Oaxaca hasta San Cristobal

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Hello! So we finally regained enough strength to leave beautiful Oaxaca and head east towards Chiapas. Leaving the city, we took a detour to Hierve el Agua - a site with petrified waterfalls and beautiful springs on top. It was a bit out of the way but definately worth it. Unfortunately for such a unique sight visitors are allowed to swim in the pools, walk all over, so in a few years all the beauty might be destroyed. It was strange, back home national monuments such as this are tightly controlled, you can only walk on designated pathways and watched so that you don´t touch or damage anything.

As we entered our last Mexican state of Chiapas, we passed through the capital of Tuxtla and went to the "best zoo in Mexico" (it was nice), and then Chiapa de Corso, where we stayed for the night and had a lot of fun at the town festival riding rollercoasters and drinking margaritas. The next day we took a boat tour up the Cañon del Sumidero - a huge 1000meter deep gorge - and saw many historical spots on the tour such as the spot where hundreds of indiginous fighters jumped to their deaths to avoid their inevitable capture by the Spanish conquistadors.

Finally we reached San Cristóbal de las Casas - a city even more full of alternative culture than Oaxaca. It is a beautiful city, at 2200meters high - we are freezing and wearing all the clothes we never thought we´d need to use! (And now Kat is grateful for the extra weight she lugged around for 2 1/2 months!) We are staying with a German, an Englishman and a Belgian who are living and working here. They sometimes have other visitors stay, we made friends with a couple from Estonia and all had a good time together. We visited some museums, including the Mayan Medicine Museum which included a very interesting section on Mayan Midwives. But then, we suspect those delicious blackberries we bought in the market and made into pancakes made us sick yet again and so we spent about 3 days not farther than a few steps from the toilet! So, our 4 day stay has turned into over a week as we recuperate. But it has it´s benefits, too - Kat lost those last +/- 10 pounds that kept on hanging on despite our rigourous exercise, and also we have spent so much time here that we are in on the latest local gossip - who is dating who, who had to move out of her flat because of a messy break-up, etc. So we feel at home.

But it is time to go! We are thinking that in another day or 2 we will be sufficiently strong to continue towards the famous Mayan ruins of Palenque (mostly downhill there as it is at 70 meters!) From there the Guatemalan border will be just days away...

Hasta pronto, Kat y Swen

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