended. The journey, requiring a small lancha (boat) trip across the a river into Mexico, seemed to never end, and on top of that we had the feeling that "non-official" charges were being extracted from us, disheartening but I guess thats life out here, you live and learn! We arrived in Palenque and quickly headed out of the town into El Pachan, a small group of hostals/camping areas on the way to the ruins. On our arrival we found that the places we could stay with our tent were rather limited, forcing us into an "interesting" camping spot. We decided to leave in the morning to start ... read more

Was fine on the night bus after all and slept all the way thankfully. Was a pretty fancy bus which wasn't remotely as bad as some of the ones we travelled on in Vietnam! Its way colder here as we've gone back up the mountains again and the hotel and town isn't nearly as nice as Oaxaca. Had a bit of a drama when I first arrived as couldn't find my credit cards. Blonde bimbo that I am had hidden them and hadn't remembered! Thankfully found them before I had cancelled them! Again another chill out day of wandering around before going out for dinner for one of the girls birthdays. They have an unusual custom of shoving your head in the cake which was funny! I've been very sedate since I got here and again ... read more

Instead of going to Canon del Sumidero, El Chiflon waterfalls and Lagunas de Montebello I decided to go for a hike just outside of San Cristobal with the group and just hang around town. It was supposed to be a lazy day but I still woke up at 07:00, but I stayed in bed until 09:00. I did some reading then went for a leisurely breakfast. We started our hike around noon, walking through some neighbourhoods until we got to Jojo de Agua, the source of water for the city. Along the way we saw a hacienda that offers rooms for 2000 peso/night. It must be quite spectacular to charge that much. The area we hiked was in Moxviquill Ecological Reserve. The hike only took 40 mins, including stops. About half way into the hike was ... read more

Po nestastne stavce jsme se klikatou silnici vhodnou pro rallye vysplhali vzhuru do chiapaskych hor. Cestou zastavujeme na vyhlidce a snazime se proti slunci udelat par fotek Pacifiku, ale sance jsou male. Zastavujeme u typicky betonoveho staveni na kopci, kde se na vesaku susi pradlo a pan majitel lezi schovany za stenou v hamace a odpociva v podvecernim slunci. Pri prekonani nastupu na nahorni plosinu si to stradujeme planinou posetou cetnymi pastvinami a policky az do Tuxtly Gutierrez, ktera byvala kdysi hlavnim mestem Chiapasu nez ji vystridal San Cristobal de las Casas. V Tuxtle jsme az se setmenin. Po nove zbudovane silnici jsme za chvili take v San Cristobalu, ktery patri mezi jedny z navstevovnejsich z Chiapaskych mist. Diky nasemu opozdemu prijezdu bohuzel stihame pouze bar na namesti, ovsem o to vice si v poklidu vecera ... read more