Viva La Mexico 🇲🇽- Chiapas

Hello from sunny Mexico, dear ones!

Palenque

From Flores we took a bus to Palenque Chiapas. The tour took about 10 hours. We heard from many people that there can be problems at the border crossing. However, we had no difficulties except for a bit of dragging, as you have to cross the border on foot. This was a mere 300 meters maybe. In Palenque, you can visit beautiful rock pools and a large Maya city, but since I was already saturated with excursions, we only saw Palenque as a necessary stop for an overnight stay. The next day at 4:20 p.m., we continued to San Cristóbal.

San Cristóbal de las Casas

is a colonial town in the central highlands of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. The town is located at an altitude of 2100 meters and has about 160,000 inhabitants. Due to the altitude, San Cristóbal has a very pleasant temperature for Mexican standards - perpetual spring. During the day, you can perfectly wear a T-shirt and shorts or long pants, and in the evenings it gets cooler and you need something to wear over. This way, you can stroll through the colorful streets and lively markets.

However, one must be careful not to drink tap water here, let alone use it for brushing teeth. Many people here get parasites and are bedridden for two weeks. From San Cristóbal, you can reach the small town of San Juan Chamula in 15 minutes. Here, there is a small very indigenous Catholic church that, due to the strongly represented indigenous population, engages in obscure rituals for us Western boys and girls. Christmas songs are played all year round from a small plastic box. From the sound, I had the feeling that this box came from a Happy Meal from McDonald's. At the same time, an orchestra loudly plays Mexican songs at the entrance of the church. Candles are spread all over the church, many of which are simply stuck to the floor with wax. But the obscure thing was that chickens were sacrificed. This happened right in the middle of the church, and before that, live chickens were held over the candles and people rubbed the still-living chicken on their bodies to remove their sins.

We also went on a boat ride through Cañon El Sumidero, where we could observe crocodiles.

Other than that, we played a lot of Shithead in the hostel with Jhin, a Bulgarian friend. There was also a free walking tour every day at 5 a.m., which I joined for a day. Here I learned that the water remains so bad due to Coca Cola, as they own two clean springs and can thus maintain their sales. On average, 2 liters of cola per day per person are consumed... alarming. From here, we took a night bus to Puerto Escondido. But more about that in the next post, you scoundrel!