San Cristobal

After Oaxaca, it was time to head to San Cristobal. This required a thirteen-hour bus ride to which nobody was really looking forward. The trip was made easier by the fact that we were taking a fancified bus with nearly totally reclining seats for our sleeping pleasure and that was supposed to make all of the difference. As a little insurance, I packed along a little happy juice (vodka and pineapple juice) for the trip.

On the bus, we were able to watch movies, television shows, etc. I watched Despicable Me for the third time, and for the second time in Spanish. It’s a good film. Anyway, it was closing in on midnight and I still wasn’t sleepy. The girl sitting next to me and I decided to have a little happy juice. The only problem was that I couldn’t find my happy juice can. My friend got on her hands and knees looking under our seats for the happy juice. (She’s my new hero.) Ultimately, I found it a few rows up in the aisle. I grabbed the can and we shared some happy juice, though not much. It was enough for her as she went right to sleep. I, on the other hand, kept trying until around 2 am, when I finally surrendered to the Tylenol PM. That finally put me out, though only for about four hours. We swung into San Cristobal early in the morning and I was pretty tired.

We stopped for breakfast and then went to a nearby tourist office for options of things to do. The only thing that sounded interesting to me was a trip to Sumidero Canyon, taking place later in the afternoon. I went back to the hotel and got a little sleep before heading back.

The ride to Sumidero Canyon took about 45-minutes, if I remember correctly, and we all hopped on a small boat to get on the river going through the canyon. I don’t remember the name of the river, and the entire tour was in Spanish, so I was only picking up bits and pieces, but it went right through the heart of the ancient Mayan culture and Spanish conquest.

The highlight of the Sumidero Canyon is the scenery, I suppose. Lots of cliffs. We saw some alligators and some monkeys. We saw Catholic shrines. We saw jungle. Yeah, lots of cliffs and jungle. I think that pretty much sums up what we saw.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the trip through the Sumidero Canyon. I just don’t have the words in me at the moment to describe it very well. Fortunately, pictures are worth a thousand words and all of the photos in this entry are from the Sumidero Canyon.

After the canyon, I hung out at the hotel for a little while and then we headed over to a San Cristobal wine bar. I was excited because the bar had an Argentine malbec wine and those are my favorites. In addition to wine, we received free tapas with every bottle of wine that we bought. We went through a lot of tapas and a lot of wine. Afterwards, we went to a club for some dancing and additional drinking. That is where the bad time started. I’ll talk about the bad time in the next entry.