Next Stop: Chiapas

I left Oaxaca with my friend Karisa and we headed to the state of Chiapas which is even further south to meet up with our other friends from the program. Unfortunately, at this point I came down with a bad cold so I wasn't able to fully enjoy my first day in San Cristobal de las Casas. However, I made the most of it and still enjoyed the trip a lot! The really cool thing is that I studied a lot about Chiapas in one of my spanish classes in smith and the indigenous movement for autonomy that took place there in the 90s (the zapatista movement) so it was very interesting to actually be there and see little zapatista dolls in the market. The city of san cristobal was different that I expected, because even though chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico, the city was very prosperous and filled with lots of elegant organic restaurants and hippie travelers from the west. However, there were also very young children begging and selling things on the street like in every mexican city which is always hard to see. My friend and I spent one morning exploring the huge market and marveling at all the beautiful and cheap things to buy- I wanted it all! Too bad my suitcase has a limited amount of space! The city was having free screenings of documentary movies when we were there, so we headed to garden of a cafe to join in on the screenings. I also went to a small museum about the history of coffee in Chiapas, because it is one of the main producers of coffee in mexico and about the work of a coffee cooperative there. Overall the city was very happy and alive and the weather was great so I was sad to leave so soon! We left the city beyond to travel though the many hills, valleys and forests of Chiapas and the highlight of the trip was passing by a school with a Zapatista mural like I had studied in smith. However, we were all shocked to discover that there was a military checkpoint along one road and that everyone was being stopped and the cars were being searched. I have no idea why exactly, but because Chiapas is on the border with Guatamala it is possible they were checking for drugs or immigrants. Anyways, we arrived at one of the most famous waterfalls in Chiapas, Agua Azul where the water is bright, tropical blue! And the best part was we got to swim in the water and it was really refreshing because it was so hot out! However, Palenque, the ancient Mayan city was even hotter! I was really excited to see Palenque because I had also studied about it in an architecture class in Smith. The site was built in the middle of the jungle and has many impressive pyramids, but is also the site of the tomb of Pacal the great which was the first pyramid discovered in mesoamerica to be used as a tomb instead of for rituals. Another interesting part of the ruins is that the Mayans built arches, but they didn't know how to use a keystone so the arches look more like triangles than arches. The heat was so strong that it was hard to fully explore all of the ruins (the sweat was dripping down my back). When we returned to the hotel, we all took very cold showers! The next day, my friend and I took a 10 hour bus ride back to Puebla and I had one day to rest and regroup before heading off with my program on another trip.