Photo Diary: San Cristobal de Las Casas

San Cristobal de Las Casas is an incredibly charming place, blending Spanish colonial churches and streets with an indigenous cultural feel, authentic and completely unbearing. It's the sort of place you can get lost in time as you walk the streets, with only the cars or the occasional internet cafe as proof that you haven't somehow slipped back in time. A day in San Cristobal might include...

A ride in a Collectivo. Usually an old converted VW bus, these shared taxis are crammed full of people (locals and travelers alike) as they go about their business through cobblestoned streets and up into the hills.

 Walking the city, one is likey to encounter a myriad of colorful walls often sporting graffiti. Strings with colored flags hang overhead, each different according to the neighborhood.

 Take a break in a Plaza to get a look at one of San Cristobal's many churches as Mexican lovers take a break on a bench. Here more conventional means of Catholicism take practice, and not so much the ritualistic sacrifice of roosters (as in San Juan Chamula, apparently the rooster seen there was slain about 10 minutes after I left)

 Wandering the streets, one sees graffiti but also simple requests "Do not park here, please"

 In 1994 a local indigenous rebel group rose up to protest the Mexican government, the signing of NAFTA, and in general fight for indigenous and farmer rights. They occupied San Cristobal for several days and a high spirit of support remains here for the cause.

 Much walking around the city will build up an appetite. My favorite? Elote. Boiled corn with Mexican mayonaise (better than in the states, although not as good as Holland, plus with lime!), salt, salsa picante, chile, and cheese. Mmmmm.....

 Finish your corn on the cob snack while watching a local Bohemian perform in the town square. This fellow was quite impressive and entertained us with his juggling, gestures, and mystification of kids.

 Get back on a walkabout with a visit to a local church (note different colored banners, different neighborhood)

 Huff and puff you way up a hill to a church on top, complete with splendid views of the city.

 Say hi to "The King of the Mountain" along the way.

 Stop in the town square to watch soem gentlemen get their shoes polished.

 Or just check out local kid vendors trying to peddle their goods.

 And of course, what is a town square without pigeons? And what are pigeons without kids to chase them?

Eventually return home to the hostel at the end of the day for some much needed mutual lovin'. Who wants a buttscratch?

His Airness

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Add this one to the very long list of "The Deification of Michael Jordan" (/ global spread of Americana)(/tacky third world culture) (/only in Mexico) but yes, what we have here is a Jesus Christ bumper sticker combined with the legendary Michael Jordan jumpman pose. Snapped this one on the rear window of a collectivo from San Cristobal de Las Casa up to Zinacantan.

Oh Mexico, don't ever change...

Through the Lens, Part 1; Isla Mujeres

IMG_1359
Canon EOS Rebel T1i
55-250 mm Canon IS lens
F stop: f/8
Shutter: 1/500
ISO 100

When I returned to the States from the Caribbean this past summer I finally pulled the trigger and bought myself a nice fancy camera. I don't really know how to use it all that well just yet, but I've been practicing and starting to take some good shots. But really, more than anything, I think photography is about capturing a moment in time. These moments I'd like to share with you. So, here it is, the start of a series where I'll show you a photo I've taken on my travels and tell you all about it. Still looking for a title to this series, so we'll go with a working one for now, Through the Lens.

We start with a photo above, taken from a beach on Isla Mujeres looking back to Cancun. On this day, I woke up early and made like a baby to head out and do my usual travel thing-meander. And so meander I did and came across this father and daughter fishing from their boat. Along the beach other fishing boats sat idle while their fishermen drank beers nearby. Today was a Sunday during Carnaval and thus a day where fishing is better left to family pursuits or drinking and swapping fish tales. Here we see the former. In the father's hands is a Palometa, and I don't recall whether he kept it or threw it back. The daughter holds out a baited line in anticipation as the father looks on after it. Below is another photo from a few minutes before.

More to come...

San Juan Chamula

There are times on the road where you can't help but look around and ask yourself... where the hell am I? There are others when the question is 'when' am I? What a unique experience I had today as I roused myself from a very warm bed into the very cold morning air of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Determined to find a worthy market I got my morning going with a (warm! oh thank god) shower and small breakfast before setting out and finding a collectivo to San Juan Chamula, which according to the Lonely Planet All-Knowing-Travel-Bible informed me there was a market to be had in Chamula up in the hills.

So, there I was seated in an old VW bus collectivo (Dad, you'd be jealous) amongst eight or so indigenous folk, one of whom I am positive was purposefully dressed in his Michael Jackson imitation Sunday best. The old bus wound its way up through the hills, stuck in first gear most of the way and as its engined whined I tried my best not to think about how an engine burnout would result in us rolling back into town. After about 25 minutes of passing small farming plots, green with plants or rich red-brown clay that only a masochistic farmer can love, our bus came to a sudden jolting stop in the square of San Juan Chamula. Commence Twilight Zone.

I paid the driver my ten pesos and immediately took in the environment. On a platform at the municipal building side of the square were about 40 men dressed from the ground up in boots, jeans, a white long sleeve collared shirt with a white sheepskin vest over top, secured down by a light brown leather belts with palm sized belt buckles and topped off with immaculately clean cowboy hats. The leader appeared to be at first running a sort of auction, although I could only understand numbers as the rest was conducted in a Mayan dialect unbeknown to my gringo ears. Below them were similarly dressed men but with black sheepskin vests and surrounding them were men dressed in their Sunday best (cowboy hat included) but lacking the vests. An occasional cheer from the crowd was sent up as numbers were read off by the leader as myself and other gringos wandered the square, sneaking in pictures (photos a no-no here) and wondering what the hell was going on. It was, like I mentioned from the start, a question of where am I and when am I? I doubt this tradition had changed much in 100 years. As I was informed by a Spaniard several hours later, this auction was actually the reading of government allocated funds to various communities in the area, leading to quite a few disputes and very angry (or ecstatic) looking groups of men from various nearby pueblos.

I positioned myself in a rotunda and changed over to my 55-200 mm lens. Time for zoom shots from afar. Trying as discretely as possible to take these, I snapped off quite a few before noticing a palomitas (popcorn) vendor about 50 m away. Naturally the boy selling popcorn gave me gringo price (10 pesos, later I saw them sold for 1) despite my talking in Spanish and trying to argue him down to 5. Oh the joy of being able to argue for 40 cents! I settled down with a Coke, out of the bottle- always better, and watched a Catholic/traditional hybrid procession of horse riding and smoke swinging (can a Catholic enlighten me to this one?) as it went around the square. Photography of this was strictly forbidden and while I will bend in some cases to get some great shots, this was not one of them. But, I assure you it was quite a sight and worth seeing one day.

I continued to wander around the square, observing old Mayan women selling scarves and necklaces as young whippersnappers set off bottle rockets from their hands into the sky. Sometimes their aim was bad and the rockets were more horizontal than vertical but I am still in one piece (although I am expecting another to come flying in to the hostel at any moment, quite a few going off outside... wisssshheeewwwwww BAM!). I bought a half a chicken, cooked over a grill for 25 pesos ($2) and then chopped into pieces and sat by the square to continue observing this local political happening. Determined to find the market after my meal, I wandered up the hill, stopping to buy a nice blue scarf for 50 pesos, eventually stumbling upon about 20 vendors of fruits, dried fish, and snails (noooo! not this time, thank you for that lesson Morocco. Review here, here, and here). Not quite the market I had hoped for and made my way back down the hill to the square.

But what do you know greets me? The entire square of men, led by the white vests and followed by the rest coming en mob up the hill. I had some warning for this shot, and once again switched over to BIG lens and snapped a few. Very much reminded me of that movie with Johnny Depp in Mexico and Day of the Dead and ... (Emily help me out here!). I let them pass by and on to their business and walked down to the square, encountering Pippa, an English lass from my hostel in Playa and her two Dutch friends along the way. They wanted to eat and naturally being the travel-food-fatty that I am, joined them in their quest. We sat down at a taco joint on the side of the square and were joined moments later by a threesome of very poor sibling kids who asked us for 'Uno dos peso' but settled for tacos and playfully posed for our foreign cameras. Yet another beauty of blonde women is the reaction foreign kids give them as they play with Dutch and English and even my, yes, my blonde locks. I had mine up in a bun (hmmm... will need new diction to describe my hairstyle du jour) and they wanted to play with it but told them 'Es la casa de mi cerebro' at which point they backed away, not wanting to upset the house of my brain.

Post lunch, we found a bathroom (always interesting bathrooms in Mexico) where you paid 2 pesos and tried not to slip in pools of human excrement on the way in or out. Pippa and I set off to take a look inside the church as the Dutch girls headed out to buy tacos for street dogs and other hungry children. The church itself is a brilliant mixture of white and pastel colors (like most building here in Mexico) and the inside was like the ritual in the square earlier, and interesting mixture of Catholicism and traditional religion. Pine needles scattered the floor as relics and porcelein dolls of various saints lined the walls and drapes hung from the ceiling. Settled amongst clearings in the pine needles were locals chanting as they set down burning candles. At one such spot, a rooster, in some state of mental disarray lay quietly by the candles as a local woman chanted eerily next to it. I have to find out more about this ritual later and will let you know.

I bid the girls adieu as they set off on their scooters back for San Cristobal to find an ATM and back again to Chamula to buy some boots and hopped in a very crowded collectivo. Mayan children sat on my lap and used my jeans to wipe their hands from their boiled potato lunch as we thundered down the mountain. Instead of wondering if the old VW would make it up the hill, I wondered if the breaks would work and we'd be able to stop, as well as that the door which I was shoved up against would hold lest I and the Mayan children be sent spilling off a ledge on a Chiapan roadway. Oh travel, how I love thee. It's mid afternoon now and I'm off to take some photos. I'll post photos up when I can but for now you'll just have to imagine me walking around a charming colonial Mexican town and hope that a stray bottle rocket doesn't blow me up.

La Vida Playa

Well, it's been a while, and at the request of family have decided to get this up and going again. I must say I've had a bit of a change in the way I look at travel. Before on this blog I chronicled my adventures abroad from the standpoint of the backpacker, someone in the process of travel but always destined to come home. But really, since I graduated over a year ago, I haven't really been confined to a return and lately my concept of "home" has seemingly gone on a journey of its own. The real fact of the matter is, what I'm engaging in now is life... not a trip. This is conceivably my new identity and becomes less about the travel and more about my life in a given place.

As such, pardon me if these updates are few and far between. Really, my life here isn't that interesting. I can't tell you all about my escapades in Pamplona during San Fermin or the joys of a small Moroccan town of Chefchaouen. Nor can I really detail how I went tubing down some river (chronicled back in the email days) or going Canyoneering in Switzerland (when I first really got the travel bug). This is my typical day in Playa, and for the most part it doesn't really change:

0630 Wakeup. I've discovered the joy of slow mornings. Time to hit snooze, make breakfast, enjoy quiet. I'll usually shower, depending on the state of my hair, which is getting to be quite long and not too far away from the atrocity that was my sophomore year of high school. Although sun bleached and on a dive instructor, it seems to fit. At any rate, I am out the door at...

0740 ... for my daily trip to Starbucks. Yes, yes, I know... Mark supporting the evil capitalistic empire, how strange (I also occasionally shop at Wal-Mart here, gasp!). But, they make a nice coffee and it's become very ritualistic for me to start my morning. I walk to work from here, either via the beach or through the main road in Playacar (resorty/expat area where I work).

0815 Work has started. I'm usually one of the first to get in the shop and go about my OCD cleaning and whatnot. When customers arrive we outfit them in their dive gear, have them sign waivers, and send them off to their destination for the day- Cozumel, Cenotes, or Local Diving. I usually hang around the shop for a bit after this, channeling more OCD power into our disorganized shop or fixing regulators...


10-1030 ...Comes around and I head off the pool, either at the Occidental Allegro or more commonly the Occidental Royal Hideaway. I set up my pool demo then begin to make the rounds, turning up the charm and getting first time divers to go out to the ocean with me for the afternoon. No, it's not a glorious dive job at all, but the people love it and I make some good money doing it. So there!

1215 Brings lunch. Cafeteria style. Not too shabby.

1300 Pool session with DSD (Discover Scuba Diving clients). Sometimes this is easy but most of the time can be quite challenging. Many folks, especially those at the hotels where I work, are not the most coordinated or adventurous of people. It sometimes takes a lot of convincing and coaching to get people through the skills but completely worth it, because at...

1500 We head off to a shallow reef for the ocean dive. This is usually fantastic and what I love about my job. Not  the greatest dive site in the world, but to see the expression on people's faces when they dive down and you can just tell they love it. That's what it's about. That look in their facemask. Where they completely forget the oddities of scuba equipment and geek out on the underwater world. Some days, we're even rewarded with cool sites, like today. 3 FRICKIN' BULL SHARKS!

1630 Returning to the dive shop from the DSD dive, I clean up all the equipment and wrap up loose ends for the day. 1700 brings the end of the day but sometimes this goes later. All depends.

Nights bring a variety of choices, but lately it's just been me going to bed early. I'm usually pretty drained by the end of the day and do enjoy myself a good sleep. Sometimes I go out. Tonight is one of those nights. I'll do a Playa nightlife post later.

So, it's a start here. Not much I know, but it's 10PM and I'm going to bed. What I'll write about in the future:
-My Spanish and understanding of Spanish slang
-Nightlife of Playa
-The Good and Bad of Tourism here
-Food
-Friends
-My apartment
-And more...

So I leave you with a photo taken on the way home from work.