Lost Days
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006San Cristóbal de las Casas is an impossibly beautiful colonial town tucked away in the mountains of Chiapas. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see any of it today.
We did, however, have a rocking good time last night.
Yesterday started innocently enough. We wandered through the charming cobblestone streets, stumbled upon a municipal market where I was so tall that I kept hitting my head on the tarps that served as a ceiling, and did not buy anything from the indigenous children who would approach us with belts and friendship bracelets. The market was incredible. It went on for miles, twisting and turning and overflowing with oranges and squash and corn and fruit that I have never seen. It was exhausting and overwhelming, so we returned to our hostel and fell asleep.
That night, a fellow hostel-mate had a birthday party in the garden behind the hostel. For the first time, Sarah and I found a way to mingle with our fellow travelers. We met an effervescent couple from Norway, two women from the UK, a woman from New Zealand, a few Canadians, and a sweet French couple. We learned that I could pass for Canadian but Sarah has a ¨hard¨ American accent and couldn´t. We confirmed our suspicions that people would be more welcoming if we weren’t American, when the Québécois hippie literally turned and walked away when he heard where we were from. (He came back and we had a conversation about how crazy evil Bush is. Our work on the 2004 election gave us a little cred…) Then we downed a few too many tequilas and went with our new friends to Cafe Revolution where a nearly full brass band was accompanying a Spanish rapper. It was the best bar I´ve been to in a long time. Packed to the gills with Mexican fashionistas and travelers in quick-dry clothes. I even got into a short, choppy Spanish conversation with a woman in line for the bathroom. She kept saying ¨que chilo!¨ which I hope means ¨cool¨ and not ¨what a stupid American!¨ On the way, the effervescent Norwegian woman traumatized several small Mexican boys by forcing them to dance with her in the town square. It was a great night.
Today, not so great. We made it a pretty early night, thinking we´d be able to tough it out in the morning, but a combination of dehydration, poor nights sleep, and the tequila made this a wasted day. Well, there´s nothing but time.
-Megan
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