There are a few cities in the world that I feel I could settle in (these itchy feet don’t stop just anywhere!) San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas is one of those (others being London, Granada, Amsterdam and Cuzco in case you are interested/ fancy meeting me there). After just a few hours wandering San Cristobal that was it, I had fallen for the city.
San Cristobal is a beautiful, old-colonial city full of handsome building and cultural happenings. This was the focal point of the Zapatistas’ uprising in 1994, when Sub-Comandante Marcos announced to the bewildered tourists now surrounded by balaclava-clan Zapatista protesters that “We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.” Revolution and ironic good-manners. Oh yes you can see why the history seeping out of this place appealed to me!
Our merry band of travellers had temporarily dived, simply due to the fact that taking two taxis to what turns out to be a ghost hostel, and without mobile phones it is sometimes necessary to give up searching and find a place to sleep before regrouping. All those hours spent watching Ray Mears are beginning to pay off you see: survival techniques of mobile phone-less worlds. So anyway, without eating animal dung or whittling any canoes Diego, Lindsay and I found a hostel and settled in for the night.
I spent my time in San Cristobal trying to suck up as much information about the Zapatistas and as much cultural fun as possible. I also managed to find a load of hang-outs that would have been my locals in the alternative universe where I lived in this city. One key find was a great tea-shop with a documentary film festival on. I spent my first night in the city sat in a tent on the building’s roof, sat in a camp-chair and, trying not to be distracted by the twinkling lights of the city and the random fireworks, to focus on the small projector screen. The film was called Maria Sabina and quietly and slowly told the story of an old woman in the Chiapas hills who was a spiritual healer, using magic mushrooms as her medicine. She would feed her patient mushrooms as well as herself, they would then hallucinate (and come out with some beautiful poetry) until one of them vomited, expelling the illness (or, call me a cynic, the mushrooms). It’s here if you are interested... http://wn.com/maria_sabina It was a nicely made film and gave me an idea for a story which I will try and find time to write at some point.
Another night I crammed into a three-sofa screen room to watch another documentary on the Zapatista’s structural changes. So yes, I ended up watching some TV on holiday but it was educational, honest!
It wasn’t all TV though. There was food and drink too. On the great tip of my friend Kayla (you might remember her from such blogs as New Year in Panama), I dragged the others to a cool cafe called Cafe Revolution. Covered in politicial stencils and posters it was something of a tourist trap but made great Micheladas (beer with lime, spices, some tomato juice and salt and pepper- savoury-er beer! The spice makes downing it too quickly hard at least).
The rest of the time in the city is a blur of bookshops, markets, horchata, mole, hot chocolate and plenty of tequila. We managed to find ourselves in a Blues bar one night, being sung to in English, which was pretty disorientating. We also hung out in a great Zapatista cafe complete with propaganda posters and book shop.
I also found my alternative-universe-regular-bar, a mescal bar. (Mezcal is a liquor made from cactus. I am not quite sure how it is different from tequila but after one or two you don’t seem to care.) This tiny bar was full of local hipsters with some of the best moustaches I have ever seen. The walls were dotted with shrines to lucha-libre-wrestler-saints, there was a toilet instead of a barstool, beer only came served in plastic yard-of-ale glasses and as well as peanuts you got deep-fried bugs as bar snacks. Sigh. Eighteen years of vegetarianism gone for a crispy cricket. But at least now I have a better answer to the “what’s the weirdest thing you have ever eaten” question other than a funny shaped carrot. (Yes our UPEACE exam questions really are tricky).
On our last day Lindsay and I jumped into the back of a Toyota truck and trundled our way up to the hills above the city to horse-ride up to local town Chamula. It was lovely riding up through the green forest, past a Zapatista university and past families working on their farms. The waves and smiles from the local children just about distracted me from the wooden saddle slowly numbing my butt.
Barely able to walk we dismounted at Chamula and explored the bustling market square and its rows of piled fruits, beans and (moving piles of) hermit crabs. Our explorations were rhythmically punctuated with the sounds of explosions. They were setting off fireworks for San Pedro’s Saint’s Day but given it was mid-day we only heard the noises, and having secretly pretended I was a cowboy for the past hour it was hard not to run from cover from the gunshots! Anyway, it spooked me, if not the horses.
After making our way through the market we headed to the beautiful green and blue church. Inside it was the most amazing church I’ve been to. The floor was scattered with pine needles and leaning against the wall were fully grown pine trees. The walls were lined with shrines to saints, each illuminated by jars of candles crowded in front. On the floor there were lines and lines of thin, taper candles melted upright like penitent worshippers. People knelt on the needle-strewn floor, in their black, furry ponchos chanting and praying aloud. The whole effect was remarkable, if not a little on the fire-hazard side.
Back in the city we were treated to another spectacle when we went to a dance show- a bit like the West End Lion King but about a battle between Mayan tribes. Beautiful costumes and gymnastics but as it was in an anchient dialect the only thing I could get was that they said Palenque a lot. But who doesn’t.
Ok my brain has run out of superlatives so I’ll stop going on about San Cristobal for now but I’d advise you to come and visit me there in the alternative universe (p.s. you might want to find someone else to stay with though cos Gael Garcia Bernal lives with me in that universe and it could get a bit crowded.)
Lessons learnt:
In Chamula you can’t take pictures of people as they believe it steals their soul (same as the Innuit, interesting that despite distance and separation the same beliefs crop up!) So I resisted, despite the philosophical conundrum: if they don’t see me take the photo is that still disrespectful to their beliefs? My head hurt too much from the fireworks so I never puzzled it out.
Four hour horse-rides on wooden saddles aren’t great preparation for another epic bus journey. Probably should have been able to work that out.
Mexican street food is amazing! Corn on the cob covered in lime and hot sauce and empanadas make sore stomachs worth it!
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