San Cristobal De Las Casas Part 2
Wednesday Jan 16
Wednesday was an amazing day, one of my favorites so far! We hired Brother Ortiz as our tour guide and he took us up in to the mountains to see a couple little villages where the Zapatista movement started. The majority of the people in these areas speak only Tzotzil, which is a Mayan dialect, only the younger people speak Spanish and it‘s usually pretty basic. Ortiz first took us up to Chocoloh, which is deep in the mountains and we met up with the Branch President (Manuel was his name) from the church there, his house is literally where the road ends and just turns in to jungle. He told us he still has an hour walk to his house from the closest bus stop and some people still don't even have electricity let alone a car so they don’t have any other options. He also mentioned that he’s the only person in the branch up there that even speaks Spanish and it’s because he served a mission in Mexico City. From there he took us a little ways back down the road to go see the chapel (for such a small community, it‘s unreal that they have a chapel), which was on a what seemed to me a pretty hidden path off the side of the road with no signs at all as to where we going and then down through the jungle. On our way we were passing through peoples backyards which meant corn fields, pumpkin patches, fruit trees, chickens and all other kinds of fruits and vegetables. Then all of sudden the path ends at a gate and the church is right there, no other roads or paths getting there.
Million dollar view! Also, McKay wore this sweatshirt in honor of Lance confessing to Oprah this day....
This is as they say, the end of the road, in this case it's just a little more literal than others... About 100 yards down this dirt road is where Manuel lives.
So pretty right? This is on the path down to the church, I hope no Zapatistas jump out and get us!
We made it! Tzotzil is the writing on top! McKay wore this shirt in honor of the Aggies, just because they are awesome!
Chapel, they also had a separately attached building below this that had all the classrooms! One awesome thing about going to the churches while we are here is they always have super nice bathrooms that you can throw your toilet paper in the toilet, maybe that doesn't sound like such a luxury to you now, but if you had to live in a world with trash cans full of stinky toilet paper then it would!
The church was by far the nicest building we had seen since driving deeper in to the mountains and it had a basketball court instead of soccer goals, which is crazy because every church down here has soccer goals and they get used like crazy. When we asked Manuel about it, he said it’s because basketball is the most popular sport among the indigenous people, I mean I hate to judge a book by it's cover but come on, in a country obsessed with the true sport, they chose basketball? It starts to make you question a few things... :)
After that Manuel took us to see a few peoples houses, the first one was on our way back from the church.
This is the kitchen of one of the members who lives right by the church, the whole house is a big open room like this with dirt floors and the kitchen was about 1/3 of the entire house. They didn’t have any mattresses or anything I could see that they slept on except a few hammocks.
When we first walked up to the house Manuel was behind us talking to someone else and there were two young girls sitting there sewing clothes (one of them was making one of their traditional skirts which takes about a week to finish and the other was working on a little girls traditional top which takes about 12 days) and of course they had no idea who we were, but even so the first thing they did was go and get us some chairs to sit in, these people were so amazingly kind and at the same time so shy! Every time we would try to talk to them they would answer but look away cover their mouth and kind of giggle it was pretty funny. They were super impressed though when McKay showed off his super Tzotzil language skills and shared the 9 (McKay wanted me to lie and round up to 10, but I'm not giving him any leeway here) words that he knows! McKay snapped this picture as we were walking away and the girl was getting mad at him.
After that we went and visited Manuel's sisters house, we didn't get to see inside but his nephew, nephews wife, and two little kids were all hanging out outside. The wife was stripping corn off the cob to feed to the chickens. It was crazy to me that the little kids were just playing around in the dirt with no socks or shoes on, I just kept cringing thinking about all the dirt and germs! They also have lots of random dogs and cats and chickens just wandering about the place.
When we got to his house, Manuel's wife was washing these clothes by hand like a pro, seriously she had a system down and I was enthralled with her technique! Also, it is so hard to get them to smile for a picture, so I love the big cheesy grin she has on her face in this one!
This is from the Manuel's backyard, which consisted of 3 small buildings, the first one in the middle is closest to the road was brand new and it was their new bedroom, very basic but it at least had wood floors. The second on the right was the kitchen, not all the way enclosed and had dirt floors, and the one on the left was their old bedroom, but is now his "man cave" it was hard to picture anyone ever being able to live and sleep in such a room!
They fed us these fresh "blue tortillas" that she had whipped up that morning with some black beans and salt. It was good, but so dry and hard to imagine that alone as a meal. I felt bad even taking from them but they were so insistent and just wanted us to keep eating more, it was so kind! We were also talking to Manuel and it was interesting to learn that his wife grew up speaking Tzeltal, but when they got married she had to learn Tzotzil. She didn't speak Spanish, but when she was feeding us the tortillas you could tell she seemed a little sheepish and Manuel told us she's embarrassed of their house when people come over. He was so great though and told us he keeps telling her, we have nothing to be embarrassed about, this is how we live. I love that he said that so much!
Panoramic view from the road, on the far right is Manuel's house, across the valley is the village Pom and in the valley is Chenalho.
After that we passed through Chenalho, it’s a little bit bigger, but still not much to it. They’re very wary of outsiders and even though Manuel was with us they wanted to charge us to cross this bridge just to look at the river. He finally convinced them that we didn’t have to pay but we weren’t allowed to take any pictures unless we wanted to give them money (which strangely we had no desire to do...).
What a great view! Oh yeah and the scenery in the back looks good too!
Our amazing guide for the day Manuel! He is such a sweetheart! He had just finished attending a business school in Mexico City where they teach you basic business skills, like accounting and how to run a business and it was really cute seeing all the things he was trying to do. He had built a big box to make compost that he was going to sell to the farmers, because the land there is not very good, compost is super pricey. He had also started making these tamarindo sweets to sell. When we were saying goodbye to him, we tried to give him some money for spending all day with us and he wouldn't take it, so we finally told him it was to help grow his business, he got a little choked up and then insisted that we take a bunch of the tamarindo for ourselves and thanked us for our support.
This is what a lot of the houses look like from the road driving through the mountains!
That night we came home and met the Mondujano family for dinner, they were so sweet and took us to this locals favorite taco restaurant in town and ordered big plates of all the meat so that we could try a little of everything. It was so delicious and finally cured me of taco unease after the Mr. Taco “incident!” They were so nice and in addition to buying us dinner had also brought us a present, it was two handmade ceramic doves that the indigenous women here make, and you see lots of them on the front entry ways to people's houses. It was so thoughtful of them and I can't get over how nice everyone here has been! Their daughter Karlita is learning English in school, so between my Spanish and her English we were chatting the night away like old friends communicating brokenly in our second languages! :)
Huh? I wonder why all the food is surrounding McKay and I, awkward… I really think they were shocked at how much food we both ate! :)
After Dinner Karlita and her mom had driven separately and walked us back to the main plaza to work off some of the tacos we had just eaten. They were so dang cute laughing and joking together and singing songs, you could just tell they really were good friends and it definitely made me miss my mom! :)
Thursday Jan 17
Chiflon is amazing, I’m glad we had the chance to make it there! It’s a series of about 6 waterfalls that you have to hike up the mountain to see each one. The cold rainy weather actually made it perfect for hiking! At the bottom of all the waterfalls was set up an awesome swimming hole with a bunch of picnic tables and grills and was the perfect area to go for a swim and spend the day!
This is the first waterfall you come to as your hiking up. As I mentioned before it was a little bit chilly this day and as you can tell I was not going to waste a golden opportunity like this to break out the spandex, I'm sure I was making all the boys swoon....
As we kept hiking and working harder and harder the layers were slowly coming off.
This is the view from the top waterfall. If you look closely you can see on the path up to Chiflon where we lost all our dignity because we couldn’t afford 12 pesos for a little Tuk Tuk and had to walk like the poor tourists that we really are.
This is the highest waterfall at Chiflon. It was a nice little (big) hike to the top which got our hearts pumping and our sweat glands working! Your next question may be, “Hey Jayne, how is possible that you are wearing a completely different outfit than in the first picture?” One word, magic!
This is the swimming hole at the bottom, other than us there were only two other young Mexican girls swimming in the pool because it was so cold.
The girls had spent as least 30 minutes each doing glamour shots of each in the water and on the waterfalls. Naturally I wanted to play along, this is the best mermaid pose I could muster up, what do you think?
My muscle man! Sorry ladies he's already taken!
This is McKay's sad face after having to walk there and back, because we apparently forgot the boy scout motto this day...
This little kid was so cute and was running around trying to sell his cotton candy saying things like, "please buy my candy" and giving you these super sweet sad eyes, I mean how do you say no to that? All the indigenous people have their little kids out working like this because they know it's way harder to say no to a 6 year old than a grown man with BO and missing teeth. We really didn't want any cotton candy, but we offered to buy him some chips, which he gladly accepted. When we got to the store first thing he went for was the biggest bag of Doritos in the place (he's no dummy), but we made him pick a smaller bag and then told him he could get a drink as well. He went straight for the Blue Powerade and said, "Chiclet?" which is what they call gum down here. After that we were getting ready to pay and you could see the wheels in his head turning and he looks at McKay and says, "I should get one for my little brother?" McKay asked him if he was sure he had a little brother and he assured us he did. The lady in the store then said, "You better not be lying or God will punish you." He sat there quietly for a second thinking and replied, "Well I have a brother, so God won't punish me." It was seriously so cute and we were dying laughing. After walking out of the store with a haul of two bags of chips and his blue Powerade, he still had the audacity to turn to McKay and say, "Buy one of my candies, I'll give you a good price." :)
Friday January 18
This was our last morning in San Cristobal, we had so much fun here and were way sad to leave!
Goodbye hostel with the awesome balcony and bad Mexican karaoke!
This is the awesome view from our balcony. Maybe you're thinking, "Oh what a cute dog in this picture." WRONG, these dogs are not normal people's pet dogs, these dogs wander the street like it's their job and their bathroom, barking until all hours of the night!
We were heading back up to Playa Del Carmen to meet my family and after researching like crazy we finally found the cheapest bus in the history of buses. For a 19 hours bus ride we paid 350 pesos, which is less than $30, we were pumped, until we saw this....
What? It's not normal to have to tape your windshield back together? Have you ever seen manual windshield wipers? I have, because these ones didn't work, so the driver had a rope attached to the wiper that he would pull across the glass and the wiper was attached to a bungee cord on the other side that would pull it back. Luckily it only rained like the entire time so it wasn't even a distraction for the driver... Haha, brings ghetto rigged to a whole new level!
We could have had this, but instead opted for this....
This is our orange beauty as we called her (or maybe I just named her right now so it would sound cooler than it actually was... either way you'll never know).
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