San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas…días 3 y 4

Sunday was a long and wonderful day. It was my first Easter without going to church, which was strange for me and certainly made it feel less like Easter. However, I did spend the whole day admiring God’s creation, so it definitely could have been worse. The tour van picked us up at 9am, which was a bit confusing, as Saturday night/Sunday morning was the time change in Mexico. I wasn’t sure if my phone or my computer would change times automatically, and there was a clock by the kitchen that I didn’t know if the owners would change. Usually, the unplug the internet at 9pm, but luckily on this night the owners forgot, so in the morning I was able to check to make sure we really knew what time it really was. In our van we met a girl and her aunt, the girl is from Chicago and was here visiting her aunt, who has retired here. We drove two hours to Cascada el Chiflon, which is a waterfall made up of 3 or 4 main cascades.
View of two of the cascades from the highway:

We had booked the tour through our hostel, which is kind of a story in and of itself. We didn’t decide to go here until the day before. We talked to the owners of the hostel about whether or not we’d be able to eat in the morning, and they told us if we booked through them, we’d get a discount. Their book says you have to tell them by 5 if you want a tour, and it was already 8. They called for us and found out there was no space, but since the owner is good friends with the guy, they ended up finding space or adding a van or something. The hostel owners were so nice (and they had an adorable baby!) Anywho, since we had booked through the hostel, we hadn’t even seen an itinerary. We knew enough to bring our suits, but the rest was unknown. We had two hours at the waterfalls, and we began to climb up one side. I had no idea it would take an hour and 15 minutes!
Cascada El Suspiro (Sigh Cascade), 25 meters high:

Cascada Ala de Angel (Angel's Wing Cascade), 60 meters high:

closer:

Río San Vicente:

Cascada Velo de Novio (Bridal Veil Cascade), 120 meters high:

Cascada la Corona (Crown Cascade). That's what the sign said, but the map had a different name...who knows.

the view from way up there:


looking down:

I thought the trip up was rough, but the trip down was worse, really slippery. There was a whole other side that we could have climbed up too, if we had the time. There was even a zipline between the two sides, which I would have loved to do, but by the time we had finished climbing and got back down to it, there was only 20 minutes to swim and climb the rest of the way down. I guess I’ll have to go back some day…

After the waterfalls, it was another hour and a half to the Montebello Lakes. This is a National Park really close to the Guatemalan border, made up of some 52 lakes. 10 of these can be visited by highway. Our tour group stopped for lunch at a restaurant overlooking two of the lakes.

Next we drove to the lookout over this lake, which I think is Lago Tziscao. I've read that it's the largest lake, and from here, we were less than 1km from Guatemala. The first row of mountains is about where the border is.

Next we went to this small lake:

Then it was on to Cinco Lagos:

From the lookout, you could see those lakes, plus the one on the other side:

The next stop was a big lake, which I think is called Montebello. Here, you can camp and swim and everything.

Our last stop had three lakes.
El Ensueño, on one side of the road:

And these two, which were connected, on the other side:

Laguna Esmeralda:

Our tour guide told us that we had a choice between two boat rides, but that never happened. We were disappointed, but it might have been for the best, as we didn’t get back until 8:30 as it was. When we did return, we booked a tour for the next day, bought some post cards and some chocolate that the girl from Chicago recommended to us, and found some dinner. I later tried this chocolate, and it wasn’t that great, especially compared to some of the other chocolates that we’ve tried.
Monday we took a tour to two small pueblos. The first one was called San Juan Chamula, and is about 20 minutes from San Cristóbal.
View of San Cristóbal on the way:

We learned about the indigenous group of people who live in this community. Our tour guide was really great, he gave the tour in both English and Spanish. Katharine and I would have been fine with just Spanish, but there was a German couple who knew English and not Spanish. It was nice, though, to double check if we understood everything, plus it was kind of fun to see which things he forgot to say in the other language. He speaks at least seven languages. Anyway, then we went into their church.
church and market:

From the outside it looked like a regular Mexican Catholic church, but as soon as you walked in the door, it was very apparent that it wasn’t. There were no pews and LOTS of candles. People would sit on the floor in front of the candles to pray. They had statues of the Catholic saints, but they don’t really have the same beliefs about them as Catholics do. Their religion is a bit of a mixture of the two religions, but definitely more so pre-hispanic beliefs. For them, the Sun God and Jesus are the same thing. The tour guide was very clear about when we could take pictures and when we couldn’t. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the church, and we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the people, especially the older ones, as they believe that the camera will steal your soul. The young kids will let you take pictures for money…they know how to work the system. We talked with two adorable girls who were trying to get us to buy bracelets.
Next we were on to Zinacantán, which is about 15 minutes away. We went to a family’s house, where we watched them weaving.

We also saw them making tortillas, which we later got to eat, and we tried posh, a drink made from sugar cane. Ours was Jamaica (hibiscus) flavored, and man oh man was it strong stuff. There was the cutest little puppy there too! At the end, the tour guide asked for a picture with me...that was...something.
It was 25 minutes back to San Cristóbal, and we didn’t get back until almost 3. We got some lunch and hurried back to the hostel to grab our stuff and catch a taxi to the terminal, where we arrived just in time for the 4:05 bus to Palenque.
New food: Fried bananas. I had first seen these in Veracruz, and had heard from multiple people that they’re really good. They were the dessert that came with Katharine’s meal. They weren’t as good as I was expecting, so I’m glad I didn’t buy a whole one off the street.
Here’s the photo album from days 3 and 4: San Cristóbal