Mexico: A Wander or Two Around San Cristobal

One of my favorite things to do in San Cristobal was to pick a direction and go for a wander.  Sometimes I'd have a destination, like a church or a museum, but sometimes I'd just head up a hill to see what was there.  It only took a turn onto a side street to put me in a different city, without hotels or restaurants with menus in English.

If it rained, as it often did, I would duck into a nearby cafe or pastry shop, order hot chocolate and wait it out.  I found some nice places to eat that way.

Sundays, however, were a different story.  On Sundays, most places are closed.  Getting caught in the rain without an umbrella on a Sunday afternoon can leave one cold, and drenched to the skin both from the rain and the occaisional splash by a passing car.

I know this.  My innate sense of direction is barely good enough to get me across a room, let alone tell me that I am not three blocks from the hotel, but nearly twenty.  Notice the clouds in the picture below.  I took it just before I headed back to my hotel, starting with a ten- block excursion in the opposite direction.

Mexico: Chamula and the Church

Photography is not allowed in the church in Chamula, one of the towns near San Cristobal.  While I could wander around, and watch people worship, I couldn't take any pictures.  So it's descriptions only for the interior experience.

The Catholic Church and the traditional religions of the area have merged in ways that often seem more traditonal than Catholic.  As Christianity spread throughout the world, missionaries would try hard to tie local beliefs and rituals to Catholic beliefs in rituals. Christmas is in December because it coincided with the birthdate of a Persian god.  Christmas trees come from German traditions.  In the New World, priests li ked local gods to Catholic saints, and churches developed their own, distinct, Catholic rituals.

In Chamula, the walls and altar of the church look like any other, with the stations of the cross and statues of Mary.  The center is different.  The space usually occupied by pews is empty, and the floor is covered by straw.  Small altars, votive lights, and offerings are spotted around the area, tended by the worshipers who set up temporary places of worship.

Walking around among them is a bit eerie, and feels intrusive.  I could feel the intensity of their worship.  Unlike going into a normal service, I was very aware of not actually belonging, not being part of anything taking place.  While I'm not Catholic, I usually don't feel rejected by the church.  Here I did.  My visit was short.

In fact it was so short I had to wait quite a while for my guide to come back.  I tried to talk to some of the men who were sitting outside the church. My minimal Spanish was a real handicap.  The men did manage to tell me it was OK to take pictures of the outside.

Mexico: '67 Lime Gold Mustang

At first I just got a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a flash of an unusual color near the cathedral plaza in San Cristobal, one known to me as lime gold.  It was the color of my first car, a 1967 Mustang.  I turned and there it was.  I walked over, and stared.  Wow.  It wasn't mine, of course.  This one was an automatic.and had special speakers on the rear window deck.  But it was the same year, and the same color.OK, it had been repainted, of course, and the color was a bit off, but still...my first car.

Driving with my roommates down to the Cape for the weekend.  Trotting across the beach at Falmouth to feed the parking meter, digging it out of snow.  The morning my fance and I woke up and realized the parking space that we had shoveled out the week before was empty, the car had been stolen. Picking it up ten days later down near Providence, with no appreciable damage done.

I loved that car. I called her Matilda.

Mexico: Semana Santa, or Easter Week, in San Cristobal

After spending Carnival in Merida (Ooops, forgot to write about that, maybe later...), I was looking forward to Easter in San Cristobal.  I expected lots of processions, and a crowded town.  I was disappointed on both counts.  I think there were more out in the villages, but I didn't know about them.  Besides, I spent Semana Santa  in Antigua, Guatemala a few years ago, and I doubt anything will ever top that.

Because this was at the height of the flu epidemic, the Mexican tourists that shop owners were expecting didn't really materialize.  Although the numbers were not too far off from the normal season, the tourists didn't fly in from Mexico City or Monterrey, but drove up from nearby places like Villa Hermosa. The flu risk in San Cristobal was minimal.  It doesn't have an airport of its own, and is way off the normal long-distnace bus routes.

The most peculiar thing to me was how little publicity there was.  The cathedral put out a schedule of services, but there were no posters or other advertising that I could see.  I sort of found thigs by happenstance or rumor.  The search for the procession, the mock crucifiction, the burning of the effigies - all these things involved running around, asking questions, and trying to ascertaing times.  The police who were stationed everywhere didn't seem to know much about what they were going to protect when.

Even the chuch services weren't taken very seriously.  I wanted to go into the cathedral to see how it was decorated and what was happening duing Easter mass.  Since I'm not Catholic, and not local, I was hesitant to intrude.  Then I noticed that a lot of Mexicans were going in clutching their cameras, then coming out fairly quickly.  When I saw a nun enter in the middle of the mass and emerge five minutes later, I decided that maybe it wouldn't be too offensive if I went in for a look.  I joined the crowd, stayed for a few minutes, and left, along with many others.

We all headed straight for the vendors.  Tent stalls had been erected on the plaza in front of the church, and blankets were spread on the ground to display handicrafts, toys, and other goods. One corner was set up for bands to perform. It was, above all, a festival.

Mexico: San Cristobal de Las Casas, Cool Weather At Last

What a difference altitude can make. In Palenque, every move I made left me drenched in sweat. In San Cristobal I slept under two heavy, thick wool blankets. At nearly 7000 feet (2200 meters), the nights are cool even in the hottest months of the year. During the day, I felt a bit cold in the shade, and a bit warm in the sun. Sun was in short supply, so I wore long sleeves over short sleeved tops, and stuck my collapsible umbrella in my bag for the duration.

San Cristobal wasn't what I expected at all. It's in Chiapas, and the city and the villages around it were the center of of Zapatista rebellion. Now the Zapatistas run a restaurant in town, and sell Zapatista dolls, postcards, and keychains!

The center is geared around tourism, in a much more modern and upscale way than Merida. The two intersecting pedestrian-only streets and sidewalks are paved with flagstone. The sidewalks are wide and open, without the shop overflow that makes walking in some Mexican cities so hazardous. Even outside the tourist area, I was rarely forced to step into the street in order to get by.

All this talk about temperature might seem excessive, but in San Cristobal the problem was the opposite of that in Paleque and Merida. Again, all the restaurants were totally open across the front, and there was no attempt to change the inside temperature. In the evening they were just as cold as the outdoors. There are few coats hanging on the backs of chairs, because taking off your coat really isn't comfortable.

Restaurants were more sophisticated, too. One of my favorites was a Lebanese restaurant across the street from my hotel and another was the Italian restaurant right in my hotel.  I had a favorite table, near the pizza oven, because it was warm.

Yes, I said hotel. I needed a break from hostels and got a private room with share bath for about what I paid for a hostel bed on Isla Mujeres. Because of a low demand for the cheap rooms, I usually had the bathroom to myself.

Add a good English-language used book store, lots of activity in the parks and in the square in front of the cathedral, interesting indigeous villages to visit, and a sprinkling of museums, and I had a great town to pass a few weeks.