Mexico

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Mexico

My visa was nearing its expiry so I had to leave Guatemala for a minimum of 3 days so I opted to travel to Mexico, about 3 hours away from Xela by bus. Feeling brave and wanting to save some money I decided not to take an expensive tourist shuttle and instead took a Chicken Bus (an old American yellow school bus, normally repainted and with chrome extras added, and so called because you have a good chance of sitting next to a chicken whilst travelling. I haven't had the pleasure of that on one of these buses, only later on a mini-bus, but 'Sardine Bus´ would be more of an apt name than 'Chicken Bus', with the number of people they manage to squeeze on!).

I always feel adventurous walking across international borders and despite immediately seeing a ´Welcome to Mexico´sign the immigration office was 4km away (I made the fatal mistake of trying to walk it before being very relieved when a bus stopped for me about a quarter of the way along). My guide book was pretty rubbish at explaining how to get from the border to my destination of San Cristobal de las Casas, and despite for a while not really knowing where the bus was actually taking me I managed to get there successfully in the afternoon.

San Cristobal is a pleasant highland town, with lots of restaurants and bars catering for tourists (most of whom, and there were lots, were Mexican). On my second night there I went to a salsa class at a local bar and met a girl called Louise who was on holiday from her teaching job in El Salvador but had lived in Northampton on and off for 10 years (for those of you who know Northampton she used to teach at Mereway!). Louise had just said to somebody that she hadn't met anybody from the UK in the week she had been there when I went across and said hello. It's that old cliche - it's such a small world!

I spent New Year's Eve with Louise and some people she had met and we had dinner in a hostel before heading to the main town square to see New Year in.

On New Year's Day I set off on the bus to Palenque with Louise (we travelled for about a week together) where we stayed for 3 days to visit some Mayan ruins and we also visited Agua Azul, some beautiful water falls with the most amazing turquoise and blue water.

From there we headed into Guatemala using a back route, travelling by bus, boat and then bus again. More in my next update...

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Comments

[Simon]

Pics
Great pics mate. New Year's eve looked like fun. Best, Si