San Cristóbal

In a continued effort to eventually reach Guatemala and the rest of the world, we sojourned southeast from Puerto Escondido on Saturday. Bus left at 6:30pm so we puttered around town until then. Arrived in San Cristobal at about 8am the next morning! Bus ride was much more enjoyable than our previous excursion and I slept the majority of the way. Unlike the trial periods and as Jason mentioned in his blog, the malaria drugs are having a bit of an effect on my dreams. Its not necessarily nightmares, its just very difficult to tell when some dreams are actually dreams! For example, I was seated next to a mexican girl on the bus ride to San Cristobal, and a few hours in, she turns to me and offered me this great silver present. I kept telling her to take it away and she eventually did, but I couldnt help but thinking how odd the whole experience was. Finally, when I fully woke up, it hit me...twas a dream! Hopefully I'll start to get used to these things...either that or slide into full blown schitzophrenia (spelling?), but Im betting on the former! I dont even really have to be taking them yet, just knew that we were supposed to start 1-2 weeks before entering a malaria zone and we didnt know our guatemala timeline, o well!

San Cristobal is the main city and I believe the capital for the Chiapis province. Its quite unlike any other area of Mexico in that it's made up mainly of indigenous people and seems much more like Guatemala or 'Central American', rather than Mexican. Theres an ongoing rebel campaign to break it off into its own province and you can see around here that many of the locals support the EZLN, that being the guerilla group, not to worry though Mom, no violence against tourists! Except for that bombing yesterday....I joke, I joke, there hasnt been a major attack for ten years when the rebels took control of this very city :). Climate here is much more suitable to us Canadians and has prompted to me swing by the market today and pick up a toque!

We're going to stay here until the day of the dead celebrations are over (so leave on Nov 3rd). Although the city is gearing up for it and its a neat old city, we're a little worried that there may not be much to do, but I guess in the end we can just sit around the hostel. Our next stop from here is a 5 hour bus ride to Palenque to see the ruins (pretty sure ive already mentioned all this in several blog entries, but too bad!).

On the bus ride over we ran into our German friend Tim from Oaxaca. Spent the day with him yesterday going on a river boat tour. Took a little van into the jungle, hopped on the river boat and the guide took us up into this large canyon. We couldnt go the entire way because of hurricane debris, but what we did see was quite cool. Lots of birds, lizards, a few crocodiles and to top it off 3 lazy monkeys hanging around from some trees. We saw the spot that the chiapas flag is based off of (you can see the picture on jasons blog) and spent most of the trip just gazing up into the huge mountains on either side of us.

Tonight being halloween, there are already some little goblins running around looking for candy. Not sure what it was...but last night there were also little guys running around. Theyd stop you and start randomly singing, at which point you're supposed to give them candy, unfortunately we had none so we just cheered them, we shall see what tonight has in store! Spent today at the market, which I found much more enjoyable then the other markets we've visited. This one was very authentic and for once we actually all started buying things!

Pictures! Top one is a pretty random shot, just to get a look at what the locals dress like here,
I had another to put up from our river tour, but this connection is waaaay too slow!

Until next time!

Adios!