San Cristobal de Las Casas

After another long journey by bus overnight (around 10 hours), I arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas, described by some people as the most european of the mexican towns, where a friendly "hippie" feeling can be felt. For me San Cristobal is somehow similar to Oaxaca, although it is located in a different state, the Chiapas, land of numerous indigenous maya villages. Following a recommendation from an Irish guy met before, I booked into a hostel called Rossco which was offering cheap deals and good accomodations (about 65 pesos a night = 4 euros). I originally planned to stay only a few days but found myself extending my stay as the city really invites you to do so. So I stayed a week there, some days spent doing absolutely nothing apart from chilling out at a nice cafe, checking internet or reading books to improve my spanish.

Here are a few pictures taken that week:

The Amber stones are popular in Chiapas as it is one of the only places where they can be found in the world. Here is a stone with a fossilised insect in it, more expensive than the "pure" ones as this is more rare...

There are also a couple of other interesting things to do or to see around San Cristobal though.

Cañon del Sumidero

With a tour booked from the city, I headed to a famous cañon near San Cristobal where some majestic views can be found, along with a few crocodiles and monkeys (unfortunately I did not see any monkeys that time...). I would have liked to show you some videos but unfortunately my camera and computer got stolen recently, with all my videos so I only have a few pictures to offer. I will talk about this incident later in a different post (with hopefully a happy ending thanks to my insurance) as this only happened today and I am still quite angry about it.
Anyway to come back to the cañon, once thing which quite frankly shocked me is the pollution in the river. Plastic bottles and other things were flotting and could be seen all along the trip, sometimes even forming a floating "island". I am pretty sure that the tourists are not involved in this situation but rather the locals who do not see the damage they are causing by throwing their shit everywhere without any consideration for the environment. Hopefully this will change in the years to come and they will realise that the only thing they achieve is destroying the land they are living in and from.

A crocodile getting a bit of tan...

Waterfalls of El Chiflón

Another impressive site, formed a main waterfall and a succession of several smaller ones. It took us a while to get there as we didn't want to book another expensive tour, so ended up switching between local buses ("colectivos"), facing a strike, walking a while under the heat, but at the end we made it and it was quite rewarding. You could even go down near the main waterfall and experience the "rain" as the water splashes around. I think the main waterfall was about 56 meters if my memory serves me right.

Enjoying the "rain" coming from the waterfall...