Bus Trips and Bambi

Much as we liked Mexico City, we were glad to leave it behind. All that running around was exhausting. (I know you all must feel very sorry for us.) The bus from Mexico City to San Cristobal de Las Casas (pictured) was about 13 hours long (ouch). We arrived at the bus station early and killed a couple hours playing 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon. We connected Tupac, Jackie Chan, Corey Feldman, Audrey Hepburn, Wesley Snipes, James Belushi, Demi Moore, and McCauley Caulkin. I was personally most impressed with Audrey Hepburn. I believe we did her in 6. The bus ride was hell. We had the same driver for the entire trip. I don’t even remember him stopping. He drove like a crazy person. We were on a two lane winding highway. At one point, the fog was so thick, you could hardly see out the window. I was convinced that, if I looked behind the curtain to see the driver, it would have been the Cryptkeeper. I could almost hear him laughing as he drove us unsuspecting travelers off into the abyss. I wasn’t the only one worried either. Two women were staring intently at the road. It was the first time I ever saw locals look worried on the bus. I finally just popped a half a Valium and got a few hours sleep. We arrived in San Cristobal at about 10:00 in the morning, exhausted and starving. (Thirteen hours on that bus and not so much as a bag of peanuts. Don’t ever take ADO-GL.)

San Cristobal is the kind of place where travelers are accosted the second they step foot in town. We had flyers shoved in our faces and person after person follow us with arm-loads of trinkets. You can’t escape in restaurants either. There are no “no soliciting” signs in Mexico. You sit at your table eating and, between bites, say “no gracias” over and over until you can’t take it anymore and buy some crap you don’t want or need. I’m currently wearing a pastel-colored anklet. I hate pastels. After we choked down our (kinda nasty) breakfast, we hopped in a cab and went to our hotel (Media Luna). The hotel had a courtyard full of flowers and was very beautiful. The guy working the desk was a middle aged man from Oklahoma (but who lives in Texas). He sells oil drilling parts and army gear to people in Nigeria, but he was there helping his girlfriend run the hotel. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish. (I had to translate for him with two other guests.) Bizarre. He tried to give us special, down-home Okie treatment, but any efforts he made were undone by the lady who runs the place. She is quite the princess. (We came back from breakfast one day and watched as she ordered the guy cleaning rooms to stop in the middle of what he was doing and go wash her little fufu dog instead.) We originally made reservations for three nights, but they booked other people and we only could stay for two. Good riddance. San Cristobal is beautiful, but there are just too many tourists. No place on earth can stand to have the entire economy based on kissing ass and pleading for pennies. None of the people seem very happy. The food was generally pretty blah, although the coffee was finally improving. (They grow coffee in the state of Chiapas, where San Cristobal is.) The best thing in town was a printing cooperative we toured. They take used paper, flowers, leaves, dye etc and make notebooks, cards, wall hangings and other paper products. They’ve been doing it for decades and it supports about thirty families.

What we really went to that part of Mexico for was to see the Mayan ruins at Palenque. We had to take another long winding bus ride (about five hours), but this driver was sane. We stayed at Cabanas Safari in, as the name suggests, a little thatch-roofed cabana. The place is owned by a veterinarian and his family and is on a large piece of property covered in tropical plants and full of animals. It reminded me a lot of Florida, full of palm trees and crab grass and those bushes with the little red flowers all over them. Unfortunately, it was like Florida in August - hot as balls. The cabana had no air, so Chris and I took a lot of cold showers. The best part about the hotel was, by far, the company. We got to eat breakfast with a funky chicken and a deer (named Bambi, of course). As you can see in the pic, Bambi likes toast and will come right up to the table and give you kisses in order to get it. I doubt toast is good for deer, but who can say no to deer kisses?

Before we went to see the ruins, we took a tour of the tropical forest with a Mayan guide named Geronimo (like the Apache). Those of you who know my complete lack of interest in greenery will be surprised to learn that his tour of medicinal plants was actually pretty interesting. We saw plants for snake bites, antibacterial plants, poisonous plants used for stunning fish, and a tree with peeling red bark that they call the “tourist tree”. He neglected to point out some of the special agriculture we passed, but Chris managed to spot it anyway. The forest was filled with Tarzan vines and snakes, but surprisingly free of mosquitos (dry season). He found some howler monkeys for us to hang out with, but my zoom lens wasn’t quite up to the task. Finally we ended up at a beautiful waterfall where Chris and I took dozens of dorky pictures, this being one of them. We finished our tour of the forest just when it was getting to the hottest part of the day. It must have been 100 degrees, all of them humid. Chris and I went through about 6 bottles of water, a gatorade and a coconut (we drank the milk). Even though we had to stop every few minutes so I wouldn’t get heat stroke, the ruins at Palenque have taken first place in my list of most impressive ancient cities (a position formerly held by Uxmal). It’s just amazing. Most of the buildings can be climbed on and quite a few can be climbed inside as well. They are all built into the mountains in ingenious ways. By the time we finished climbing around in the heat, I was exhausted. After a cold shower and a nap we went out to dinner in Palenque town (less picturesque, but more pleasant than San Cristobal). We tried some plantains stuffed with cheese (like Mexican blintzes) and a local drink called pozol. If Yoohoo was unsweetened and full of corn meal, it would taste a lot like pozol with cacao. Once was enough on the pozol, but the plantains were scrumptious.

Another winding bus ride from Palenque, a couple more nights in San Cristobal (at a much nicer hotel) and we booked a ride out of Mexico. We have been in Quetzaltenango for almost a week now and it looks like we are going to plant it for a bit. I’ll give you the lowdown on that in a couple days.

Ciao.