We arrived in San Cristobal in the early evening. The altitude here (~2000m) means it’s a bit colder than anywhere else we’ve been so far, especially in the evening. So we decided to get some beers and sit around the hostel campfire to warm up. We were soon joined by other hostel guests with the same idea and got chatting. Including Santi, Tod and Tom who we’d already bumped into several times on our trip.
The next morning, after breakfast at a delicious french bakery, we decided to explore the local markets. First we visited the textile/craft market and saw a lot of cool hand crafted clothes, bags and jewelry. Grace brought a cute cloth bag.
Next to the market was a free museum on traditional Mayan weaving. We popped in and had a look around, it was interesting to see the different types of weaving and styles from different regions. Apparently the weaving skills, still on display today in the markets, have been passed down the generations for over a thousand years.
After the craft market we decided to look around the daily market that sells everyday goods. It was vast and like a maze. There were so many stalls selling every fruit and veg imaginable and some we’d never even seen before. It was super cool to just nose about, except the poltry stalls. I had a hard time not banging into the chicken heads dangling off the sides of stalls and the live poltry were no better, they stank. But they were more than made up for by the deliciously smelling spice stalls and the beautiful flower stalls. We spent a good hour wandering around the stalls, partly because it was so interesting and partly because we couldn’t find our way out of the maze. I didn’t take too many photos as it felt a bit intrusive to photograph people just going about their shopping. The last thing I’d fancy while in Tesco would be someone snapping their holiday shots of me. So the photos below were some I took sneakily.
Before we were completely shopped out, we decided to head back to the French patisserie. Tod, one of the boys mentioned earlier who we kept bumping into, was turning 23 and we wanted to treat him to a cake. We got him a teeny tiny birthday cake which he enjoyed greatly and even tried to cut into slices to share.
That evening we went out to a local bar to celebrate Tod’s birthday. It was a really fun night and we got to dust off our salsa skills which honestly had not been used for three years for good reason!
Some street doggos on our way home.
The next day we had horrible hang overs, I had the headache from hell and honestly felt so sick all morning. The boys well and truly showed us up by still managing to wake up at 8am to make their river tour around a nearby canyon. Me and Grace were sea sick enough on land without bringing a boat into the mix. Instead we had a lazy morning at the hostel and when we finally started to feel a bit better we decided to take a collectivo out to a local Indigenous village.
The village San Juan Chamula is almost entirely made up of indigenous people, they are self governing so make their own code of conduct and the community prison is completely open on one side so you can see all the prisoners and publicly shame them (If that’s something you’re into, we gave it a miss).
There is also a ‘temple’ in the town, it looks and feels for all intents and purposes like a Catholic church but as the Catholic church no longer recognises it as Catholic, it is now called a temple rather than a church. It is not recognised as Catholic due to the residents having a very strange blend of beliefs. Catholicism mixed with indigenous beliefs, mixed with well… A kind of intense brand loyalty to Coca-Cola!
It is cheaper to buy Coca-Cola in the town than water. The residents on average drink 2 liters of Coca-Cola a day! That includes the children. They believe it has healing properties and the burps it gives them are cleansing evil spirits out of their bodies.
We decided we had to have a look inside the temple. Unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photos there, which is a shame as it was absolutely breathtaking. The marble floor was covered in a layer of pine needles and every inch of the considerably expansive walls were covered in fresh flowers. There were no pews, just tables around the walls, and every possible inch table and floor space was covered in lit candles, hundreds and hundreds of them. It was absolutely beautiful. The collective heat of them was boiling, but we walked around every part of the temple to take it all in. There were also families lighting candles and chanting/praying in unison and the whole effect was just surreal.
The above photos are ones I found online of the church, I think we must have visited on a special occasion as the walls were covered in flowers when we were there and there were waaaay more candles but at least the photos give you a small glimpse of what we saw.
On our way back out of the town we also passed through a graveyard, it was kind of sad to see, different colour crosses indicate deaths at different stages in life and there were unfortunately a lot of white crosses simbolising children and babies.
To leave the town we had to walk up a big hill. I’d had a cold since Palenque but walking up the hill made me very short of breath and my sore throat seemed to feel as if it travelled right down into my lungs. I’d been taking COVID tests every other day since I’d gotten my cold (not daily as we only had one box from the UK and they are £20 a test in Mexico) and the next morning when I tested, I was positive.
I think my awful headache was more covid than a hangover, as this is apparently one of the first symptoms. I felt awful that we had been out and about while I was possibly contagious but at least we had been hand washing and sanitising regularly and worn masks all the time, in Mexico you have to wear them even outdoors. We had also booked private rooms since I started getting a sore throat. Even though I was testing negative for covid at that point, it’s still not nice to risk passing a normal cold on either. After we got the positive test we booked a private air BnB to isolate in for a week and that is where we have been since.
Unfortunately we have had to change our plans quite a bit, firstly to make up the lost time spent isolating but also as although I am past being contagious I could still test positive via lateral flow for up to a month from now and a negative lateral flow is needed for entry into Guatemala. So our plan now is to skip Guatemala and fly straight to El Salvador. Not ideal, but seeing as I’ve recovered from COVID for a second time unscathed I feel lucky to still be travelling at all.
Our journey to El Salvador is going to be a long one. We checked out of our air BnB at 11am, we are now currently relaxing in an orchid park until 7pm when the last bus to the airport leaves. The bus takes around 2 hours so we will arrive around 9pm and then have to wait for another 2hr 30 for our flight from San Cristobal to Mexico city. Once we arrive in Mexico city around 1am we need to wait in the airport for another 6 hours until our flight to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. It’s going to be a very long sleepless night for us.
I’ll let you know more about El Salvador soon, lots of love, Alice x
Above are some photos from the orchid park. Below are our last tacos in Mexico and my favourite, a series of photos I took of Grace trying to con me into trying a chilli she just had, telling me it isn’t spicy. I think you’ll agree, the photos bsuggest otherwise!
