San Cristobal de la Casas

So after breaking the foot (or fracturing a bone as Clair would put it), hanging around down on the Pacific coast was proving just a bit too sweltering. We had originally planned to head not far from Puerto Escondido to the well known traveller haunts of Puerto Angel, Zipolite and Mazunte. They are famous for their 'old time hippie vibe', but after ending up a little too close to various dreadlocked numpties with bongos and absolutely no sense of rhythm in Puerto Escondido, combined with beaches being nigh on impossible with crutches, we decided we would give them a miss and head up to the Chiapas highlands.

Chiapas is one of Mexico's most amazing states. It has beautiful lanscapes ranging from dense lowland jungles to the much cooler highlands where some of the most traditional and unreconstructed of contempory indigenous Mayan people remain. The indigenous people's average income in Chiapas is only one third that of the rest of Mexico. One third of indigenous homes are without running water and electricity and illiteracy is higher there than anywhere else. These inequalities helped sparked the state's Zapatista revolutionary movement.

We ended up doing an overnight bus from Puerto Escondido that was about 14 hours. This actually wasn't nearly as bad as you might imagine as the bus was proper lush. We've mentioned before how great the public transport is, and we both managed to sleep a fair amount of the journey. My pegar (as Clair now lovingly refers to my breakage) was a bit stiff when we got there, so Clair saw me into the bus station before going back to retreive both our packs (poor thing, mine is vast). Anyway, she got there, and the bus had beggered off, and our packs were no longer to be seen. BUGGER! She legged it around in a frantic panic for about 10 minutes getting totally blank looks from all the staff around, before a very casual official turned up and said he'd put them somewhere else for safe keeping. I felt totally impotent during the whole episode, but never mind, it all worked out in the end.

We got a taxi, to a place that sounded decent and were seriously chuffed to find that there was barely a building in San Cristobal de le Casas that was over one storey. The hotel we had chosen turned out to be utterly gorgeous and we ended up staying there a week.

San Cristobal is bloody lovely. Really chilled, beautifully cool but sunny climate and in the middle of a lush green valley due to its altitude. These remote Chiapas highlands were a refuge for ancient Maya after the collapse of their lowland civilization more than a 1000 years ago. Eventually the spanish settled here rather than the sweltering other parts of Chiapas state, and the usual tales of slavery and disease followed. Nowadays though, its colonial charm mixed with the indigenous traders and cosmopolitain atmosphere has made it a real pleasure to stay here. We've found it really hard to actually book our onward journey.

Here's a selection of pictures that we've taken throughout the week. To start, one of the unbelievably vast palms in the main plaza:


One of the main pedestrianised shopping streets. Gorgeous mountains in the distance.


Indigenous market up by the lovely Templo and Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo


Really stunning filigree stucco work on the Templo de Santo Domingo


Side door of the Templo Santo Domingo


Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo, and a lovely shiny old style beetle. I really want one after seeing them all over the place here.


Front of the Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo


Clair snapped this great little portable fruit display.


Cathedral de San Cristobal. Love the painted stonework, though apparently it was only done like that in 1990. You can just about make out a tiny hobbling one on the steps (by the way you can click on most of these pics and get a slightly bigger one - I've only just figured that out).


East side of the main plaza.


The bandstand in the middle of the plaza at night. You can't really see it, but it has lovely ironwork all around.


Early morning view down the street outside our hotel. Looks even more gorgeous without all the cars.


Just having a rest. I think I deserved one, although admittedly we're not 20 yards from the hotel entrance.


The Arco de El Carmen. This used to be the gateway to the city.


Beautiful cobbled streets. Not that practical for some things however.


Nicely worn old buildings. There was lots of lovely stone masonry around.


Now here's the reason some of those cobbles just ain't that practical. Clairy suggested we try and hire a wheelchair (I´m still not not sure if it was just to make Adam laugh). But it did mean I could have a rest from my crutches. It was a genuinely humbling, yet quite a hilarious experience. If I thought just having the plaster and crutches made people stop and stare, I really hadn't seen nothin yet. I also found it quite hard to be pushed around. I kept trying to grab the wheels. Made my hands well skanky


More lushious painted stone work.


And look! Even a lovely Burger King!


Clair got this beautifully moody shot as the sun went down.


And here's me admiring the view.


Oh hi! Wheelchairs can be fun!


A nice restaurant with trees indoors. What a great idea (as long as I'm not clearing up the leaves).


And here I am stuck into the second Philp Pullman while Clair secretly takes a picture.


Yet another truly gorgeous little Mexican town.

Canon del Sumidero

Oh hi! Question: What can you do with a boyfriend who has his leg in plaster? Answer: Take him on a nice two hour speed boat ride! Sounds good huh? It was all getting a bit too sedate, this was the perfect antidote!

We went for the whole package thing, for obvious reasons, and got dropped off at the Embarcadero Cahuare, which is 5km north of Chiapa on the road to Tuxtla. I had brought some plastic bags in case Wiji's leg got wet, Wij had decided to bring some chocolate wafers. (Nice team prep work). At the jetty we were issued with vintage life jackets, mine being about five sizes too big, Wij's broken, and everyone else either wedged into one, or wearing it around their ears like me. No time to query this, because we were off down the gang plank and onto the Lancha. Wij pegging it down the plank was quite funny. As soon as we were all wedged on the Lancha, the motor was revved up and we were off down the canyon.

The Sumidero canyon is a fissure in the earth. At various points the canyon walls tower above at around 800m. In 1981 the Chicoasen hydro-electric dam was completed at its northern end, damming the Rio Grijalva, which flows through the canyon, creating a 25km long reservoir. You can view this from above at several vantage points, funny, but I didn't fancy that! Luckily it wasn't suitable for the Pegar either.

Being a Mexican boat trip, we proceded at full speed along the reservoir, pelting along, we were glad we had our cheapo sunglasses so that we could actually take in our surroundings. The canyon was totally breathtaking and so enormously high, it was hard to really take in the scale. It seemed slightly odd to be going so fast at first, especially as we were supposed to be spotting wildlife... even so, we did see a whole variety...

Cormorants.


Vultures, yes really!


Not the most sociable of creatures.




Oh no! My hair! Check out the monkey face rock formation above Wiji.














A much slower pace here to look at the rock formations.


Our guide pointing out something in Spanish.


Hard to comprehend the scale...




Another boat gives you some idea of the scale.


It was amazing looking up at the rock face, coming in and out of the sunshine.


Fast and a lot of fun! Our guide really put his foot down and enjoyed swinging the boat about!


Oh hi! A christmas tree formation of minerals, moss and lychen. This was enormous and very strange, it hung in big swathes from the rock face.


Under the christmas tree formation, (it was very 3D), one of many tiny white Herons, minding its own business. Luckily they seemed not to care that giant speed boats were hurtling towards them with noisy petrol motors, they carried on fishing. This one in a prime tourist spot, under the christmas tree formation.


A whole island of Vultures, just hanging about. They were surprisingly quiet, but seemed to be constantly flapping about and getting in each others way.


A massive nesting site, painted white with guana. Even the cactus trees were white. It looked like some kind of Art instulation. A massive variety of birds here including black Herons and very big grey Herons. The Vultures seemed to want to chase each other out of the trees.


One of the few moments that the boat was actually completely still.


As far as we could go in this direction. The Chicoasen hydro-electric dam, and monument to the men who built it. A gigantic monument that looked so tiny in the landscape. Some Pelicans in the foreground, making an escape.


The Lancha sped towards the bank at various times, without warning, so that we could get a glimps of some wildlife minding its own business. There were Iguana's hanging about in the tree tops, warming up in the sun. We also heard, and then saw a few small primates in silhouette.


A lot of lush vegetation on some of the banks. These trees had ripple marks from the slosh of the water engraved into them.


Our guide, stood above us. He did a good job of not running us into any floating debris, from his vantage point. I want his job! It seemed a lot of fun. He gave us the thumb up for enjoying it, and not just huddling together like some of the other passengers! LOL.


The money shots... the Aligator, one of the three that we saw... some of the better shots...


Others were sleeping in debris by the bank, or slipped of quickly from a muddy river bank. All basking in the sunshine to warm up.


Some people on the banks. They seemed miles from anywhere to us.


And it was over far too soon, sadly. We wanted to go again! Instead we went off to the mini bus and a very speedy journey on dry land back to San Cristobal de la Casas.