San Cristobal - a colorful place that is fun to visit :) (Day 158 of the world trip)

09/02/2020

And here greets the jet lag :D

We went to bed around 8:00 p.m., fell asleep immediately, and then woke up at midnight (both of us, strangely) and again at 3:00 a.m. From 3:00 a.m. onwards, there was no more sleep, as for our bodies it was actually midday :p :D :D

Both Jonas and I have been to the USA a few times, but I have never experienced jet lag as bad as here^^ Also, we are at an altitude of over 2,000 meters, so that might also have something to do with it. Acclimatization and all that ;-)

Well, we managed to handle it until 5:00 a.m., but then we got up, had breakfast, and finished the last two blog entries. I managed to write the text yesterday, but my eyes were closing when it came to the photos, so we postponed it :D

Finally, around 9:00 a.m., we were ready and went out into the city. As mentioned yesterday, the city is huge in terms of area, but the individual streets feel like a small village. The houses have facades in vibrant colors, and there is a lot of street art.

Just for that reason, it's already worth it to walk aimlessly through the streets. I could have taken a photo of every other house because it had something special :D

Based on suggestions from the internet, Jonas designed a walking tour for us, which initially led us uphill to a church. From there, we already had a nice view of the city and especially the houses built into the hills <3

Afterwards, there were several other churches as sights, as well as the truly impressive cathedral (which was closed, though). And even though we are familiar with churches from back home, just like on the Philippines, they have little in common with ours :p It is colorful, sometimes kitschy, and almost always there is music playing nearby - not church music, but local music played on probably local instruments. A really cool thing :)

In addition to all the churches and the general sightseeing in the form of the street scene, we also stopped at a huge market that is set up like a bazaar in narrow alleys. The cool thing was that only locals were there. You could see fruits, vegetables, whole chickens lying upside down on the edge of the table (…) and a few stands for clothing.

At one stand that had cool, colorful fruits and/or spices, I took a photo, just like I had done a thousand times on this trip, but for the first time, I got scolded by an angry lady for it :O I stopped taking pictures, but I didn't delete the photo either :p After all, there was nothing bad to see, but oh well ;-)

After the local market, where life is in full swing (which might explain why the streets themselves are always so empty? ^^), we passed by the cathedral, where there is a tourist market with souvenirs and above all, colorful fabrics. The cathedral is currently closed, but from the outside, it already looked pretty cool!

And about the colorful fabrics: most locals walk around the city in their traditional clothing, which makes for a really beautiful picture :) Even the younger girls often wear their colorful fabrics instead of H&M, even though they definitely have contact with modernity in San Cristobal. We always like it when you can still recognize the culture and tradition despite tourism ;-)

The last stop and the last church was also a viewpoint. The church is even higher than the one we visited first, so we had to climb some more steps until we could look down on the city from above. Views are almost never bad, and this one didn't disappoint either <3

Back at the hostel, we rested a bit and then extended our stay here to a total of five nights. We also booked a tour for tomorrow, for which we will be picked up at 9:00 a.m. Ha! That's a piece of cake for us :p :D We are always up so early anyway ^^

As we were chatting with our host Sergio, I told him that we had actually wanted to ask him in Spanish and presented him with the sentence that Jonas and I had put together with great effort. To our delight, Sergio liked the sentence and probably even understood it! Yay! <3 :D

We then talked a bit about our limited knowledge of Spanish, and he gave us a book of "Street Spanish", which contains dialogues in colloquial language. Let's see if we can learn something from it (or want to) :D :D

For dinner, we went to a vegan restaurant, where we paid only € 8.00 together for one main course and one side dish!! :O That's awesome!! In the street where this place is located, there are many vegetarian and vegan cafes and restaurants, so we have probably found our place for dinners ^^

On the way back, we cheekily got a package of chocolate cookies (for emergencies :p :D), and now it's not even 7:00 p.m., but Jonas is already almost fast asleep, and my eyes are tired again too. Oh my :D :D

I think we might be able to stretch it until at least 8:00 p.m., but then it's probably okay to end the day ^^