On december 22rd around 11pm i pulled into Puebla and was met at the bus station my friend oscar chavez and his girlfriend/mother-of- his- child/ live-in-lover Sylvia. They drove me back to an apt that oscar aunt owns and in which he resided before moving to ixtepec. The current occupant, oscar´s buddy, was out of town for the holiday so I had a room with a bed.

Virtually no place has heat in mexico, outside of really nice hotels, which is interesting bc puebla was hovering around 0 degrees centigrade at night. Luckily, I packed my warm long underwear tops and bottoms that I use for snowboarding, vest and stocking cap (this is by the way the entire set of cold weather clothes I brought to mexico), so I was ¨snug as a bug in a rug¨ each night as I slept in the apt. and for the most part each night in both puebla and san cristobal.

My first day in puebla oscar, Sylvia, the baby and his twin sisters picked me up in their volchito (volks bug are affectionately called volchos, or the diminuitive, volchito) and we were on our way to the registrar´s office. People were getting married and throwing rice; it was all quite interesting and I though oscar and Sylvia were going to get hitched. No, they were going to register their baby. I felt kind of bad when oscar told one of the twins that she could not be a witness because I was going to be. So now I have my name attached to alexia natalia chavez vega´s birth certificate. It was funny because oscar wanted to add another name as we were standing in line (his fourth name) but Sylvia was having none of it. I lobbied for the extra name but she said five was too many. Never thought I would hear that, especially considering I thought four was already a lot.

The daytime temp is considerably warmer so I was able to stroll around in a short sleeve shirt and pants. This was good because I spent most of Friday going to museums and old cathedrals. Puebla, the city of angels, named because the founder of the city, a Spanish missionary, claimed he was told in a dream by an angel that he should build the city in its present location. 400 years and about 200 churches later, you have puebla de los angeles. A beautiful cosmopolitan city about 1.5 hours outside of the choking sprawl of d.f., or mex city, which I avoided like the plague. Sporting a few million people, puebla is hardly a pueblo as the name would imply, yet it is a nothing next to the dark giant of d.f. the cities protector is popocapatapetl, which I know I just butchered the spelling of, a somewhat dormant volcano covered in snow most of the year. Around 17000 ft or so, it is spectacular, yet you need a day without smog to really get a good view from town. There was only two such days, xmas eve and day, when nearly everything was closed and most of the people stayed with their families and avoided driving.

The food was particularly amazing here. The chile poblano is quite rich and there are many dishes which incorporate chocolate into the mix. Sylvia is a chef, so I was spoiled because she and oscar´s twin sisters kept trying to feed me the entire time I was there. To them, I looked skinny and they were on a mission to rectify that situation.

For xmas eve dinner we had barbacoa, essentially barbeque mexi style, salad, pasta, beef, all sorts of food. I was at oscar´s brothers house with oscar´s bro and wife and 3 kids, oscar´s two sisters and his dad and Sylvia. We ate for hours and then after played games until 4 in the morning. It was then that I found out that xmas day is not the day when kids get presents. That day is dia de los santos reyes- the day of the saint kings (when the 3 wise men showed up in tbe biblical story) and that is January 5 or 7. it was funny because the two older children wrote letters to the santas reyes and placed them on the xmas tree. At 4am I reminded the mother to take the cards off the tree so that the kids would think santa had come and gotten them. No, that would not happen for another two weeks I was informed amid laughter from the group. I had no idea the kids got nothing on xmas day. They knew this, however.

Xmas day was slow with more eating and games. Nothing was open so we stayed in most of the day.

The 26th I went back to the downtown center of puebla with oscar and we went to visit more museums and cafes and I visited the monument for which the date cinco de mayo, or 5th of may was made famous. Basically, an outnumbered group of Mexican soldiers successfully defended the city against a French invasion. Of course, the French came back about two weeks later and mopped the floor with rag-tag Mexican army, but that is conveniently left out of the story.

If I could choose a city to live in, it would probably be puebla. The climate, the people, the variety of things to do all add up to an amazing place. There are cafes and book shops all over the place and the architecture is astounding. It would definitely be one that I recommend to anyone who wants a taste of city life in this country.

I was hoping to leave on the evening of the 26th but it did not work out bc the buses to the place I wanted to go, Chiapas, were full. Well, when I say full I mean that there were no discount seats available. Each bus has 2 student and 2 teacher seats available at discounted rates, but this is only during vacations when schools are not in session.

So I waited until the next day and took a bus to the state of Tabasco, which is right next to Chiapas. My guide book said there would be ruins near the town of villahermosa, which there were. Unfortunately, the town was not really great (sticky hot and filthy: fairly ugly) so I left after being there for about 24 hours and headed to palenque in Chiapas.

Palenque is a small town in the lowlands of Chiapas. I arrived around 10 am and found a cheap hotel to stay (100 pesos a night). Just outside of town are the ruins of palenque, which are the largest and most incredible I have seen to date. The city was occupied for about 1000 years and there are giant pyramids and temples and hundreds of other buildings that have yet to be excavated. This is essentially the deal in mexico: there is no funding to dig out all the sites so a good 75 percent remains hidden. In this case, it added to the mystique because as I approached temples standing over 200 feet tall rising out of the steaming jungle, the howler monkeys that called to each other in the forest beyond left me with the distinct impression that I had travelled back in time. The place was green and there was still a light fog lingering in the air and despite the hundreds of tourists, I felt a sense of calm. The architecture here is amazing. They managed to harness a powerful stream and built passages to carry it away from the major buildings yet provide water and even some beautiful waterfalls in other areas.

Did I mention I forgot my camera in the hotel that day? Ya. After about 4 hours at the site and museum, I caught a van back to the town, kicking myself for missing out on the best photographic opportunity of my trip.

So I decided to return the next day. I located a tour office and got some prices on a tour that included palenque, misol-ha (a 250 ft waterfall that you can walk under and then swim around in the huge pool) and las cascadas de agua azul (a series of incredible waterfalls that stretch for roughly 7 kilometers where the water ranges from bright turquoise to about five other shades of blue- Carolina, sky blue, more that I don’t know the names for). The next morning I was on my way back to palenque, armed with a camera.

At 8am, the van picked up a pair of Australians and they took the seats behind me. I quickly decided that today was the day to meet people, so I asked them where they were from, etc. jared and sophie were from easternmost point in Australia, I think it is something like barin bay, but that sounds wrong so don’t quote me on it. They had spent the last week in Puerto Escondido, near where I live, and were on their way to Guatemala in a few days. This two ended up being my buddies for the next 3 days and we spent new years together as well. When they finally return to Australia in march, they will send me pics of the places we saw together over the next few days, but until then I have to wait.

Sadly, the tour company screwed them over so instead of heading on to san cristobal de las casas (also where I would be going the next day) after visiting the waterfalls, they headed back to palenque with us. The other people on our van ended up being great fun also. There were two Australian girls and a kiwi named will who were outgoing and talkative. They had been studying in mexico for a month and were just touring around as well. We all spent the afternoon together and I realized I was speaking English more than I had in over a week since leaving Acapulco. It is so much fun to be with a group of travellers who are all looking for something new and exciting. We shared lots of stories and this may have been one of my favourite days on the trip. I returned exhausted to my hotel around 8pm and after having a quick bite, went to bed in anticipation of my 7am departure.

San cristobal was all I had hoped it would be. Located around 8000 ft, the town is set amid looming and lush mountains that in the afternoon capture storm clouds and thus leave the town smelling of a faint scent of rain for the evening hours. gorgeous and fairly colonial, san cristobal is a haven for tourists, mainly from Europe, who come to experience a different mexico. As Chiapas was annexed by mexico from Guatemala less than 150 years ago, the feel of the place is that of another world (a world which I assume is Guatemala though I have yet to go). The native people speak two main dialects and originate from the mountain wilderness to the south and east. I explored various museums and took away from my trip a better understanding of the plight of the natives as their forests are stripped for timber and the wild is slowly tamed by companies looking for oil and any other ¨valuable¨ resource that may lie hidden in the jungle.
One gets the feeling that the people are a little sad because they see the destruction all around them yet must sell their handicrafts to the foreigners who are inadvertently helping to exploit the community. The quality of the crafts sold in the town is remarkable and some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen in mexico originates here. The foreigners are everywhere. At least 1 in 3 people that you see are of clear European extraction, thus making the place feel both comfortable and strange at the same time. This is mexico, but somehow it is not. The contradiction is startling as you wander the streets and read signs in multiple languages and visit shops catering to the foreigner. This deep in the forest one finds a mini-european city. It is strange indeed.

I found a youth hostel and shared my room with 5 other travellers who all turned out to be quite fun. And it was only 35 pesos a night (yup, $3.50 u.s.a) with a kitchen shared bath and shower, t.v., books, games, etc. I was in heaven. Most of the tourists were from other countries so we could only communicate in Spanish which I found really amusing because here we were from about 10 different countries struggling to say what we wanted a common language that only a few of us knew pretty well. The effort was worth it and I heard some wild and tragic (thieves, mainly) stories about travelling.

New years eve was a blast. I met sophie and jared and we ended up going to many different places, listening to live music and chatting about travelling, Australia, etc. I really want to visit them some day, so if anyone ever wants to fund a trip down there, I have a free place for us to stay! They are truly wonderful people and I still hear from them about once a week as they have gone to Guatemala and belice and are soon headed to costa rica. The first day they tried to convince to drop my plans and spend the next two months travelling with them (partly because I spoke Spanish and could help them and partly because we were having such a good time), but I fought the temptation (clearly, I am writing this description after all).

This leads up to the marcos sighting. We hung out all day waiting for marcos to show up, you know, waiting for the revolution, and just talking and drinking coffee and wandering through the markets. Well, the first two hours we sat in the central square and waited because we wanted good seats. Around 7pm we heard that he would be late, you think?, because he and his friends were walking. So we grabbed a bite to eat and walked around some more.

Essentially, when he showed up around 9pm, there were about 15000 people in black ski masks marching in with him. As you might imagine, this took more than 30 minutes because of the sheer number of people. Then, they all had to be fed (there were food stands set up giving out plates of black beans and tortillas) before marcos finally spoke.

The speech? The usa is horrible and we are making things worse for the native people of Chiapas because of our economic position of power and influence. The Zapatistas, in a very simplified explanation, want sovereignty (similar to what most native American groups in the usa want); the ability to choose their own governing body, the land that the govt took from them returned; the immediate end of any and all timber operations destroying part of the forests in Chiapas, equal rights for women, homosexuals, etc. they want a lot. Marcos is still touring mexico (this time he has a free passage because he has agreed to leave the rifles behind) and speaking all over the country against all of the candidates in this year´s presidential elections. Kind of funny because his posters say: pri, pan, prd (these are the 3 main parties of mexico) are all the same; come hear me for an alternative.

I wont get too much into his view points because my own views on him have changed slightly over the months. Some of their policies are not quite as accepting as they would like for everyone to think.

So this is the basic summary of my 16 days on the road. I returned to ixtepec at 430am the day I had to be back at work, january 3rd. I rolled in a little weary, but not too bad. I cannot wait for the next vacation in april when I am either going to go to Guatemala or d.f. excitement.