A suggestion from a traveler's forum got us here after a day of driving mountain roads filled with expansive vistas and roadside attractions and a feeling of endless possibility. Escaping from the clutches of San Cristobal took some considerable effort. We got up early Saturday and left the Rancho San Nicolas campground before 7:30 to descend into the city's old town, find a parking space and do some last minute touring.
At that hour of the morning I found the perfect spot first in line to the corner so I couldn't get boxed in and facing the correct direction to leave town. I am not much intimidated driving and parking the Promaster but San Cristobal is a very difficult city to drive, narrow streets packed with cars requires precision maneuvering and I was not keen to do anything to make getting out of town harder.
Layne had a hankering to explore the markets of which there are more than one and we walked to the old town market full of people, an anthem comes to mind, so while I jockeyed outside with Rusty who found much of interest, disgraceful dog...
...Layne went inside and reported back it was a food market only and therefore not much use to us. We wanted to explore unencumbered by food parcels and fresh fruit is available roadside everywhere you drive as we shall see. "Seasonal fruit for sale"
I was fascinated by the Maya women dressed in traditional clothes while the men wore western garb, long pants, shirts with collars, baseball caps and jackets of one sort or another. I'm not much for fashion but the pride of ancestry is carried entirely by the women.
They walk for miles in unsuitable footwear, flip flops or low shoes with no support, and they were dark heavy skirts, some of them make of peculiar woolen material that looks like it's covered in feathers and is very difficult to photograph.
They speak some Spanish but mostly they talk among themselves in their own language which sounds oddly guttural which I can only describe as being like German with a speech impediment. Then when they switch to Spanish for the idiot gabacho it comes a s slight shock that you can understand them again.
They move fluidly through the Spanish world that surrounds them but they are not of it, nor do they aspire to be. I find them mysterious and admirable in their world apart. I don't mind their cooking either.
We wandered the streets and Layne bought a pillow case to carry our towels. The limitations of life in the van manifest themselves in the size and quantity of souvenirs we can carry from our travels. When we get back to Miami we'll add these to the others we store there from years past that we used to keep in our home. I am looking forward to what she will discover in the markets of South America, always in miniature!
I voted for the dark purple pillow case as I thought this one was too busy. Rather to my surprise Layne agreed with me.
I was wandering around waiting for Layne to buy a headband and I spotted a clear example, I think of a typical Mayan skirt. It looks weird and fluffy and reminds me of ostriches with their feathers hanging low. And this woman will walk miles in those dainty shoes with massive loads on her head or in her arms. At 7500 feet above sea level.
I am not much of a shopper so my heart sings when I see the stores looking like this:
Though even I do have to admit the streets look more colorful, and possibly overwhelming when they look like this!
We meandered back a different route checking the stands and maneuvering Rusty through the sidewalk crowds on the narrow tall uneven passageways that pass for sidewalks in this town.
Piles of Mayan skirts for sale:
If you think that San Cristobal is a local market town you will get an occasional nudge in English to remind you of the other half of the tourism. And I dare say many of the vegans they are touting to may not be English speakers as Chiapas is off the map for most Canadians and US travelers and leave these mysterious places to insouciant Europeans.
I suppose we should be grateful the Spanish brought the wheel to these shores:
Wandering San Cristobal before the day started properly made up for our hectic introduction to an awkward city. We were still glad to fire up Gannet 2 and get going.
An online acquaintance from a traveler forum (On the Road in Mexico) had told us of a delightful stop she made last year at the Lagos de Colon (Columbus Lakes) 70 miles before the city of Tapachula. This being Chiapas we weren't sure how far we might get owing to potential for road blocks and other delays so we checked the route and had several back up stopping places, mostly Pemex gas stations that double as truck stops along the way. The lakes on the map below aren't marked but they are located where the blue line gets closest to Guatemala just north of Frontera Comalpa. We were going well and truly south!
Naturally getting out of San Cristobal was a trial in thick unrelenting traffic as the city had woken by 9:30 in the morning.
We inched out of town until suddenly the road ahead was jammed tight and cars were peeling off. Another blockade? we sighed...until Layne wound down her window and shouted to another driver for information. An accident he thought but the road ahead was closed. I saw a bunch of collectivo minibuses, taxis and pick ups peeling off to the left up a hill so I just threw us after them figuring I could check Google maps later and see where we were going. Layne was thrilled of course by my daring until we stopped and I traced a thin white line across the mountains back to the blue line of our route out of town. That should get us past any accident I asserted confidently and off we went.
The road was smooth and clear of potholes except for the sort bit where we drove through a quarry (!) on dusty white dirt a d that got my passenger grumbling again for a bit. I ignored her and enjoyed the views across the valley through the pine trees. We went up and up to a small village in the heights where we saw not a soul, we were alone on the road with no other traffic and no pedestrians among the houses. "I'd be too nervous to take a detour like this on the boat," I admitted to my wife, but aboard Gannet 2 I am possessed of a confidence and joy I never had on the water and I find that fact to be rather odd. Webb Chiles' records are safe from me.
Once we got half way through the mysterious empty village we came upon a rope road block, our first in Chiapas. It's a technique used by villagers to make some money for their people in communities where they feel the central government has ignored them. Some gringos get totally bent out of shape by this form of enterprise capitalism but my wife argues its just another form of Cuota (toll) and the money goes to a good cause, helping people in poverty. We smiled and coughed up a whole 50 pesos ($2:50) and I asked if I could take a photo. I never expected hi to say yes so my photo taken half on the fly is pretty crap but it is all the evidence I have of this particular form of a Chiapas institution. If you don't pay and try to run the barrier they have rocks to put damage in your vehicle so you will end up paying a lot more. Just in case you were envisioning yourself being a hero.
I smiled and told them it was their lucky day there was an accident pushing traffic up the hill and they just smiled leading me to suspect that they were ready for any opportunity. Back on the main road we joined the line of cars ambling south on Highway 190 straight into Zapatista country. 
Our juicer preparing a mug of orange:
