San Cristobal

The first stop on our trip was a 3 day adventure in San Cristobal de las Casas. I loved it! The town center was soo beautiful and I really enjoyed my time there.

We arrived in the morning on monday after an overnight (long, long, long!) bus ride from Puebla. Thanks to Dramamine I slept for nearly the whole ride so I was ready to explore the city right away and not too sleepy. Kyla and I decided to go exploring so we got some delicious breakfast to start out with; I am really going to miss eggs with chorizo and tortillas for breakfast. After we ate we walked through the Zocalo and to the artisan market where we picked up a few little things. San Cristobal is so full of beautiful weaving and embroidery and other artisanry, I finally completed my souvenir purchasing, so hopefully I didn't forget anyone. At the market this guy gave us a flyer about horseback riding so we decided to go and do that. For only 100 pesos we got a ride to a ranch and then rode horses for about an hour to this little indigenous village where everyone speaks Tzotzil. We hung out for awhile and then rode back. It was so beautiful! I took some pictures which I might post later. My butt hurt really bad for the next two days, but it was worth it.

Tuesday we went on a boat ride through a canyon that was a kilometer deep in some places. It was really beautiful! Sadly I had to pee really bad for most of the time so I was suffering a little bit. It was cool though and we saw two crocodiles and three baby crocodiles. We also saw a lot of pretty birds. In the afternoon we just hung around the hotel and I went with Cat on a little walk in the evening and we ended up finding this street where all of the people who do acts on the street during the day were practicing. It was really cool! People were dancing and playing music and one guy was teaching two others how to juggle and a guy was practicing fire throwing but with the sticks not lit. It was fun.

Yesterday we all went as a class to two indigenous villages, one of which was the same one Kyla and I went to the day before. I actually thought it was kind of an odd day and didn't really like "touring" the villages, but we had some delicious food including fresh tortillas made on a fire and we met some women who are weavers and do absolutely amazing work. I went to the Zapatista artisan cafe with Emily in the afternoon. It's kind of a collective and the main room is a cafe and then all around the sides are little shops. We ended up spending a lot of time in the women's collective part with the most beautiful hand embroidered things. Plus, the profits benefit the revolutionaries which is so cool. The woman who came into our class last week to talk about the situation in Chiapas and the EZLN revolution works a lot in solidarity with the indigenous revolutionary movement in Chiapas and she told us about the cafe, so it was fun to go there ourselves. Then last night we met some french canadians who are traveling from canada to guatemala on a bus that runs on corn/vegatable oil and who started a non-profit where they're teaching kids film skills and filming a documentary. Some of my friends went to go see a film about zapatistas with them while I was eating dinner with some other girls from my class and then we all met up and visited the bus and hung out. It was really fun and they were cool. I also got to see a friend I made in Oaxaca again so it was fun to hang out a second time.

Then, we had to get up at 5:30 (!) and leave our hotel at 6 this morning to come to Palenque. I slept for the whole 6 hour bus ride, thankfully and now here we are. It is so hot here, too hot to do anything. All we've done since getting here is swim in the hotel pool, lay in bed, shower in cold water, and order room service. It is that hot. In fact, it's 40 degrees celsius. That's 104 frickin degrees farenheit. And someone heard a rumour it got up to 42 which would be crazy and unbelievable...well maybe not actually, it is really hot. 104 degrees! What shall we do? We'll see... tomorrow we're visiting some water falls and going swimming so hopefully that will be nice and refreshing.

Less than two weeks until I go home!