Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Exit Oaxaca and enter extremely early in San Cristobal de las Casas, our final mountain town (2000m+). Like all the best Latin American mountainous regions it has it own pseudo Marxist rebel group, the Zapatistas. However like the Shining Path in Peru the Zapatistas have been fairly inoffensive recently. Despite the exciting prospect of being robbed, dangled in front of us by the Lonely Planet, the most we saw of them were on the masses of t-shirts on sale in the markets.
San Cristobal turned out to be a gorgeous place and it was a pleasure to potter around looking at the craft stalls around the churches, ducking down pretty cobbled streets and occasionally stopping at a café for refreshments when the sun got a little enthusiastic for our tastes. We also managed to squeeze in some social time with a couple of girls we met in an excellent bar with a homemade Luchadore mobile hanging from the ceiling. We even went to the movies to see Pan's Labyrinth (excellent but not one for the kids as the American dad should have known when he brought his brood).
San Cristobal, like every Mexican town, has excellent tacos and we ate many.Real Mexican tacos consist of meat and onions in a small soft tortilla which you then self harm with chili sauce and lime juice. They are easy to find, just look for a plastic table with a crusty toxic looking chili sauce sitting on it and you are there. Generally run by a family in which the most junior member is the chef and everyone else hangs around chatting, taco shacks are incredibly friendly as well as the cheapest place to eat in town ($0.50 per taco and 5 or 6 is usually a meal for a grown man or Rachelle).
Two days isn't a massive amount of time to spend in a place but we have a schedule people so we have to move on, sorry but that's the way it is. Our next destination was approximately 200km north and 2km down into the jungle to our first Mayan (as opposed to Aztec/Toltec) ruin. As we only had 18hrs before our next bus we plonked ourselves in a hotel next to the Palenque ruins and we spent a very sweaty 2 hrs racing around before they closed. Whilst it may not be Angkor Wat, what the site lacks in overall grandeur (and it is still pretty amazing) it made up in its setting deep in the jungle. Howler monkeys can be heard in the trees around and in their silences the birdlife takes its opportunity to show off its collective voice. The buildings blend beautifully with the environment as it seemed merged with rather than imposed on nature. Soon enough though it was morning and a mad dash to the bus station - next stop Campeche.
Further north 300k and we arrive in Campeche, on the Gulf of Mexico. Campeche is apparently world heritage listed by Unesco and described by our guidebook as uniformly pretty. Maybe we were just a bit grumpy after our early morning ride (true) or stunned by the intense heat (probably 40c, over 100f) or depressed by our hotel room which managed to be hotter then outside and had no windows. Perhaps it was simply lack of tacos. Whatever the reason, Campeche didn't really do it for us. Our highlight/lowlight was when we blundered into a torture museum disguised cunningly as a Catholic church (which had some very gruesome woodcuts).We couldn't shake the overall feeling we were wasting our time. We had planned on 2 days - no chance, we would have gone insane so now we are off to Merida, into the heart of Yucatan where we will once again bless ourselves with tacos once more.
A & R
- comments