I haven’t posted an entry in so long, that blogger thinks I just might be dead. While I have written a few posts I just never finished them or never had just the right pictures or whatever, so I just haven’t posted for a while and I’m not dead, just busy...or on vacation.
I’m currently curled up on the sofa with a pile of sleepy dogs, watching it snow-maybe we really will get the 8-15 inches of snow that’s predicted-and wishing I was still in Mexico.
We spent our first week in San Cristobal, a city in the southern Mexico State of Chiapas. We wanted to do another week of Spanish language school and found Instituto Jovel. We had 3 classes a day, for me it was more of a beginners Spanish review that was desperatey needed. I think the Spanish stuck a little better this time, since I wasn’t starting completely at zero.
Affiliatated with the language school is a cooking school, El Tzitz. We had hoped to go to multiple classes, but it just didn’t work out that way. Classes are usually Monday/Wednesday/Friday but the Monday we happened to be there was a holiday, so there was no class. We made it to chili rellenos on Wednesday, it was delicious and so fun, but since 2 of the other folks taking the class didn’t speak ant Spanish, the whole class was in English. We decided to skip the Friday tamales class so we wouldn’t miss our very last Spanish lesson. Yes, we are nerds.
The town of San Cristobal is beautiful and very walkable. The streets are so narrow and full of traffic that walking seems like the fastest way to get around. We had a great time going to the markets-there are 2 main ones: the fruit/vegetable/any other food stuff you could possibly imagine and the artisan market.
We went a little crazy buying stuff at both markets and ended up barely being able to carry everything back to our Airbnb! I hope we end up going back to San Cristobal again. We only spent a week there and there is still so much to do and to eat!
After a week there, we took off in a very little rental car to see Mayan ruins for the very first time. But it's a long drive, and on the way there we stopped at the Agua Azul waterfalls. The pictures do not do this place justice. This is one of, if not the most beautiful natural places I have ever seen. We were in a hurry to get to our hotel, so we didn't stay to swim there, I hope next time we do! At least we had time to slurp down a couple coconuts!
We went to Palenque and there are really no words to describe seeing it for the first time. It was early in the morning and the surrounding jungle was still misty, with howler monkeys roaring through the jungle and these giant, beautiful temples just emerge from the jungle. It was truly breathtaking, I barely held back tears. Ever after reading and listening to the history of Palenque, I was not prepared for the size, grander, and beauty of actually being there. If you ever get a chance to go, go!
Before we went to Palenque, we weren’t sure if we were going to try to get to any other ruins, but after the awe of Palenque, we knew we wanted to get to as many as we could get to during this trip! The next day we were off to Yaxchilan. These ruins lie along the Usumacinta River-the river forms the boarder between Mexico and Guatemala. You can only get to the ruins by boat, it since it was just the 2 of us tourists on the boat, we could stop and look at all the crocodiles on the way down! Yaxchilan is so much different that Palenque. It was by far less crowded. The draw of Yaxchilan are the stelae, lintels, and alters that are all still there and not removed to a museum-apparently not for lack of trying-some of the stelae are just too big to move.
As with Palenque, we hired a guide to take us around the ruins. Our guide, Juan, was a pretty interesting guy-he was raised speaking a Mayan language-I think it was Ch'ol-then went to a bilingual school where he was also taught Spanish. Now, even though he's mainly a farmer, he's teaching himself English online and guides to work on his English. We stayed a night in the small town of Frontera Corozal, where the boats take off to get to Yaxchilan. There we hung out in the park along the river for a while and listened to the kids playing in the water, speaking what I think was Ch'ol. Before we went to the Chiapas area, I knew that some Mayan was still spoken in Central America. I had no idea that there are at least 21 Mayan languages spoken by more than 6 million people.
Last leg of the trip-Mexico City! For as big a Mexico city is, and for as big the population of the metropolitan area is-20 million or so people-it didn't feel that big. It reminded me of Chicago, with distinctly different neighborhoods and it never felt overwhelming. It has a beautiful and very large park, El Bosque de Chapultepec, that is full of museums, botanical gardens, and a large zoo. We stopped at the zoo because they had pandas-neither of us had ever seen pandas before and they were ridiculously cute and hungry and I could have watched them eat bamboo all day.
We spent the next day doing about 5 million more stairs at Teotihuacan. Again, it was vastly different than the other 2 Mayan ruins we had been to-no jungle here. It was hot, sunny, hazy with pollution and packed full of tourists, but still breathtaking-and not just from climbing all the stairs! It's no surprise that the architecture and carvings are so different at Teotihuacan, since while they existed and traded/battled/influenced the Mayans, they were not Mayan-there is still debate about what ethnicity the inhabitants of Teotihuacan were, but they weren't Mayan.
The Pyramid of the Sun is one of the largest in Mesoamerica and the only one I found a dog to hang out with on-so it is my favorite. This little guy was almost completely at the top, then walked down the whole way with me. I named his Sunny and wanted to take him home so bad!
On our very last day we went to the 'Venice of Mexico' Xochimilco, the canals were built by the Aztecs and are now a fun place to rent a boat, drink beer all day, and try not to get cornered by all the boats full of mariachi bands. The boats are huge and we ended up sharing a boat with a few other people-a tech guy from Guatamala, a lady who works for the UN from the US but currently living in Guatemala, a professor from Mexico who works in Georgia and his kids, who were great and couldn't stop asking Keith about the gross things doctors see. It was a fun group and a relaxing way to spend our last day in Mexico.
Ok, so I could do a whole post about all the delicious food we are in over the last 2 weeks. It as truly amazing. We ate everywhere and everything! Outside of Teotihuacan we ate at a little outdoor set up where we had to crawl through a hole in the fence to get there-and the food was amazing-later that day we ate 14 course meal at Lorea, considered one of the best restaurants in Mexico City. We ate mole in the park, ice cream out of cocoa pods and barbacoa that had been pit roasted over night. We ate fried cricket tacos and corn fungus-and liked it! Did we get sick-yes, we both did-but it was at the beginning of the trip and after that we could basically eat anything-so we did! The food exceeded my exceptions and I can't wait to go back!
So, long story short-go to Mexico! Bring stretchy pants and a willingness to climbs thousands of stairs. I know everyone says this kind of thing-but everyone we interacted with was so kind and welcoming. 'Bienvenido a Mexico' was what we heard from everyone we talked to in the markets and there was no moment that we did not feel safe. We are already planning our next trip to Mexico and it can't come soon enough!
