Sarah: San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico
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San Cristobal de Las Casas,
Mexico
Sunday, January 27, 2008
From Oaxaca we took the 12 hour overnight bus to San Cristobal de las Casas. Man I have had it with the damn speed bumps in this country! Or "reductor de velocidad" as they call them. Open road, no one for miles, speed bumps every 500m or so. Jeez! That´s one common gripe amongst backpackers around here. San Cristobal was BEAUTIFUL. This medium sized town nestled in the forest-clad, mist-shrouded mountains. The air was so crisp - cold at night time and out of the shade but beautiful in the sun - fresh, dry heat. It just had this magical feel to it - my favourite place so far. I took a horse trek through the hills to a little indian town, San Juan Chamula, and their church - wow, that was a cultural experience and a half! Thousands of candles in all shapes, sizes and formations, pine needles to carpet the floor, chickens calmly waiting in plastic bags to be sacrificed, people drinking their holy pepsi to open the pathway to the divine.... One chicken passed on while we were at the altar, the woman did it when I wasn´t looking dammit! Sorry to sound macabre, but it´s all part of the experience, you know. No sqwauking, squawking (mmm that´s a hard word to spell) at all I tell you. Maybe it was doped up on pepsi.
Ever since Aco, we´ve seen kids selling crafts and other things everywhere ... some of them are as young as 5 (I´ve asked). So sad. On the beach, the roadside, the markets, all the bag packers in the supermarkets are boys of about 7-10. Some of the market and roadside stalls are manned only by children. One in San Cristobal was run by an eleven year old girl and her nine year old brother (who did the bargaining). They also had to look after their little sisters, 6 and 7. They said their parents were at home. There must be a low literacy rate because there are a LOT of kids who don´t go to school. I learnt that the literacy rate amongst the Indians in the region is only about 20%. One common scam in San Cristobal is for the kids to come up to you with a piece of paper and ask you to write your name and country down for a school research project (except they´re not IN school). Then they point to the column where it has "donation." Only did that once. You do feel a lot of pity, and you feel very fortunate.
Talk about a small world, bumped into a guy in the hostel who had been taught by my uncle in Nelson! (Unc, if you´re reading this, his name was Hamish Mace. He said he also had a couple of brothers that you may have taught)
We spent a week in San Cristobal due to Ray´s stomach. He just continued to go downhill, so we took him to the hospital (cost 30 pesos for a consult, that´s $3!) Got some different antibiotics to the ones we were taking (not that you need a prescription for anything here) and he started to improve. I went to this amazing show, "Palenque Rojo," which was a dance /drama show in traditional Mayan dress and language depicting one of the legends of Palenque, capital of the Mayan Empire. It was incredible. The whole experience was so visceral, everything was larger (an louder) than life. Many of the characters were from the royal or military classes and so their costumes were splendid and elaborate, not to mention the masks and head-dresses... the drums, the chants, music, face painting, dance - it was a performance up there with the Lion King that we saw in Melbourne,. Unforgettable.
San Cristobal will occupy a special place in my travel memories. Definitely hasta luego.
