Chiapas is the southern-most state of Mexico bordering Guatamala, about the size of South Carolina. Chiapas has an extraordinarily diverse set of ecosystems, including the Lacandon rainforest, which hosts everything from jaguars to bromeliads, and of course is rapidly shrinking due to human use. Chiapas also grows 60% of Mexico's coffee and coffee is the most important agricultural output. Chiapas is also the center of the ancient Mayan cultures, and twelve (I think?) different indigenous groups live here (I often hear languages even more unrecognizable than Spanish in the market). The indigenous people are indeed distinctive; often they are quite short (coming up to my waste sometimes) and some wear these black furry skirts and intricately stitched blouses. I have so much more to learn about this place and I can hardly choose between the activities of learning, seeing, eating, bicycling. (Next time I'm unemployed I may very well just live on my bicycle in Mexico)
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| San Cristobal, one of the many cathedral plazas |
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| The golden evening hour, and the birds redistribute around the plaza |
San Cristobal is a classic colonial city, built by the Spanish conquistadors when they bullied their way in here back in the day. This city drips with colonial style, the narrow streets with sidewalks you must step off when encountering a wide person, the house walls coming right against the sidewalk. The streets are of jostling cobble stone and countless imposing cathedrals and expansive plazas. Mountains hug and frame every side of the city.
It seems that most of the tourists in San Cristobal are from other places in South America or Europe; I hear much more Spanish spoken than I have in other touristy areas. I feel exceptionally uncool with my helmet hair and non-existent wardrobe among these chic travelers. I miss the soft pink Canadians I was meeting during other times of this trip. It is incredibly humbling to be a complete idiot with my poor communication.
Yesterday was spent rejoicing that I was no longer on a night bus, shopping at the market (my favorite was a hunk of peanut something candy something blondie-esque creation), marveling at the architecture, and taking a rest from the bicycle.
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| These stonecrop plants at the orchid garden made me smile with their big juicy heads on brown stalks |
And today was not unlike a normal day off I would have in the states: I drank coffee in the sun and read leisurely (trying eagerly to LEARN so much about this place!), then I went and spent time with plants (an orchid garden), and then a bicycle ride.
The bicycle facilitated me in not spending my entire day inquisitively eating food from the market and guiltily buying beautiful earrings.
Ziplines, caves, bus tours, horse back rides.... I thought about those options, but what I really wanted was just to be under my own power, carving around on two wheels, and just seeing Mexico day to day.
I wanted to ride my bike. Good thing I'd packed it.
So I looked at the map, picked a direction (up!). I rode out and up through the barrios of the city, houses becoming farther dispersed, and then into the pine forests. Trucks passed by towering with logs, I could hear the wine of planers, yards were stacked with tall Jenga piles of wood. I was in logging land. Entire hillsides were bare. Here is made manifest the impossible balance of humans living in ecosystems and needing to utilize them.
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| Denuded hillside in forground, pine forests on mountains surrounding San Cristobal |
After the climbing it became a little flatter, and the wind pushed me through a highland place. I rode with huge eyes through a completely different world. I was in some sort of small indigenous subsistence farming community. No house was taller than one story, these low houses, absolutely tiny places. Each had a few pigs or chickens or these funny loud black sheep nearby. Smoke twisted upwards from fires. Little fields of corn were interspersed among the wood buildings, dotted with squash plants. I rode past a field of cilantro--cilantro!--and I could smell it on the wind and I wanted to so badly to roll in it.
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| This is a field of cilantro. The low little houses in the background, the remaining pine forests behind them |
What is missing in a place can be as telling as what is actually there. There was no name for here on my google maps, and no central church square (as in every Mexican city that is organized the same). I was passed by no cars and saw few people.
In a dirt front yard a little girl in an orange shirt sat in an orange wheelbarrow tipping back and forth and smiled at me as I passed. Cut trees were everywhere, and all the tiny houses were wood. It was windy and desolate feeling and the few standing trees whistled in the wind. Those few tall remaining pines made me feel like I was pedaling through The Lorax. A group of children on bicycles coaxed some of those loud black sheep through a field of cilantro.
Then I rode into the forest again, leaving the highland farming place behind. I descended for a blitheringly long time (had I climbed that high?!) and merged back into the city life of San Cristobal.
I've had little opportunity to ride in thick traffic yet here (I have distinct memories of Bangkok, Medellin, Seattle traffic), but coming back into San Cristobal from my ride, I had that opportunity to participate in the intense crush of a place, which is it's traffic. I love the instant-by-instant reaction this takes, no time to pre-meditate any movement, but moving instantaneously with the plasma. In this way, it is like a partner dance, following the lead of something, in this case many somethings. Dodging taxis, men in the street yelling about their taxis, school children, a lame dog. Potholes, speed bumps, a tourist with a big camera. A man on a yellow bike crossed an empty intersection on a red light and I followed suit. But soon I was out of it, and I had a quiet narrow stony street to myself and I jangled along on the colonial cobblestones.
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| A garden in one of the many courtyards in this city. Those are poinsettias, how they are really. All tall and leggy and happy. |
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