Sustainable tourism in San Cristobal

Posted on September 13, 2012 by somewhatinterested

Beyond looking at hippies there are lots of great things to do in San Cristobal de las Casas – most tours take you out of the city to visit indigenous villages, and natural wonders. We did a tour with a sustainable tourism company called Tienda Experiencias. Their website is currently only in Spanish, but they have two staff members that speak excellent English, and they are currently creating an English version.

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They have over 60 experiences currently, varying from mountain bike riding, to bird watching to canyoning to visiting indigenous villages. We went on a tour to the nearby village of Zinacantán, where we visited the home of Maria, one of the few remaining traditional weavers.

She continues to weave using mostly natural fibres (cotton, wool and a special type of plant I can’t remember the name of), using the same techniques her ancestors have for hundreds of years. She showed us how she made all of the various creations she produces (which includes traditional outfits, table cloths, wall hangings, blankets), then we both had a go at doing it.

She learnt her craft from her parents and she has taught her two daughters and their children as well. Her goal is to keep passing down these skills to future generations.

First she showed us how to create balls of wall from the raw material (very hard) and then how to weave. NIkki was pretty good at that one (see the photos below). Most of the items take a couple of weeks to create – some several months! It was fantastic to learn about this as there are so many women and children selling these wares in the street, and you have no idea who has made them or whether they are genuine (for the record Maria said a lot of the weaved products sold in town are from Guatemala, and some are second hand from deceased people!).

During all of this we were accompanied by Maya, our lovely tour guide. She translated the many questions we had for Maria (who spoke Spanish).

After the weaving, we sat down for a traditional meal of tortillas (all hand made), beans, pumpkin seeds and salsa – all cooked over an open fire.

It was a fantastic experience – gaining an insight into the daily live of an indigenous family, who is able to continue to sustain this lifestyle thanks to the income she is earning from these tours (80% of the tour fee goes to her and her family). We’d highly recommend the company if you’re in San Cristobal. They also organise experiences throughout Chiapas – particularly in the national park zone south east of San Cristobal.

Cost: 350 pesos each
Time: Around 4 hours

Where there’s a hippy there’s a fire twirler

Posted on September 12, 2012 by somewhatinterested

Hippies annoy me. Well urban hippies do. They seem to make it their mission to find all the lovely and chilled places of the world, and take them over – setting up organic cafes and running dance parties and dialogues*/conferences.

San Cristobal de las Casas is one of those places. It’s a lovely town high in the mountains of Central Mexico – almost 2,000m above sea level, surrounded by jungle. It’s very different from everywhere we’ve been in Mexico – well the central part of town is. Very sanitised – lots of tourists – lots of organic cafes, and lots of vegetarian food (which is one thing I do love about hippies as Mexico is not very vego friendly!). In the centre of town it seems every second person is either a hippy (most though seem to be Mexican or from another Spanish speaking country), or a tourist. Which is weird, because we’ve hardly seen any tourists anywhere else.

The hippies are of the urban variety – dreads, hairnets, baggy pants, sandals – they don’t seem to venture outside of the main streets, where all of their needs can be met: tofu, organic coffee, world music and most importantly other hippies. Mexico in general is not well set up to cater to any of these needs, so we do have to thank the hippies for bringing some variety to San Cristobal.

Topping it all off is the resident fire twirler. We saw him on two nights – he was handing out promotional flyers for some cafe – with his fire-twirler at the ready. Why do hippies have the market cornered when it comes to fire-twirling? Is it the thing you take up when you want to join the hippy gang, but have no other skills? (I think fire twirling is the new juggling – N.) Maybe mastering the twirler is easier then learning all of the rhetoric required to engage in a nightly conversation (ie. dialogue*) about the flaws of our capitalistic society. Oh, and when we say capitalistic society, we are excluding the above-mentioned organic cafes, bars and any sales of incense or salt lamps.

Besides being very pretty and relaxed, San Cristobal also has another feature that makes it a hotspot for hippies – it was a staging point for the Zapatista rebellion of 1994. Rebels only took over the town for a few days, but it was long enough to ensure it remains a popular leftie destination. It certainly has more revolutionary cred than Byron Bay.

So while it was very nice, it really didn’t feel like Mexico – more like a generic travel spot. In the same way that great hostels can feel the same no matter where you are around the world.

But it’s definitely worth visiting – and I appreciated being in a town where vegetarians are “embarrassingly spolit for choice” (Lonely Planet). For the record, I wasn’t embarrassed.

(* Dialogues tend to be pointless small conferences where like-minded people sit around agreeing about the state of the world – while using appropriate words such as “patriarchal”, “grass-roots” and ironically “dialogue”).

This is not a photo of a hippy. It is just a street in San Cristobal (The car however did belong to a hippy he got out of it literally seconds before I took this picture – I loved the colour! – N.)

Some old stuff

Posted on September 10, 2012 by somewhatinterested

There are heaps of amazing historical buildings and temples in Mexico. This post will give you absolutely no information about any of them. But I’ve included some nice photos.