Jan 22, 2010 - San Cristobal

Hi Everyone, As you can see we have uploaded some more photos. I`m afraid there seem to be rather a lot. We are stitching some together when we get home. As you can see I have been enjoying my anthropological self, wallowing in cultures of long ago as well as those of today. Mitla has detailed adornments that the grandiose Monte Alban does not. The latter was a town of thousands and is situated 4 km. from the river. Slaves had to carry up everything they could not save from rain water. We have travelled on public buses chatting to...

Jan 21, 2010 - Waterfalls And Lies

Heading down through the mountains we reached the lowlands, stumbling like hallucinating anthropologists into the green embrace of the jungle, where sweat is the only currency and survival the only language that matters. We frequented the town of Palenque, a stupendous agglomeration of excrement and not really worth a mention. However, there are several sites nearby that definitely are. First of all we spent a day visiting two waterfalls in the middle of the rainforest. The first was called Agua Azul and was a site of about a dozen...

Jan 17, 2010 - Canyons And Crocodiles

Our last stay in the mountains was another colonial town, San Cristobal de las Casas. It’s quite quaint to stroll around, with colourful buildings and some interesting churches, although we are definitely on the edge of the church threshold at the moment, having walked around dozens over the last week! It was noticeably colder when we arrived, and we began digging into the clothes that we didn’t think we’d need until we hit Patagonia – Georgie still wasn’t totally warm, so we may be picking up more clothes at some point! This place is one...

Jan 2, 2010 - San Cristobal de las Casis

The theme song for the old television show Here Come The Brides began with “The bluest skies you ever saw are in Seattle”. Whoever wrote this had obviously never been to San Cristobal de las Casas. It is located high in the Chiapas mountains at about 2100 metres. Colonial San Cristobal is a UNESCO world heritage city that is spotlessly maintained under the crystal clear blue glow of endless sky. The altitude keeps the temperatures down but stepping in to the sun is a radiating experience. Most of the buildings are colorfully painted and...

Jan 2, 2010 - Chiapas

Puerto Vallarta is not my favorite place to be during the Christmas holidays. It is just too crowded and I am a bit spoiled and tend to get impatient with all the crowding. It seems like a good idea to take off for awhile if the opportunity presents itself. David never seems to care much about being on the beach for his entire vacation so we decided to take the time to explore some of the ‘real’ Mexico with a big change of pace and scenery. Exactly four years ago we made friends with someone from Mexico City who was in Vallarta for the...

Dec 17, 2009 - De vloek van de Maya's

Overal in de reisgidsen wordt erover gesproken, totnogtoe hadden we daar niets van gemerkt en dachten we dat het een mythe was. Maar vandaag hebben we het beiden aan den lijve ondervonden. De tropische hitte van de voorbije dagen, gecombineerd met eten dat ons deze keer niet was bevallen zorgden ervoor dat Kims eten die avond zwaar op de maag lag... en plots niet meer! Daarna begon het ook bij Lies te broebelen in de buik. Gevolg: anderhalve dag mottigheid... Ondanks het ongemak bleven we toch het reisschema volgen en reisden we in de...

Nov 2, 2009 - San Cristobal de las Casas

Nous sommes a San Cristobal de las Casas, l’une des plus importantes et des plus belles villes du Chiapas. Nous avons plaisir à sentir l’air frais et froid le soir car nous sommes tout de même à 2300m. Nous restons à la « Casa del Azar » chez Philippe un français qui loue des chambres. La Casa du Azar ressemble plus a une sympathique coloc qu’a un hostel. Il y a plusieurs personnes (en grande majorité française mais aussi mexicains, italiens, australiens…) mais tous des jeunes voyageurs aventureux. Nous pensions y rester quelques jours...

Oct 27, 2009 - Palenque

C’est parti, stop a toute blinde! la journée passe tres vite a l’arriere des differents pickups (sur cinq voitures seulement deux voyages nous sommes a l’interieur de la cabine, et que sur de courtes distances…). Nous arrivons le soir a la ville de Villahermosa. Cette ville ne nous parait pas tres attractive et il nous est difficil de trouver un hotel pas cher et correct. Mais nous trouvons grace a l’aide d’un gentil jeune couple. Nous partons donc tot le lendemain en direction de Palenque. Il y a pres de Palenque un important site...

Aug 31, 2009 - Oaxaca to San Christobal

Second leg of the Pan American Road trip. 8/25/2009 Went back up to bird at the Cumbre de Ixtepeji Reserva again. We search for the elusive Dwarf Jay and finally found a couple with a few other lifers to boot, Grey Barred wren and a beautiful Blue Mocking bird,and a striking Red Warbler. At about 10 miles in on a dirt road, we heard a funny noise and decided to turn back to the main highway. On the way back to the highway we passed a water processing plant and bought 10 gallons of purified spring water to put into the tank. The car would...

Aug 1, 2009 - San Cristobal

Aug 1st Aug 2nd Village tours to San Juan Chumal? I was reluctant about doing the village tour as I have been to various Indigenous Markets/ villages and they are very much geared around the tourists coming and buying various products. This however, was a totally different experience and well worth undertaking. After a fairly long journey from San Cristobal we arrived (through a check point with our guide) to the first village 2250m above sea level. The first thing that struck me was that all the women and young girls were wearing...

Mar 17, 2009 - Mexico: San Cristobal

We spent a couple of days in San Cristobal de las Casas, a beautiful colonial town in the Chiapas area. Loads of coffee houses, art house cinema and gorgeous streets and buildings. San Cristobal drew worldwide attention in 1997 when masked Zapatista revolutionaries seized control of the town in 1994 on the eve of Mexico signing the free trade agreements, fighting for indigenous land rights in the Chiapas area, which is one of the poorest states. We saw a film on this while we were there which was over ten years old, but focused on the...

Mar 17, 2009 - Mexico: Palenque

It was then off to Palenque, also in the Chiapas, to check out the ancient Mayan ruins. The ruins include around 500 excavated buildings, some quite spectacular, with most dating from around 7the century BC. The ruins are set right in the jungle with the backdrop of howler monkeys so if you moved away from the main tourist groups into the hills it was very Indiana Jones like! You can climb on a lot of the ruins too. Really interesting, although we were too poor to afford a tour we managed to move between a few groups to get some free info!...