St Cristobal de las casas

After a 12 hour overnight bus journey complete with eye masks and ear plugs we arrived in St Cristobal de las Casas – a mountain-top town in the region of Chiapas. The bus took us up some windy mountain roads until we were above the clouds, it was amazing and as soon as we got out of the bus we enjoyed the fresh mountain air. St Cristobal is a really beautiful, it's an old colonial town with a huge yellow cathedral small streets, white houses with coloured window sills and doorways, and red roofs. The central square has a big yellow church in the centre and a little market. It's quite close to Guatemala.
Al is enjoying this town and says he wants to live here. It's really sunny but there is cold mountain air and unlike Puerto Escondido it's less muggy.

The 15th was independence day and there was a huge procession and party in the main square complete with mariachi bands on a stage, singers, dancers – very very loud. The square was packed with people from the town, luckily they were all smaller than Al and I so we had a good view wherever we stood. The band was singing typical Mexican songs which you hear constantly over here and they had little kids up on stage dancing which was very cute, they even dedicated one of their songs to the gringos at which point everyone turned around and looked at us... even though we're not officially gringos! After a couple of tequillas Al and I bought a Mexican moustache which the locals loved.

The next day we woke to go on a tour we had booked to a waterfall and the Montebello Lakes.

The first waterfall was very picturesque, we saw some big spiders on the leaves and the lakes were a beautiful aqua marine blue. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to swim in them (you get what you pay for with these tours). Our rather unfriendly guide (we figured he had a hangover from the festivities the night before) sussed me and Al out as tourists who look like they want to buy lots of pottery from local villages so he stopped the bus on the way back for a complimentary “tip from the driver” stop at what was probably the most boring market ever, each stall selling the same ceramics as the one beside it. Fair enough the local women made these themselves and maybe if I had a house I would have considered it, but ceramics and backpacks don't go, and for that reason Al and I jumped ship for a few minutes to explore the local village and stumbled upon a local fiesta, bought some churros and were happy, unlike our guide who made no commission.