Furthering Our Education and Spanish 101

February 11, 2010 to March 16, 2010

The Photos

During our stay at Casa Caracol, we met Anne, a young lady travelling through Mexico by bike and she recommended the Spanish school Tierras Mayas, located in beautiful San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.  With no other destination in the plans and wanting to start learning sooner rather than later, we bussed to Mexico City and caught the first bus for San Cristóbal.  Although we didn’t actually explore D.F. (de efe), we found it noteworthy that it took over THREE hours to get out of town.  And while a portion of that time involved crossing from one bus terminal to the other, ALL travel time increases because the city is SO congested!  After a days journey we arrive in San Cristóbal.

So once again we set down our packs and stayed in one place for a length of time.  And, as with our last month long stay (and apparent refusal to blog until it’s over) there is just too much that could be written about the day to day routine, therefore I’m just gonna cover the highlights! 

the City ~ San Cristóbal lies in a valley surrounded by mountains.  Which may or may not create the beautiful weather I consider perfect for camping (upper 70’s/lower 80’s during the day and lower 60’s/upper 50’s at night.)  All was not nirvana here, however.  There were (unfortunately) three rather noisy distractions to be noted, 6+ churches with indiscriminate bell ringing whenever the bell ringer seemed to deem it necessary, random explosions of fire works at all hours of the day and night, and the incessant barking of ‘stray’ dogs long into the wee hours, making it sometimes hard to get up in the morning in time for...

Spanish School ~ Obviously, it’s what we came for and while we did not walk away fluent in the language, we are definitely better equipped to attempt those long conversations we love so much.  The school was a little more than halfway up a hill in the center of the city (the main church was at the top!)  Once we signed up for our classes, we were offered one of the two apartments they rent out.  It was a perfect little ‘Penthouse’ apartment with a 270 degree view of the city.  As an added benefit, we also had (almost) exclusive use of the wonderful terrace looking out over the city, which we utilised for entertainment of our...

Neighbors & Teacher ~ Shortly after we moved in we discovered that we had a neighbor, sort of.  An Australian guy named Jonathan lived there while attending school, but after finishing school, he arranged to leave the majority of his possessions and wander the surrounding areas.  At the point we figured out we had a neighbor, he was in the last few days of his stay.  We did get to have dinner with him on his last night and he gave us many wonderful suggestions of places to visit.

Almost immediately Kim and Will, from England, replaced Jonathan.  Will and Kim met in Miami while travelling solo.  They decided they got on well enough to continue travelling together South to Mexico and further.  The twenty somethings were gracious enough to let us old fogies hang out with them and Will even began to spin poi.  We enjoyed many dinners together and one really awesome night of fire spinning, where we eventually coaxed the reticent Kim to give fire spinning a twirl.  Before they left, they bought a scarf and some rice so they could make their own set of practice poi.

Ailyn and Tomi, from Germany, soon replaced Kim and Will as our neighbors.  Initially they planned to travel for a while, but shortly after arriving, Ailyn received word that her master hat making test, recently postponed, was back on.  This drastically changed their trip, but I know they will travel again soon.  Tomi and Ailyn, both great cooks, knew of numerous phenomenal restaurants and we shared several meals with them, out on the town and at home.  Gregory even got to visit one of the local market areas with them while I persisted in Spanish class.  I believe they planned to leave almost the same time as us, however our paths separated as we went in different directions.

Although he was not a neighbor, we created at least one opportunity for paint night (well day) with my conversation teacher Daniel.  During class we talked about so many things that inevitably we ended up talking about body paint.  Daniel said that the one opportunity to paint had never manifested so I easily set up a Sunday afternoon to give him another chance.  While he played with a new medium and the visualisation of artistic ideas we picked his brain about everything from his ecotourism company to the history of Maseca use in tortillas, (which started out as a program to feed the indigent of Mexico but rapidly changing into a private monopoly) we neglected, however, to ask him about the strangeness we witnessed in...

Chamula ~ As the closest indigenous village, we would have been remiss in our tourist duties to miss visiting Chamula.  Despite being told that the indigenous beliefs strangely mix with the Catholic ideas, nothing prepared us for the absolutely amazing customs we witnessed.  To begin with, you procure a twenty peso ticket (about 2 bucks) just to enter the church.  Once inside, you must let your eyes adjust to the dimness of smokey candles.  Then it gets weird.  A completely empty center space approximately half a football field in length with the floor covered in pine needles.  Except for the places cleared and set up with vast candle arrays.  We watched a pulsadore go through the whole ritual of candle lighting, object blessing via waving eggs and a baggy of water over the lit candles and then waving the eggs and sprinkling the water over and around the people paying for his services.  The particular pulsadore we watched acted in a way that seemed very unprofessional to us as in the middle of one ceremony he not only answered his cell phone but remained talking on it for several minutes before resuming his candle lighting.  Nothing can impress upon you the bizarre mixture of ancient culture and new religion we observed in Chamula, especially when you realise one group has a dead chicken.

Just outside the church exists an open air market selling everything from food to handicrafts to masses of junk made in China, with very little of it being stuff we couldn’t find just wandering in San Cristóbal on the...

Pedestrian Avenues ~ Just about the most pedestrian friendly place with multiple walking streets.  And although we enjoyed the many pedestrian avenues with shops and restaurants aplenty, the constant stream of tourism creates the unique environment (at this point in our journey anyway!) of selling native crafts, trinkets, shoe shines and of course, candy or cigarettes to those tourists.  No meal or outing was complete without at least one indigenous person approaching with their wares and if one approached you, three more were standing at the ready should you even look interested.  The pushiest vendors sold cloth.  So pushy in fact they would block your path and hold the cloth right in your face.  In our infinite silliness, we decided that they were actually trying to convince you to pay them to remove it.  Walking everywhere (as one does when one’s car remains in Dallas) we created at least two games to keep us entertained...

Beso Bug ~ Beetles represent a large portion of the car population in San Cristóbal but knowing that Slug Bug or Punch Buggy would eventually lead to a real fight, we modified the rules a little bit.  Whoever sees a bug has to call out the color is Spanish and then claim a beso (kiss) from the ‘loser’.  If you call out the wrong color, the other person corrects and claims two besos for the win.  Not a difficult game by far, but Gregory found it slightly amusing that when I was distracted, he would be the clear winner, until I was focussed again and then it was much more difficult to find one before I did.

Switchback Kisses ~ Since we lived slightly less than halfway up a hill, it is fairly needless to say that there were many stairs to be climbed each time we came home... many stairs.  Fortunately the stairs were laid out with 2 different types of steps and multiple landings to avoid complete exhaustion.  Unfortunately, it was still a long draining walk to get home.  Being able to motivate each other all the way up eventually turned into a game of sorts.  We would separate at the bottom but at each landing the first one to arrive would claim a kiss when the second arrived.  This had the double benefit of giving the faster one a moment to rest while giving the slower one something to look forward to.  During one of my ascensions, I counted the steps from the bottom all the way to our third floor apartment... almost 300 footsteps all while trying not to be violently...

SICK ~ Monteczuma is a pure rat bastard as he afflicted us multiple times in our short stay.  We were both extremely sick twice, I was pretty bad off at least one additional time and we never really achieved 100 percent health after the first time we got sick.  Fortunately, there exists a great OTC antibiotic that really only works on the bad bugs and doesn’t completely destroy every good bacteria in your system.  We also drank a significant quantity of electrolytes and soups.  With the sickness and continual queasiness of belly, we were quite ready to move on once school finished.  However, Monteczuma had one more strike in store for me and we pushed back our leaving until I felt well enough to travel.  Once I did we began the strange journey that landed us directly on the Gringo Trail...