Tales from Oaxaca and San Cristobal

(Nov 26, 2011)

It feels like it has been so long since I have written an update! I am currently in San Cristobal and have been here for just under a week.

Prior to this I was staying in Oaxaca, at a beautiful little hostel called Luna de Luz de Nayoo. I made many friends in this hostel and through couchsurfing and I was busy every day and night trying to coordinate meetings with people I had contacted online! Oaxaca was a beautiful city but, as with many of the cities in Mexico, the tourist centre was very manicured and I don’t think it fully reflected the ‘true’ local lifestyle. It was here in Oaxaca that I started to notice more European, Canadian, and American tourists, though a different variety from those in Puerto Vallarta. My favorite part of Oaxaca was the 20^th de Noviembre market. While I have had a bit of a hard time with the other markets I have encountered in Mexico (look, smell and sound very ‘real’), the more ‘westerner friendly’ maintenance patterns in this market were very much appreciated by me. Here I tried Chapulines (deep fried and marinated grasshoppers) and surprised my friend by buying a whole bag for my ‘emergency food supply’. I figured that grasshoppers would keep well and are full of nutrients and would come in handy in the case of near starvation due to long-haul bus rides. I spent the rest of my days wandering through the city, looking at the city’s galleries and museums (none were all that impressive, actually), wandering through the market (at least once a day), and salsa dancing with couchsurfing and hostel friends at night. I took a few trips out of the city, both with a fantastic girl from my hostel named Gabriella. Unfortunately we are travelling in opposite directions and said goodbye as we both left Oaxaca. I am getting used to the constant hellos, quick friendships, and goodbyes.  It’s hard to know what to say to someone who you meet on the road and lives so far away from you – boy voyage seems to suffice. On one of the day trips Gabriella and I ventured out to the ruins at Monte Alban, where we tried to imagine the Aztec shadows weaving throughout their city. The other trip we took was slightly less successful – and while we should have known better than to take an organized tour, our disinterest in planning the logistics of the trip blinded us. On our tour of what seemed like 1000 people, the first stop turned out to be a huge tree that we could see from the courtyard (and thus, we didn’t pay to get closer),  the second stop was to a textile store that involved a brief information session before the buying began, the third stop (to the ‘mezcal factory’) also turned out to be a store with a brief demonstration before buying, the fourth was to an unimpressive ruin site, and the fifth was to a beautiful ‘petrified waterfall’, though we arrived too late in the day to go swimming and ended up having to pay twice as much to get in! While the tour only cost ~$15 + 4 entrance fee to the waterfall, Gabriella and I were very steadfast and refused to buy or pay for anything else (we even packed a lunch!). The guides (who no doubt get a cut of the purchases) did not like us very much!

So here I am in San Cristobal. I arrived early in the morning after having taken (much more successfully, this time) the night bus and found my way to the beautiful hostel I was couchsurfing at (aka everyone else there paid to stay but I didn’t! Ah the joys of couchsurfing). For the first three days I stayed at the hostel and spent my time wandering around San Cristobal. There are many jewellery galleries, museums, stores, and trendy restaurants here. I like to think of San Cristobal as ‘backpacker’s Disneyland’ – manicured, colourful and full of ‘culture’. I have really enjoyed visiting here but don’t think I could live here as the paint begins to peel (so-to-speak). While San Cristobal is a nice place to come back to and the hostel I had been staying in was beautiful (vases of flowers and beautiful tile work everywhere!), some of my favorite sights here have been those outside of the city. One day two girls from the hostel and I went on a tour (this one was much more successful) to a town called Chamula, which is a small indigenous town with a magnificent ‘church’ (quotations because inside the Christian church structure the community was actually practicing traditional maya rituals and methods for worship). Here we learned all about the Maya beliefs and religion and met mayan families. Our guide was fantastic – though he was not of indigenous descent himself, he had taken time to learn the mayan ways, language, and most of the families in the town. I felt very welcome in the town – which was nice because it seems like the indigenous population are often so offended or wary of the visiting tourists. Even in San Cristobal. Yesterday I went with a friend for a boat ride through the Beautiful Canyones de Sumidero. As we glided beneath the towering rock walls on either side, I peered endlessly into the rock-clinging tropical forests along the banks for monkeys, crocodiles and sleeping jaguars. While I didn’t see any monkeys or jaguars, we did see about 1,000,000 vultures and 8 HUGE crocodiles (makes my friend from Egypt look tiny!) lazing on the banks with their mouths gaping!

That night I moved from my hostel to a new couchsurfing venue, which turned out to be more of a couchsurfing/backpacker/hippie commune than anything else! We all had a huge and delicious dinner together and I couldn’t believe the stream of couchsurfers that continued to glide in throughout the meal! I would call it a business if there were money involved! I am very happy here, though the farm house I am staying in is very cold. It took me half the day today to thaw out. Unfortunately, thawing brought on symptoms from the sunstroke I must have gotten yesterday while in the Canyon and I spent the day half-hobbling around the city, trying to get as many of the last remaining sights in as possible. In the morning I was able to conduct an interview for the organization I am working with and will work on writing up my report on it soon. Thank god for the rehydration salts that I carry with me everywhere, because by the end of the day I was not in good shape. When I returned to the ‘commune’, however, I stumbled upon my next great adventure! A group of people from the ‘commune’ have hooked up with a local guide and are planning to go on a jungle hiking/kayaking trek along the Guatemala/Mexico Border! The trip will be for 6 days and it is just too fantastic for me to pass up! So, as of Monday, I will be off the airwaves for the following week as I go one a jaguar hunt (or vice versa)!

Lots of love to you all – Into the jungle I go!

(photos will be posted from San Cristobal soon)