A couple weeks into my work this summer, I had a meeting with my supervisor and she informed me that the university goes on vacation for the first 3 weeks of July, and that during the middle week, everyone would be taking the week off. Because the price of plane tickets was prohibitively high for anyone to come and visit, I decided to explore a part of Mexico that I have never been to before.
It turned out that the majority of people I work with are actually taking three weeks of vacation, I am working the first and third weeks, and in the middle, I went to Chiapas, a state in the south of Mexico, just north of Guatemala.
I looked into several different transportation options to get to San Cristobal de Las Casas but in the end, I decided to travel the Mexican way, taking a bus from Mexico City to San Cristobal. It is about a 13 hour bus ride, unexpected events aside. Buses are by far the most popular way to travel in Mexico. Go to the bus station and you will see families of all sizes preparing to take buses all over the country, likely to go and visit family they left behind when they came to Mexico City. Mexico City to a huge place with people from everywhere. Very few are truly "Chilangos", but come to Mexico City to find new opportunities.
The bus ride was better than expected- I think all my plane rides last summer (Holland, England, Uganda, Tennessee, Colorado) taught me how to get some semi-decent sleep on moving transportation. The bus ride started out with a film--it ended up being Nim's Island. All the movies on Mexican buses are dubbed, sometimes a bit strange and not always appropriate. The movies I saw on buses ranged from children's films to horror films to strange talking animals. We made a pit stop at about 2am somewhere in Veracruz and getting off the bus was like walking into a sauna. The highs in Mexico City have been around 75 F with rain every afternoon.
All went well until we were about 2 hours from San Cristobal, and a tire blew. There was much running around and people from the bus company hopping in random cars to go and get tools, but after about a half an hour all they had succeeded in doing was picking up giant rocks and driving the blown out tire onto them. A bus came by on its way to Tuxtla Guiterrez, the first stop the bus was supposed to make and took the majority of the passengers who were only going that far. The rest of us had to wait it out. After very little information and much observing, I figured out that the bus that stopped was going to San Cristobal and if you wanted to get on, you just kind of had to go (the bus people didn't say anything....). So other than the breakdown, I managed to get to San Cristobal roughly on time.
San Cristobal de las Casas is a medium-sized, very colorful and quite colonial town. There are a lot of tourists there, which was a big change from Mexico City, but this also meant lots of opportunities to have different kinds of foods. I had the best falafel I have ever had in my life (though I have yet to visit Israel), as well as lots of other good foods.
I managed to find a place to watch the final of the World Cup among many fans from Holland and Spain. It was a great expereience, watching in a bar packed full of people, with the cheers alternating between the Spanish and Dutch fans.
I managed to take a couple of day trips away from San Cristobal, and went to Canon del Sumidero, Oventic (a very interesting autonomous zapatista village-- more on this later) and Palenque. El Canon del Sumidero was a nice canyon about 2 hours from San Cristobal. We saw crocodiles (which the little French kids behind me were very excited about) and some nice waterfalls. Oventic was fascinating and definitely one of the most interesting things I've done. Palenque had some beautiful ruins, but I wish I had more time to explore. Unfortunately on that trip it was me and a Mexican family of 14 in our van, and they were more interested in the two waterfalls we visited before the ruins than the ruins itself.
The beauty that is Chiapas is breathtaking-- the mountains and valleys are all covered with lush green forest (making it the perfect spot for the rebel zapatistas), and the color is gorgeous. Every time I left San Cristobal, I was amazed at the beauty of the region.
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