Mexico - San Cristobal

Day 354.

Somehow it was already time to cross the border into Mexico, somewhere that at the beginning of this trip felt a million miles away. Now we know in 10 days time when we hit the big 365 we'll be celebrating it in Mexico, hopefully with a few glasses of the countries finest Mezcal by our side.

But first we had to get there, our transport would be a surprisingly luxurious empty shuttle. Which was fine by us given the crazy mountain roads we would be taking. It was a tough toss up between watching the shuttle driver overtake on single carriageway roads at 110mph, each time fearing for your life when a like minded driver is attempting the same in the other direction or trying to sleep only to be woken startled when he decided to slam on those breaks. Credit where credit is due however, we made good time.

Walking across the border couldn't be smoother, a quick stamp and we were on route to San Cristobal las casas. We certainly arrived at a good time too, as sunset was illuminating this city of colour. The charm of this place won us over instantly, and we hadn't even tried the food yet.

Without going into too much detail the food and drink is incredible. Some key learnings of the trip so far.
- Don't add chilli spice to you nice buttery cheesey street corn, it doesn't work
- Pastor Tacos for only 7 pesos is the current record, making it a grand total of only £0.25 for the ultimate treat.
- Discovered Tortitos, suspicion is it won't be the last time either.
- Stick to Mezcal vs the local home brewed corn alcohol, It seens I just can't handle it..
- Small worry we might omelette avacados, at only £0.10 each I suspect we will be eating a truck load of Guac.
- Buying fried crickets off the street is never good, con chilli salsa or not.

The big history here is the Zapatista indigenous uprising some 20 years ago, that is still felt throughout the region today. We've done our best to immerserse ourself in the history, attended local story telling, checked out all the galleries, visited the local indigenous towns and most importantly purchased a balaclava clad laptop memorabilia sticker, doing our bit and all.

The visit to San Juan Chamula, an autonomous region only 30 minutes away was a real highlight. Here the men and women wear large black or white sheep's wool coats (accompanied with cowboy hats of course), and boy do they look suave. Police don't venture here and the town rules themselves - brutally burning the previous mayor of the town alive outside the church 4 years ago being a good example of how they get justice done...

Nonetheless they are a welcoming people, and kind enough to welcome us inside their church to witness the daily rituals. This isn't any ordinary church, and photos are forbidden (you can try but you'll risk having the same fate as the mayor, its serious stuff). Inside families kneel on the pine needle covered floor, thousands of candles are alight all around. Rituals are murmured first, containing wishes or requests to God, swiftly followed by the sacrifice of a chicken or two. The chickens are briefly waved across the open candles and then sacrificed by each family, and along with its life go the wishes of the family across to the spiritual word. We saw a good 6 chickens meeting their fate that day and we only stayed 20 minutes. If that wasn't enough once the rituals are completed everyone will begin drinking Pox, the local 40% home brewed alcohol, and generously so indeed. The final ingredient is coca cola, with each person entering with a bottle of their own, the concept being that upon burping due to the fizz the soul is cleansed. Thus it makes sense that residents of Chiapas state consume more coke than anywhere else in the word!

Back in San cristobal the local markets steal the show, the twisting undercover labrynth of stalls is mesmerising to look at and also fairly easy to get lost inside. But fortunately whenever you get lost you typically arrive at a Taco stand so it's not all bad. The vendors here take great pride is stacking their fruit in pyramids, not only that they insist you buy the whole pyramid rather than one piece of any given fruit or veg. Although rather impractical at first it actually makes for simple and super cheap shopping.

Chiapas is also the home to Amber, and man there is a lot of Amber here. Thousands of stalls set up shop daily bringing to market to Amber mined from their backyards - Mexico seems to have it all.

After a relaxing stay in San Cristóbal we were leaving the mountains and hopefully on route to that sunny Mexican weather, not sure my shoes can face being caught in another unexpected torrential downpour!Okumaya devam et