Sunday 7 July - Wednesday 10 July

San Cristobal de las Casas

We arrived in San Cristobal around 11pm, only an hour and a half later than expected, and promptly had our taxi nabbed right from underneath our noses by this little chicita who giggled at us when we objected to her jumping into the only cab on the street - our cab! So we were left on the sidewalk in the dark, wishing we knew some more Mexican expletives! Luckily another cab came along soon enough and whisked us off to our gorgeous little hostel near the Cathedral.

The reason we chose this hostel was purely because of one guy's hilarious review on hostelbookers... we simply had to check the place out for ourselves:

Rossco Backpackers Hostal review

Atmosphere - 80% Staff - 100% Facilities - 100% Safety - 100% Location - 100% Cleanliness - 100% Value - 100%

Peter Dooley

30 November 2012 Peter would recommend this property

Liked: great hostel. people very friendly. rooms big. beds warm. theres a fire outside. breakfast is toast, coffee, yogurt, cornflakes and milk. fridge big and cold. cookers work. big yards to walk in. dogs. five. intelligent old and young. internet free. you sleep like a cow on a hill in the sun by the beach.movie room big. big big tv. surround sound, dvds loads. all the movies in the world. sit on beanbag. friends beside you. you look at movie. you feel like moses or washington. lovely. doors open. come in any time. lockers safe. valuables safe no worries. wifi everywhere. in the yard. on the bed. through the kitchen. you surf like a drugged toy. hostel lovely. pure, soft, gentle, helpful, honest, caring, warm, soothing, relaxing, generous, loving, beautiful. (but you can never leave. joke) stay here you will feel like a newborn lamb standing on a stage receiving a standing ovation as the compere comes out and puts grass in front of you.

Disliked: no swimming pool. no lions. no runways. no rats. no bubbles you can sit in. no leather seats. no turnstiles. no superheros checking in. no politicans. no doctors. no mass. no water slides. no mushy peas. no third floor. no gym. no fighting. no illicit drugs. no wild animals. no tibetian monks. no statues of ganesh. no banana trees. no gold. no pondering drunks. no aggressive chicken. no revolution. just complete docility. lovely.

Haha Gold! and the hostel did not disappoint.

We liked this beautiful colonial town so much, we stayed for four nights. We could see why Karen said this was her favourite town on her and Matt's travels last year. Beautiful cobbled streets, quaint colonial houses and town centre, gorgeous little shops and cafes with some of the best Chiapan coffee we have tasted. We walked the place flat within the first day - saw loads of churches (how many churches can one need in such a small town?), climbed the steps to the church on the hill which has great views of the town - plus some strange metal outdoor gym equipment...I dont think our goofing around on the 'gym' equipment went down too well with the onlookers, who were using it rather seriously for a workout. On the stairs up to the church we were met by up n coming Mexican swindlers...two little kids asking us to write our names on a piece of paper for their school homework...we asked why they wanted our names which was met by some broken english "its for our school, its for our school" - not wanting to protest much longer we wrote our names down for them, thinking we were helping them with their English or something...haha - the ink had not even dried and the paper was turned over now showing we had to donate some money...um, what just happened? Fat chance. FAIL.

Quite a bit of our time here was spent updating the blog when the rain set in, and trying to deal with our dear friends at HSBC to obtain our new secure keys for interweb banking. Many dollars later wasted on overseas telephone calls to call centres in India, who obviously cant find where our secure keys are as they are not sitting in Bahrain themselves, and fobbing off by managers in the HSBC branch in Bahrain...we still dont have our secure keys and in about a month's time we are no longer going to be able to conduct any internet banking without them - Thank You HSBC for coming up with this great new security feature whilst we're travelling! Just bloody marvelous. If anyone can go into HSBC Bahrain and throttle - I mean, persuade someone to help us - it would be much appreciated!

Since we had overstayed our planned itinerary of Mehico by more than two weeks (because its so damn awesome), we finally made plans to leave and travelled by bus to Tapachula on the border (bleh) to catch the TICA bus which would take us all the way through Central America to Panama.