After the unsettling vibes of Chamula and the more friendly experience in Zincanatan, we are reminded of the fact that no matter where you are in the world, people are a mix of wary and welcoming, charming and irritating, selfish and kind, and yet sadly privileged Westerners are frequently far more annoying than anyone else. Mindful of what Aymeric has confirmed to us regarding food poisoning in restaurants catering for locals, we go for a sandwich in a little courtyard cafe designed for tourists called Sweet Beat with a boutique clothes store attached.
The food is fresh and lovely and the setting is quite pretty but there’s expat/traveller yummy mummies gathered there from Britain and America talking loudly about their therapists while their darling little terrors are running around screaming like it’s a crèche. And in another corner there’s a guy from Hawaii telling a woman from San Francisco that he’s travelling to seek “closure” from his last relationship, while she talks about how she quit her job to become an “activist” and is living in San Cristóbal to “channel my energies by studying non-traditional yoga practices”.
However we reason that if long-term visitors are frequenting the place then, despite the knuckle-biting annoyance of the company, it must be reasonably safe to eat at.
And that evening we have dinner at Te Quiero Verde, a vegan restaurant run by Belgian friends of Aymeric. It’s a fantastic find, serving us masala dhal and miso ramen that are easily as tasty as anything back home and less than half the price. In fact we like it so much we come back for dinner the next night for a veggie burger and spaghetti bolgnese, even getting sandwiches to go for our long bus ride to Palenque.
The owners tell us that they’ve been here ten years, having travelled to San Cristóbal and been seduced into staying. It happens a lot in this pueblo mágica; backpackers and tourists come to San Cristóbal de las Casas for a few days and often stay for weeks, months and in a few cases, settle here permanently.
We feel pretty relaxed too and are enjoying the tranquil vibe of the town so much that rather than book ourselves on a big day trip to the Sumadero Canyon we decide to spend our final day in Chiapas exploring a little more of San Cristóbal’s charms. We start with a shot of caffeine at the coffee museum which is where a cooperative of local growers have come together to sell their organic, fair trade coffee to tourists and local businesses as well as to increase their output internationally.
The displays document how German merchants came to the area to develop coffee plantations and exploit the workers before the locals were able to regain control of their lands and benefit from growing their own coffee. It’s delicious, with the standout brands being Trifuno Verde, Union Majomat and Maya Vinic which we tried yesterday.
Walking down through the Zocalo, past the cathedral and government buildings we come to the Torre de El Carmen, a large arch attached to the old Carmelite convent which is now a cultural centre with a pretty garden at its centre. But as we climb from there to La Cerrulita and La Iglesia de San Cristóbalito on the hill it’s clear we’re crossing an invisible line from where the Centro Histórico is picturesque and safe for tourists, and where the slightly edgier areas begin.
Our walk up the zig-zagging steps takes us past a few fragrantly wasted, and slightly belligerent, chaps, openly using and dealing drugs in front of a big painted notice prohibiting drug and alcohol use. Aymeric had mentioned that San Cristóbal has quite a problem with indigenous alcoholism but it’s obviously not helped by the couple of tourists we see trying to score. The view of the city from the top of the hill is glorious though.
In the afternoon we head for sunset to the hill on the other side of the city where a church to Our Lady of Guadalupe resides, affording great vistas as the sun goes down. However before we ascend we visit a quite brilliant museum called Na Bolom, which used to be the home of Dutch archaeologist Frans Blom and his Swiss photographer wife Gertrude Blom.
Bonded by a love of exploring and a fascination with the Maya, their story is an inspiration. In 1929 Frans Blom was one of the first archaeologists to excavate the incredible city of Uxmal, which we are due to visit next week, and a few years later he met Gertrude, a feminist and fierce critic of the Nazis, after she was arrested by the regime and subsequently managed to flee to Mexico before the war and started photographing indigenous women.
They were the first Westerners to contact and become accepted by the Lacondon tribe, who had escaped colonisation by the Spanish by retreating deep into the Chiapas jungle.
In 1950 the couple bought a run down hacienda in San Cristóbal de las Casas and turned it into a home and research institute and devoted their life to the protection of both the Lacondones and the wider rainforest, to preserve the unique ecology and culture of the indigenous lands. They named it Na Bolom - ‘The House of the Jaguar’ in Tzotzil - as a pun on both their surname, and the nickname ‘Jaguar’ that the Lacandones gave Frans.
Our visit starts with a short film of their pioneering work, which started decades before ecological issues became accepted, and to see the wanton deforestation, havoc and destruction carried out by the industrial cattle farms and logging companies, is truly upsetting.
But what is more depressing is the hope for a better world expressed in the grainy video from the early ‘90s. Archive film of the tribe chief and the shaman talking about the Bloms in the 1960s, and footage from 1992 of Gertrude Blom at the age of 95, being honoured by the King of Sweden as a figure of huge global importance, is accompanied by talk of how their work is leading the way in ecology. But 30 years later we are on the brink of the total catastrophic collapse of our climate, and as a result, of human civilisation as we know it. Nothing has changed for the better, far from it.
We walk around the incredible house and gardens, which were bequeathed under trust to the Lacondon people and is now operated as a non-governmental, non-profit museum, research centre and hotel for ecologists, and are almost moved to tears that the decades of pioneering and selfless ecological work and campaigning the Bloms devoted their lives to, are seemingly coming to nothing.
As we leave, the radio of the security guard at the entrance is playing Louis Armstrong’s ’What A Wonderful World’. Coman mentions it to the guard and says that he hopes the work of Na Bolom can help preserve this wonderful world. The guard shrugs and says mournfully, “Sometimes it’s just a song”.
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It’s raining the next morning as we leave San Cristóbal de las Casas’ little bus station at midday on our nine hour drive to Palenque. The direct route through the jungles of Chiapas takes a little over half that time but we would be crammed in a minibus with the risk of being held up at makeshift roadblocks by armed bandits from the remnants of the Zapatista movement. So we’re taking the longer route, with a variety of British, French, Spanish and Canadian tourists, plus local travellers, on a more comfortable bus which goes to Palenque via the safer state of Tabasco and its capital Villahermosa, and eventually terminates in Cancún after an 18 hour journey.
As we leave the bus station we pass a big bronze statue of a woman who appears to be sacrificing a chicken, which combined with the soggy, grey skies is somewhat sobering. At least they’re screening ‘Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again’ when we board to keep our spirits up. Although the driver seems determined to drown it out with Spanish language versions of Elton John.
The additional volume is probably a good thing as soon after we leave Coman has an episode of Montezuma’s revenge that sees him run up the aisle to the bus toilet and cling on for dear life as we take some bends at speed, trying to keep the WC door closed due to a faulty lock, while the paper dispenser falls open on top of him. As I know from tour buses over the years, etiquette dictates that bus toilets are only used for number ones, but urgent situations require emergency measures. Thankfully most of the bus can’t hear the commotion going on at the back.
When he returns, Lily James is crouched over a toilet suffering a bout of morning sickness on the Mamma Mia screen. Coman takes one look at it, whilst trying to find the Imodium and says - far too loudly - “Looks like she’s been to Mexico!!” I advise him that using his inner voice might be a wiser option.
It’s absolutely chucking with rain when, about an hour after we stop at the major hub city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, we pull up at the toll-booth entrance to a major highway, and officials board the bus to give us all the once over. As we continue driving through the cloud-shrouded mountains the rain quickly becomes torrential causing huge brown waterfalls to gush down the slopes beside the road, and at times mudslides and trees wash into the road. Enormous plumes of water spray up from the road as we continue on, putting our trust in the driver’s abilities to negotiate these slippery highland roads.
We cross the huge Puente Chiapas bridge over a vast man made lake, called Radaules Malpaso which is a hydro-electric dam and part of the Gijualva river, and continue on through seemingly endless rain-lashed highland forests before, some five hours after we set off we reach the flatter farm lands of Tabasco state and encounter our first village Chontalpa. From here the white-knuckle experience abates, aided by some much needed Valium. Most of the bus falls asleep but are woken up when the driver starts screening a film of Queen live from Montreal in the early 80s.
It’s dark and almost 7pm when we pull into Villahermosa for a twenty minute stop at the bus station to refuel and allow us to stretch our legs and pick up snacks. Fortunately we bought some healthy veggie sandwiches for the journey at Te Quiero Verde in San Cristóbal this morning so aren’t reliant on the huge packets of Doritos and chocolate bars that are the ubiquitous bus station offerings.
Eventually we arrive at Palenque and our hotel at 9.30pm and discover we’ve driven through a massive cold front that had battered central Mexico resulting in a severe weather warning, with threat to life. It’s still raining when we fall into an exhausted sleep in our cabin. Tomorrow we head into the jungle…
