Saturday, April 15, 2006
Our trip to Chiapas
Day 1 (Friday, April 7)
Early morning bus from Guadalajara to Mexico City, I discovered Dramamine. Even though the entire ride is a mainly flat stretch, I was thankful for the security. We tried to get to our hotel in the historic center in time for “La fea,” but we missed most of it. Our taxi to the hotel had a TV screen, but the reception was really off and on, so we hardly saw what was going on. Good to see that elderly male taxi drivers also enjoy that telenovela, however. We ate dinner at a nearby diner but were too tired for much else and slept early.
Day 2 (Saturday, April 8)
We got up really early to see the ruins at Teotihuacán, north of the city, to make it in time for our afternoon flight to the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. I had already been to Teotihuacán once before, and I remembered it being really crowded and really hot. This in mind, we left with sunscreen, hats, light clothing, but we failed to take into account the hour we’d be seeing the ruins—right at opening time, 7 a.m. It was unbelievably cold. We arrived at the bus station hoping to get on a 6 a.m. bus to the ruins, like Julia’s guidebook said, but it turned out there wasn’t one until 7. The driver of the bus to Otumba, however, said he’d take us. At a crossroads, he called us to the front of the bus, gave us 15 pesos and told us to get off and take a taxi to Gate 1 of the ruins. Once at the gate, the ticket seller had not yet arrived, and we hopped around trying to keep warm until the guards took pity on us and let us hang out in their little office. They asked us the usual questions, where are you from, what are you doing here, and we chatted with them about politics and news. They were very nice. They kept telling us to move to the town of Teotihuacán. When the ticket seller arrived, they were very helpful, lamenting that we didn’t have student or teacher IDs to get in free. We were the first ones into the ruins, it seemed. It was an altogether different experience going this time. There were hardly any people around—just one hawker, one garbage collector atop the Temple of the Sun, and some workers chiseling away at some roped-off ruins. The morning sun was gradually lighting up the steps of the Avenue of the Dead, the main walkway at the ruins, and it was very impressive. We climbed both the Temple of the Sun and of the Moon. There were dogs hanging about, running agilely up and down the steps following the few other French tourists.
Back in the city, we ate breakfast at a diner called Café el Popular. It was interesting because some of the décor and signs were Chinese, but there was no Chinese cuisine at all on the menu. Later I learned from a guidebook that the café serves its café con leche chino style, meaning the waitress brings the coffee and hot milk and you specify the proportion. We didn’t really understand why that would be chino style, but things that are different tend to just be called Chinese even if they’re not Chinese.
We took a plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas. By bus it takes 14 to 16 hours; by plane, only about one hour. We made the mistake of taking a taxi directly from the airport to the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, instead of taking a taxi to town and then catching a bus there, as we had originally planned. We thought the price difference wouldn’t be large—it was only 180 pesos each for the hour trip, and we’d make it to the city before dark. The driver whined and haggled a lot, however, so the trip was not very pleasant. He didn’t want to take the toll highway because the toll would be 15 pesos—under US$1.50. He wanted us to pay it. Julia did all the negotiating because she was better at it. She told him to let us off on the side of the highway if he didn’t want to take the toll road, so he took the toll road. In the end we did pay for the tolls, but rather reluctantly, because once in San Cristóbal he was complaining that a taxi would charge 10 pesos for all the driving around he was doing to take us to our hostel. We had never run into such a money-grubbing taxista, but it goes to show the way the people in Chiapas are with tourists. Perhaps they really are that badly off, that they have to haggle for ten or fifteen pesos, or they are just accustomed to treating tourists that way.
I realized that San Cristóbal is high in the mountains of Chiapas, and that it is cold there. I had packed all wrong—I was expecting humid jungle weather, and all I had were sandals and tank tops and one thin sweater. I suffered.
The hostel where I had made reservations turned out to be a hippie mecca, young European and Canadian hippies everywhere, swinging in their hammocks around the courtyard and listening to bad ’90s alternative rock. My guidebook had said it was good and that the communal bathrooms and kitchen were well looked after. This kind of comment is relative. I was thinking it would be like the hostel where Meabh and I had stayed in Oaxaca—very clean single-sex communal bathrooms with several shower stalls. We were put in a rustic cabaña, and I mean rustic like it was called a cabaña simply because it was made of wood. It was more like a lean-to, as Julia said, with bunk beds taking up the primary space of the room. It served well for a place to crash one night, though, and it was affordable. Despite the music continuing on late into the night, we slept.
Day 3 (Sunday, April 9)
Up early, yet again, to catch a bus to Palenque, where there are some important Mayan ruins. We barely made it onto the bus, because the seats had all been booked. We only got on because when the bus arrived it was the kind with an extra row of seats in the back, so they could sell two tickets at the last minute. The bus trip took five hours, completely through the mountains. Many people got sick. Not me! I was prepared with Dramamine! However, I did have to breathe through my mouth for the last stretch of the trip, because the boy in front of us had puked in the aisle and smelled up the entire bus. It was rough.
Once in Palenque, we settled into our cabaña near the ruins, which was very nice. Here the climate was the humid jungly kind, so I made use of my summer clothes. We ate at the nearby restaurant and then went into town to catch a collective minibus (colectivo) to a waterfall south of the town. It went frighteningly fast on the mountain roads. By this time, I had taken my third Dramamine of the day, and I was goofy and laughing at everything and really, really, really wanting to sleep, so the curves didn’t affect me. We got off at the intersection for Misol-Ha, the waterfall, and walked the sidewalk-less 1.5 km to the site. The waterfall and jungle around Misol-Ha is apparently where Predator was filmed. It was beautiful, but there were droves of tourists, so it wasn’t as pretty as it probably is off-season. We walked behind the waterfall to the mouth of a cave, but didn’t feel like fending off volunteer guides and just decided to get in the water. It was very cold, deep water, and the current from the water cascading into the pool was quite strong. I got tired swimming after about two minutes. The Dramamine probably didn’t help.
There were lots of French tourists in Palenque. At the waterfall, we were getting out of our clothes to go swimming in our suits, and a group of young Francophones near us asked us rather snootily to please move our stuff somewhere else so that “everyone can have their own space.” We would not have put our stuff there if it hadn’t been for the fact that there weren’t many other safe places to put it. But we complied and found another spot a few feet away. Then one of the Francophone girls slipped and fell on her ass, and we acted like we didn’t even see it, because we were both silently thinking, “Serves her right.” Kind of bitchy, non? Vraiment, I don’t really care. Never in my life have I disliked French people as much as I did on this trip. Every time we encountered any, they were very unfriendly, no doubt completely disdainful of Americans. (Even the English tourists we met were friendlier!) The rest of the trip Julia and I referred to them as “Frenchies,” or sometimes even “#$%& Frenchies.” I don’t feel good about this in particular—generalizing about a nation of people is never nice, and I know several wonderful French people—but I understand where these generalizations come from.
When we were about to leave to walk back to the highway and catch a colectivo back to town, it started raining. We waited for it to subside, but decided to walk in the rain while it was still light out. Lucky for us, an elderly Texan man traveling with his Mexican granddaughters took pity on us and gave us a ride all the way back to our cabaña.
Day 4 (Monday, April 10)
The next day we got up early to go to the ruins, hoping for a repeat of our great experience at Teotihuacán, with hardly any people there. These ruins were pretty well trafficked by tourists, however, and we were late for the 8 a.m. opening time because I thought we’d be able to walk easily from our cabañas. The 2 km ended up being more like 4, so we got a ride uphill with a couple who stopped in their boat of a car. The ruins were amazing. Unlike at Teotihuacán, whose two or three pyramids were solid, we got to go inside some of the many structures at Palenque. In the huge palace, there were a few walkways and steps going down inside, without signs, devoid of other tourists. We even saw a few little bats flying around at one steep, dark stairwell.
After the pyramids, we checked out of our cabaña and got an early bus back to San Cristóbal. Another five hours of Dramamine-induced stupor through mountain roads. This time I offered my “travel sick medicine” (as the English guys near us called it) to those around me, so we didn’t have to deal with any smell or puke issues.
In San Cristóbal, we stayed in a nicer hotel. That night we watched “La fea” at its new primetime hour, starting at 8, eating pizza from the restaurant downstairs and going directly to sleep. We’d been getting up every morning around 5 or 6, and then traveling by bus for many hours, so it was only natural to want to go to bed around 9 p.m. Julia also felt tired and feverish, the start of her cold.
Day 5 (Tuesday, April 11)
Shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.
Day 6 (Wednesday, April 12)
The day of the failed bike tour (or rather, the day I failed the bike tour). See below to entry of that date for more information.
The rest of the day was fine. More shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.
Day 7 (Thursday, April 13)
Bus back to Tuxtla. Due to money shortage issues, we swore off taxis whenever possible. We walked eight blocks from the bus station to a bus stop in order to catch a colectivo to the airport. Much cheaper by far, and we had a very nice colectivo driver. Back in Mexico City, we took the metro to our hotel. I wandered around looking for an internet café in vain, because it was the beginning of the Easter holiday and most everything was closed. Julia and I walked to the teeny tiny Chinatown of Mexico City—a short pedestrian block of Chinese restaurants and stores. Then we wandered to the Alameda and ate turkey tortas and drank huge fresh juices. We looked at the Palacio de las Bellas Artes and filed into the cathedral in the center mainly to observe the sinking of these buildings into the soft, drained-lake ground. We were back in time for “La fea” and went to bed early again.
Day 8 (Friday, April 14)
I had scheduled a flight that departed at the same time as Julia’s. We spent hours at the airport because I was nervous about long lines like the time I had been there a year earlier, but this time there were no lines at all. Oops. My flight from Dallas was in a small jet and we ran into thunderstorms, but we made it safely back.
It’s weird to be in the States again, especially after having spent a week in Chiapas, where there are many impoverished indigenous people. During our last breakfast in Chiapas, hawkers would come up to our table trying to sell woven bracelets and coin purses, saying in their lilting, accented Spanish, “Cómpralo” (Buy it). A young boy came begging for money. Julia gave him a tortilla filled with leftover bacon. I bought a headband from a woman who said, “Tengo mucho hambre” (I am very hungry). Julia offered more leftovers to other vendors, who always accepted.
Some of the little, trivial things I notice now in the States are the shapes of the toilet seats and the ability of these toilets to flush down toilet paper, and the cleanliness and automated-ness of public restrooms. Other perhaps less trivial things I notice are the whiteness of Columbus, and the wealth, wealth, wealth of this country.
Early morning bus from Guadalajara to Mexico City, I discovered Dramamine. Even though the entire ride is a mainly flat stretch, I was thankful for the security. We tried to get to our hotel in the historic center in time for “La fea,” but we missed most of it. Our taxi to the hotel had a TV screen, but the reception was really off and on, so we hardly saw what was going on. Good to see that elderly male taxi drivers also enjoy that telenovela, however. We ate dinner at a nearby diner but were too tired for much else and slept early.
Day 2 (Saturday, April 8)
We got up really early to see the ruins at Teotihuacán, north of the city, to make it in time for our afternoon flight to the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. I had already been to Teotihuacán once before, and I remembered it being really crowded and really hot. This in mind, we left with sunscreen, hats, light clothing, but we failed to take into account the hour we’d be seeing the ruins—right at opening time, 7 a.m. It was unbelievably cold. We arrived at the bus station hoping to get on a 6 a.m. bus to the ruins, like Julia’s guidebook said, but it turned out there wasn’t one until 7. The driver of the bus to Otumba, however, said he’d take us. At a crossroads, he called us to the front of the bus, gave us 15 pesos and told us to get off and take a taxi to Gate 1 of the ruins. Once at the gate, the ticket seller had not yet arrived, and we hopped around trying to keep warm until the guards took pity on us and let us hang out in their little office. They asked us the usual questions, where are you from, what are you doing here, and we chatted with them about politics and news. They were very nice. They kept telling us to move to the town of Teotihuacán. When the ticket seller arrived, they were very helpful, lamenting that we didn’t have student or teacher IDs to get in free. We were the first ones into the ruins, it seemed. It was an altogether different experience going this time. There were hardly any people around—just one hawker, one garbage collector atop the Temple of the Sun, and some workers chiseling away at some roped-off ruins. The morning sun was gradually lighting up the steps of the Avenue of the Dead, the main walkway at the ruins, and it was very impressive. We climbed both the Temple of the Sun and of the Moon. There were dogs hanging about, running agilely up and down the steps following the few other French tourists.
Back in the city, we ate breakfast at a diner called Café el Popular. It was interesting because some of the décor and signs were Chinese, but there was no Chinese cuisine at all on the menu. Later I learned from a guidebook that the café serves its café con leche chino style, meaning the waitress brings the coffee and hot milk and you specify the proportion. We didn’t really understand why that would be chino style, but things that are different tend to just be called Chinese even if they’re not Chinese.
We took a plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas. By bus it takes 14 to 16 hours; by plane, only about one hour. We made the mistake of taking a taxi directly from the airport to the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, instead of taking a taxi to town and then catching a bus there, as we had originally planned. We thought the price difference wouldn’t be large—it was only 180 pesos each for the hour trip, and we’d make it to the city before dark. The driver whined and haggled a lot, however, so the trip was not very pleasant. He didn’t want to take the toll highway because the toll would be 15 pesos—under US$1.50. He wanted us to pay it. Julia did all the negotiating because she was better at it. She told him to let us off on the side of the highway if he didn’t want to take the toll road, so he took the toll road. In the end we did pay for the tolls, but rather reluctantly, because once in San Cristóbal he was complaining that a taxi would charge 10 pesos for all the driving around he was doing to take us to our hostel. We had never run into such a money-grubbing taxista, but it goes to show the way the people in Chiapas are with tourists. Perhaps they really are that badly off, that they have to haggle for ten or fifteen pesos, or they are just accustomed to treating tourists that way.
I realized that San Cristóbal is high in the mountains of Chiapas, and that it is cold there. I had packed all wrong—I was expecting humid jungle weather, and all I had were sandals and tank tops and one thin sweater. I suffered.
The hostel where I had made reservations turned out to be a hippie mecca, young European and Canadian hippies everywhere, swinging in their hammocks around the courtyard and listening to bad ’90s alternative rock. My guidebook had said it was good and that the communal bathrooms and kitchen were well looked after. This kind of comment is relative. I was thinking it would be like the hostel where Meabh and I had stayed in Oaxaca—very clean single-sex communal bathrooms with several shower stalls. We were put in a rustic cabaña, and I mean rustic like it was called a cabaña simply because it was made of wood. It was more like a lean-to, as Julia said, with bunk beds taking up the primary space of the room. It served well for a place to crash one night, though, and it was affordable. Despite the music continuing on late into the night, we slept.
Day 3 (Sunday, April 9)
Up early, yet again, to catch a bus to Palenque, where there are some important Mayan ruins. We barely made it onto the bus, because the seats had all been booked. We only got on because when the bus arrived it was the kind with an extra row of seats in the back, so they could sell two tickets at the last minute. The bus trip took five hours, completely through the mountains. Many people got sick. Not me! I was prepared with Dramamine! However, I did have to breathe through my mouth for the last stretch of the trip, because the boy in front of us had puked in the aisle and smelled up the entire bus. It was rough.
Once in Palenque, we settled into our cabaña near the ruins, which was very nice. Here the climate was the humid jungly kind, so I made use of my summer clothes. We ate at the nearby restaurant and then went into town to catch a collective minibus (colectivo) to a waterfall south of the town. It went frighteningly fast on the mountain roads. By this time, I had taken my third Dramamine of the day, and I was goofy and laughing at everything and really, really, really wanting to sleep, so the curves didn’t affect me. We got off at the intersection for Misol-Ha, the waterfall, and walked the sidewalk-less 1.5 km to the site. The waterfall and jungle around Misol-Ha is apparently where Predator was filmed. It was beautiful, but there were droves of tourists, so it wasn’t as pretty as it probably is off-season. We walked behind the waterfall to the mouth of a cave, but didn’t feel like fending off volunteer guides and just decided to get in the water. It was very cold, deep water, and the current from the water cascading into the pool was quite strong. I got tired swimming after about two minutes. The Dramamine probably didn’t help.
There were lots of French tourists in Palenque. At the waterfall, we were getting out of our clothes to go swimming in our suits, and a group of young Francophones near us asked us rather snootily to please move our stuff somewhere else so that “everyone can have their own space.” We would not have put our stuff there if it hadn’t been for the fact that there weren’t many other safe places to put it. But we complied and found another spot a few feet away. Then one of the Francophone girls slipped and fell on her ass, and we acted like we didn’t even see it, because we were both silently thinking, “Serves her right.” Kind of bitchy, non? Vraiment, I don’t really care. Never in my life have I disliked French people as much as I did on this trip. Every time we encountered any, they were very unfriendly, no doubt completely disdainful of Americans. (Even the English tourists we met were friendlier!) The rest of the trip Julia and I referred to them as “Frenchies,” or sometimes even “#$%& Frenchies.” I don’t feel good about this in particular—generalizing about a nation of people is never nice, and I know several wonderful French people—but I understand where these generalizations come from.
When we were about to leave to walk back to the highway and catch a colectivo back to town, it started raining. We waited for it to subside, but decided to walk in the rain while it was still light out. Lucky for us, an elderly Texan man traveling with his Mexican granddaughters took pity on us and gave us a ride all the way back to our cabaña.
Day 4 (Monday, April 10)
The next day we got up early to go to the ruins, hoping for a repeat of our great experience at Teotihuacán, with hardly any people there. These ruins were pretty well trafficked by tourists, however, and we were late for the 8 a.m. opening time because I thought we’d be able to walk easily from our cabañas. The 2 km ended up being more like 4, so we got a ride uphill with a couple who stopped in their boat of a car. The ruins were amazing. Unlike at Teotihuacán, whose two or three pyramids were solid, we got to go inside some of the many structures at Palenque. In the huge palace, there were a few walkways and steps going down inside, without signs, devoid of other tourists. We even saw a few little bats flying around at one steep, dark stairwell.
After the pyramids, we checked out of our cabaña and got an early bus back to San Cristóbal. Another five hours of Dramamine-induced stupor through mountain roads. This time I offered my “travel sick medicine” (as the English guys near us called it) to those around me, so we didn’t have to deal with any smell or puke issues.
In San Cristóbal, we stayed in a nicer hotel. That night we watched “La fea” at its new primetime hour, starting at 8, eating pizza from the restaurant downstairs and going directly to sleep. We’d been getting up every morning around 5 or 6, and then traveling by bus for many hours, so it was only natural to want to go to bed around 9 p.m. Julia also felt tired and feverish, the start of her cold.
Day 5 (Tuesday, April 11)
Shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.
Day 6 (Wednesday, April 12)
The day of the failed bike tour (or rather, the day I failed the bike tour). See below to entry of that date for more information.
The rest of the day was fine. More shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.
Day 7 (Thursday, April 13)
Bus back to Tuxtla. Due to money shortage issues, we swore off taxis whenever possible. We walked eight blocks from the bus station to a bus stop in order to catch a colectivo to the airport. Much cheaper by far, and we had a very nice colectivo driver. Back in Mexico City, we took the metro to our hotel. I wandered around looking for an internet café in vain, because it was the beginning of the Easter holiday and most everything was closed. Julia and I walked to the teeny tiny Chinatown of Mexico City—a short pedestrian block of Chinese restaurants and stores. Then we wandered to the Alameda and ate turkey tortas and drank huge fresh juices. We looked at the Palacio de las Bellas Artes and filed into the cathedral in the center mainly to observe the sinking of these buildings into the soft, drained-lake ground. We were back in time for “La fea” and went to bed early again.
Day 8 (Friday, April 14)
I had scheduled a flight that departed at the same time as Julia’s. We spent hours at the airport because I was nervous about long lines like the time I had been there a year earlier, but this time there were no lines at all. Oops. My flight from Dallas was in a small jet and we ran into thunderstorms, but we made it safely back.
It’s weird to be in the States again, especially after having spent a week in Chiapas, where there are many impoverished indigenous people. During our last breakfast in Chiapas, hawkers would come up to our table trying to sell woven bracelets and coin purses, saying in their lilting, accented Spanish, “Cómpralo” (Buy it). A young boy came begging for money. Julia gave him a tortilla filled with leftover bacon. I bought a headband from a woman who said, “Tengo mucho hambre” (I am very hungry). Julia offered more leftovers to other vendors, who always accepted.
Some of the little, trivial things I notice now in the States are the shapes of the toilet seats and the ability of these toilets to flush down toilet paper, and the cleanliness and automated-ness of public restrooms. Other perhaps less trivial things I notice are the whiteness of Columbus, and the wealth, wealth, wealth of this country.
