San Cristóbal de las Casas, México

After the 12 hour bus journey, we arrived in San Cristóbal de las Casas exhausted from lack of sleep. Fortunately we managed to get a free upgrade on the bus (saving $200 pesos per person), I can only imagine how much less sleep we would have got if we hadn’t received the upgrade – many thanks again to our GAP tour guide, Ivan! Straight away after check-in we went for a walk around the town… Ivan here gave us a quick orientation walk, followed by breakfast. I thought that at this point I would head straight for sleep, however after breakfast there was an option to rent scooters and visit some caves near by. I really wanted to do this as the scooters alone sounded fun. Not everyone wanted to do this additional activity, however myself, Brock, Eduardo and Ivan did, so off we went (I had a shinny yellow scooter). 

On our way to the caves we ran into a typically heard of Méxican experience… one of which I thought was hearsay but has now been confirmed possible! ½ way there on the road the police pulled us over. When we stopped, the policeman spoke to Ivan first. The policemen seemed very serious, yet I couldn’t work out why they had pulled us over as we were driving sensibly and not over the speed limit. After they let us go we continued on. Ivan then explained later that they were corrupt police and were looking to make some quick cash. He said that their first words to us was (to the nearest translation), “we’re going to F*#k you over”, charming, no? They demanded to see our driver licenses, insurance papers, travel documents and proof that we were in possession of the bikes. Ivan had to explain several time to them that the bikes were not ours and that we were travelling tourists. With the police’s disappointment and frustration that they weren’t getting anywhere with us, they shooed us on. The caves however were pretty cool. I would recommend going here if you get the opportunity, as it was very inexpensive and great to see. Outside the caves were a group of young children, the children were offering tours of inside the caves to show you what they think they can see in the shapes of the stalagmites and stalactites, they showed tales from mermaids and octopuses, to ghosts and Father Christmas – these boys had pretty imaginative minds, worth the $10pesos tipped guide.

After this, we headed home to our hotel, Hotel San Martin to go for some pizza nearby – yum.

The next day we had the opportunity to go to a canyon, Sumidero Canyon. I loved this! We took a boat through the open water between the two walls of the canyon. Here we saw the likes of crocodiles and spider monkeys – great to see. 

This was all on the 15^th September, and as I mentioned previously on another post, the 15^th is México’s independence day! In other words, it was party time… We all went for a dinner and drinks at night. Over the course of the night the group got smaller and smaller, in the end it was again down to Brock, Ivan, Eduardo and I – plus our new friend Don Julio ($800 pesos bottle of tequila)! From this introduction to Don Julio, unfortunately I can’t remember much more, enough said. The next day we had a small journey onto Palenque.