Ruins, rebels and relaxation

Following five hours of one of the windiest bus rides of our lives we arrived yesterday in picture postcard San Cristobel Del La Casa. The town is set among the mountains at a very high altitude so at night its freezing cold, in the day crisp and sunny. Visually it´s a gorgeous place with pedestrianised streets, lots of cafes and funky restaurants. Students and tourists abound.The streets are lined with brightly painted mainly single story houses and shops in shades of yellows, reds, blues and oranges and with slanting roofs of Spanish-style red tiles. It does have a very clean, made for tourism image, but it still has very Mexican in feel and is the perfect place to wander, sit and sip a coffee or beer and people watch.

The town is in the state of Chiapas, home to the famous Zapatista rebel movement. You can buy rebel dolls, paintings of rebels and postcards of rebels with guns criss-crossed across their chests (and scary steely stares). The movie house down the road is showing a documentary about the Zapatistas tomorrow night so clearly there is a lot of sympathy for the movement and a good deal of romanticising too. I know very little about it except that it allegedly ´controls´ some of the towns in Mexico, has a sort of uneasy truce with the Mexican government and seems to represents the poor and lower classes, of which there are many amongst the bright coloured buildings and relaxed feel. So many young kids, looking like little Mexican men, walking about selling souvenirs or cigar boxes full of sweets and gum. It´s heartbreaking looking at these kids having to act like grown-ups so young.

We enjoyed a tiring day and night in Palenque before getting the bus to San Cristobel. The principle reason was to see the Mayan ruins set among the jungle. If nine hours on an overnight bus were not enough, we decided to walk the 9km to the ruins. Sadists we are sometimes! The ruins were wondefully atmospheric, far better than Chichen Itza, with the jungle actually stretching out and covering some of the temples and ancient structures. We also walked through a rainforest with cascades and waterfalls. The only disappointment - not seeing any howler monkeys.