Vamos Andar
Sunday, December 4th, 2005Please excuse my short absense from writing in this journal. The reason I didnt write is because i didnt really have much new to report for the longest time; I spent a full week in San Cristobal de Las Casas, which was much more time than I expected to spend there. I obviously was having a great time, otherwise I wouldnt have stayed for so long. I made loads of friends in my first two days there, and every other day I would always run into lots of people I knew on the street. It is a small city, and in a sense this reminded me of Guanajuato in the way that I could always find people I knew. It is an interesting city, composed of a large indigenous population as well as a large hippie population.
I was at a party on my second night, and it was absolutely packed with hippies. At that party, I met a lot of the people I would see frequently around the city. There was a guitarist and saxophone player at the party, and they asked me to play for a bit. I ended up playing for quite a while with the guitar player, and it felt great to get back into playing music. Traveling, I´ve missed the saxophone more than I had ever expected.
In the city center of San Cristobal, the venders are worse than anywhere else in Mexico. Everyone from little girls to old ladies approach any foreigners they see and, presenting their goods, tell these people to “compralo.” They would often point out that their bracelets or hammocks “son baratos” or “son lindos” and then repeat their demand to “compralo.” For those of you who dont speak spanish, this literally means “buy it.” As far as these venders are concerned, selling their goods isnt a matter of salesmanship but of a direct command to buy the goods because they are cheap. I usually feel sorry for these venders, but when they are so persistent and pushy it quickly became annoying.
One day I went to Chamula, an indigenous village outside of the city. The entire indigenous lifestyle and the village´s self-sufficiency is completely visible, and it is fascinating to see the animals that compose the daily diet, people working in the corn fields, and others cooking and caring for their children and everything. Also, it was surprising the the village was quite prosperous. There were a number of very nice houses around town, and nobody seems to be hungry or without the means to survive and care for oneself. This was quite unexpected, as my earlier perception had been that the indigenous villages were very poor places lacking any opportunities.
One day I ran into a Swiss guy, Tanael, who is also traveling alone, so we spent a lot of time together. We went out a couple of times to a club called Blue. On Monday there were about 25 people there, and only about 8 girls. Two of the girls approached us, and danced with us for a bit. Later in the night, however, they ended up kissing two other random guys. These girls were dubbed the “bitches” by Tanael and I the next day.
The next evening I was supposed to meet Tanael, but I saw my friend from the hippie party and he invited me to hop in the back of a pickup truck with his friends (not hippies). I spend the night riding around in the pickup truck and drinking beer at the house of the guy driving the truck. At one point there were 3 hippie girls in the back of the truck with me, and the guys decided they didnt want the girls to come along, so we ditched them in the town center. It was a fun night.
I took a day trip to the mayan ruins of Palenque and really enjoyed the trip. We also saw a waterfall called Misol-Ha, and a set of cascades called Agua Azul. It was 5 hours both ways, but it was definitely worth it.
On thursday night, supposedly the best in San Cristobal, I went to Blue again. This time, though it was crowded with people, there were almost no good-looking girls there. Nevertheless, I chilled there until 6 am, listening to the music and talking a bit to the “bitches.”
On Friday, after a week in San Cristobal, I decided it was time to take off for Guatemala. I took buses to the border, then crossed onto the hectic guatemalan side in the city called La Mesilla. It was a wild, noisy place, with no real rules or order in place. The streets were packed with venders, cars, and pedestrians, with too little room for anybody to get where they were going. I like border towns, sometimes. They are never nice places, but almost always quite interesting.
From La Mesilla, the only option is to take a chicken bus to Huehuetenango. The bus ride was also interesting, as it was my first real chicken bus experience. An old US schoolbus painted bright colors, it was filled with a ridiculous amount of people. Not wanting to leave my backpack atop the bus, i sat on a seat with my backpack on my lap, and with two other adults sharing the seat with me. Every single seat in the bus had 3 people, and there were still people standing in the aisle. At one point we had to wait while a portion of road was being constructed, and we were in one place for about an hour. The bus got hot, and the incessant vibration of the seat got quite annoying. Finally I arrived in Huehuetenango at about 7. I had hoped to continue to Quetzaltenango, but no buses leave after 4 pm.
The next morning I headed off to Quetzaltenango, aka Xela. I checked into a hostel, and wandered a bit around the city. I like the place. It is pretty, and it has a crazy market. Last night was a big clelebration in the central park commemorating its opening after a long renovation, and there was lots of music and fireworks. I met a girl during some boring speeches, and Im going to meet up with her tomorrow afternoon. I hope everything goes well, because I really like her.
After the music ended, I went to a club with a Japanese friend from my hostel. It was a cool place, but almost everyone there came with a partner. The dance floor was filled with just couples, and my friend and I were the two weirdos dancing alone. The place closed at 1, so we checked out 2 more bizarre clubs, then decided to head back to the hostel. On the way back, a group passed us and invited us to come to an “after party” in a bar. It was apparently an illegal place, staying open far past the hours at which bars have to close. I was dancing for awhile with one girl from the group, and then we decided to go with her friend to a party at this guy´s house. We drank a bit of vodka and coke, and everything was OK, but it turns out that the guys at the house were all jerks. At 5 am they refused to drive us home.
We were quite far from the center, and this city isnt such a safe place at 5 am, especially on a dark, foggy night. We walked for a while, and then we waved down a car and asked for a ride to a park near one of the girls´s house. He was a taxi driver, but he let us ride for free. He was extremely angry and reckless, because he had apparently been robbed earlier that day. Also, the girls apparently saw a pistol in his pocket. We were holding our breathe the entire way to our destination.
This was a dangerous situation, and though I am always up for adventures, It isn´t cool when they turn so drastically unsafe. I do maintain, however, that it was not our fault that we ended up in such danger. If the people at the party had taken us home, as they had promised, things would have been far easier. And though it was risky to get in the car, it would be even riskier to walk miles through dangerous neighborhoods late at night.
All three of us had to sleep in a little bed, so it was obviously difficult to sleep at all. In the morning, we realized we had a problem: the girls´s grandmother was home, and she would certainly not approve of a random gringo boy sleeping in the same bed as her daughter. Therefore, I had to remain in the room, completely silent, until the grandmother left the house. I got back to my hostel around 11: 30.
Whether or not it was much fun (it wasnt so bad), it definitely makes another good story.
On Tuesday I´ll hop on a bus for Guatemala City, where I have a contact with whom I will stay. Then Ill check out Antigua and Lago Atitlan.
Everything is going very well. Yesterday I bought a new towel, as well as a new sweatshirt (I lost my old, paint-stained sweatshirt in San Cristobal). Exciting stuff, huh? I think so, at least.
Stay cool, everybody.
Dani
Neocoltrane