Lagos de Montebello

Next stop: Lagos de Montebello, a series of more than 59 lakes that reaches all the way down to the International Lake which the Mexico-Guatemala border cuts right through. The lakes range in color from deep green (like Emerald Lake) to deep blue.

On Lake Tziscao, the largest lake in the series, and also where the village and cabin rentals are located, we took a raft ride out to an island with orchids on it. The raft consisted of 6 logs roped together with 3 hunks of wood that served as the benches. There was water coming up between all the logs and the whole thing seemed fairly unstable, but we had on our life vests, made it to orchid island and survived the tour.

On the other side of the big lake from the raft ride, in the town of Tziscao we found a nice place to stay on the lake. It was New Year´s eve and we thought it might be crowded, but it was actually pretty quiet. The kid negotiating the $20 price with me told me they were booked solid. We were the only ones and we took cold showers...we got him down to $15.

Once we dropped the big backpack off at the cabin,

we caught a series of rides (transportation in these parts is spotty at best) back around to the Emerald Lake and to hike out to the Grutas San Rafael El Arco, which is an natural arch in the rock where the river flows through. Nice!

Then of course we had to hitch another ride back to our cabin. We enjoyed the fresh air in the back of a pickup and when we got to Tziscao, we asked the locals what we owed them. $10 pesos ($1) or $5 pesos each. That´s like an 80% discount off the spotty transport price! We couldn´t have known it then, but as our cash was dwindling 3 days later before we could get to the next available ATM in Palenque, every single peso counted!

Once back in Tziscao, we walked a couple of km out to the International Lake, which the Guatemalan border cuts right through. We briefly crossed into Guatemala walking. There´s no border control at this remote location.

Comitán and El Chiflón

From San Cristóbal we made our way down to Comitán, mostly to see the waterfalls at El Chiflón, about 45 minutes from town. But in the end we really enjoyed the colonial town of Comitán too.

El Chiflón is a park that has a trail along a pretty blue-green river with a series of waterfalls, progressively getting bigger and more impressive. El Chiflón is the big waterfall at the top, so named for the big gusts of wind that come blowing through the canyon, sending the waterfall spray flying up. We hiked up to the overlook and were SOAKED head to toe in a few seconds. The shear force of the spray blowing up is quite a rush!

Comitán, officially called Comitán de Domínguez since 1915, is named for Dr. Belisario Domínguez who is from there and was a physician, the mayor, started a reputable health clinic there, later served as a senator and made a rousing speech to congress in 1913 denouncing the dictator Huerta who was the current "president". Speaking out got him murdered by Huerta´s cronies in Mexico City shortly there after. Today Mexico´s highest honor is the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor, bestowed upon one influential Mexican per year. The picture of the mural below depicts Domínguez´s speech.

Toniná Ruins

The Toniná mayan ruins (6th-9th century) are located just outside of the town of Ocosingo (also Zapatista country), which is about half way between San Cristóbal and Palenque - 2 hours from each. Toniná was never on the itinerary, but we took an interest when we learned that Toniná had sacked Palenque (the better known mayan site) in the 8th century. So we made a day trip from San Cristóbal to check out the 7 layered pyramid.

Since it is a less known site (as far as the tourism route goes), there´s virtually no signage, nor upkeep. And some of the staircases and pyramid climbing we did was slightly sketchy! I kept imagining me starting a giant rock slide with one wrong step. Anyway, any visit that gets your adrenaline pumping like that and comes with gorgeous views of the valley below was well worth it to us!

There was also a 30 meter tomb down inside the pyramid that was open (and of course didn´t have any signage saying not to go in). But, as you can see it was VERY narrow (any narrower and I don´t think my hips would have fit!) and very dark. We decided against a visit to the tomb. The guide book had warned us that it was not for the "claustrophobic or obese".

As we left, you could see the top of the pyramid peeking out of the vegetation. So speaking of Zapatista country, we could never get a mini-bus back to town because the Zapatistas were stopping all transport because they wanted to control the transportation in the region. Luckily a taxi dropped someone off at the ruins and offered us a ride back for the 10 peso ($1) mini-bus price, but we saw the poor mini-bus passengers stopped on the side of the road with the Zapatistas blocking them. Could have been us!

San Cristóbal de las Casas

If Tuxtla gets the under-hyped award for supposedly being "non charming", then San Cristóbal definitely gets the over-hyped award for being not so super-duper-extra charming like what we were read and had heard. Don´t get me wrong, it´s a pretty colonial town (like many in Mexico) and used to be a Zapatista stronghold, but we had super high expectations going in and were somewhat let down by the super touristed, but still pretty colonial town. Anyway, we still enjoyed and took pictures of all the churches, plazas and colonial buildings!

The indigenous medicine museum was different and interesting and we enjoyed that. We got spooked when we walked in on these "people" praying, complete with chanting audio. Upon closer examination (and a finger poke), we realized they were paper maché people. But they look pretty darn real, don´t they? This scenario would later play out in real life in the San Juan de Chamula church, where we were not allowed to take pictures. There was also a birthing scene, demonstrating how the midwife delivers the baby from behind the mother, while she grips the father in front. Apparently the more natural method.

We hiked up lots of stairs to (yet) another church, but enjoyed the walk and the view of the blue church from the top.

The facade of the Santo Domingo church had been beautifully restored in all its detail.

The final green and white church we visited was in the indigenous community of San Juan de Chamula. There, the locals practice their religion which is a blend of their indigenous religion and the catholic religion. They do not allow pictures, but the paper maché people above is a pretty good example of the style of the locals in their fuzzy black skirts (for the women) and ponchos (for the men). There are no benches in the whole church and the floor is covered with pine needles (which probably explains the bags of pine needles for sale in the markets). Along with the pine needles, there are hundreds of candles stuck to the ground and burning (hello fire hazard). Each worshiper brings their own candles and kind of creates their little shrine on the ground, while chanting in their indigenous language (tzotzil - Mayan ethnicity). They pray to John the Baptist (Jesus holds a more secondary position in their church), but they also had soda pop (offerings?) and eggs (curative) in their temporary shrines. The whole thing was quite a sight and very interesting. We walked out of there and said "woaahh. that´s different."