Chiapas: San Cristobal de las casas

Let's try not have 1 month of delay between the blog and the real life!

So, we were in Puerto Escondido of the state of Oaxaca and we took the night bus to San Cristobal de las casas. We tasted a bit of the very stereotype of the French tourist: being a total c*nt. We've got to work double rate to compensate those guys!

So we arrived the morning to this small city and the contrast was stunning: most people wear traditional clothes. Just like time got stopped here.

Superb City

It's amazing how little these people seems impacted by the mass of tourist that goes there everyday. Anyhow, visiting this city was very nice, Mexicans were very helpful and nice to us. We also had the chance to be hosted by Jesus for one night and played a Basketball game where we showed them how we do things in France :)

To add a bit to this crazy day (yes, we arrived early, had time to visit and to beat the crap out of three Mexicans in one day!), we had a karaoke night with Swedish girls.

We are living in a very weird world, I tell you!

Puerto Escondido

After the calm of Oaxaca City, we headed to the beach of the states to taste a bit of the famous party over there. For once (in a long time), we settled in a back-packer “near” to the beach and we felt relieved not being hang on the decision of anybody to go now and then. This freedom didn’t last long though as, for our first night in Puerto Escondido, we decided to spend our money in a fancy restaurant. You know, after eating constantly in the street for some time, you start being confident about your body and you let your guard down. Well, this fancy restaurant revealed to be tough on us: we were stuck in the bed for 24 hours the day after. We would still enjoy our evening (thanks to Carla, Lyda and Tequilla!). Frankly, at first, we thought of a very bad hangover but then, as the situation didn’t evolve, we had to face the reality: we got food poisoning.

Then, the days were better and as all touristic cities near to the beach, we didn’t really get to Mexicans. We had some british, Australians, Danish and so on. Tourists were everywhere but we had the chance to spend on day in a remote aera where we’ve seen one of the best sunsets on the beach.

Damien, Lyda, Carla and François

I’m not gonna talk about our failed attempt to get on a boat to fish and watch some animals in the sea because it was “kinda dark out there, you know?” BUT I will certainly talk about the three girls who made our stay a bit special. Firstly, Carla (the Spanish marvelous wonder that make disappear beers faster that the time to say it) and Lyda (The Cypriote whose point of view on things in general make you wonder about your own). We had such a blast with them and I can’t wait to see them again. Finally, the last girl, from the staff of the hostel, always lying in her couch poking people on Facebook (you can picture her body here), shouting to pass messages at the other side of the complex, and, at times, really awful with the clients (us!).

With all the nice people we've met troughout this travel, it's sometime hard to realize can be rude but as the manager of the hostel ask us to leave a review on his backpacker, well, we did... Jajaja

Next stop, the marvelous city of San Cristobal de Las Casas

François

Let's get together and ROCK the world !!!!

That's it, I am starting this world tour with my cousin ! Youhou ! We have been talking about it for so long. It is finally happening !!
But, hey !!
Am I ready to leave my life, my job, my friends?
Am I ready to start moving from one place to another every now and then?
Am I ready to have NO routine at all.?
Am I ready to start a new life, to make new friend, to find new goals in life ?!
That's so big, I am kind of overwhelmed by the size of the challenge.

The good thing is that I am not alone, I am with my cousin.
Together we are going to ROCK the world.
To meet people from different cultures.
To make new friends.
To discover new lifestyles.
To discover ourselves... may be... hopefully…

Anyway, let’s talk about this trip. After meeting up in DF (Districto Federales - Mexico City) and enjoying a couple of days in the big city. We moved on to the state of Oaxaca. This state is one of the most rural state in the country with Chiapas (a province located between Oaxaca and Guatemala). It is twice as big as Switzerland, and it is also covered by mountains, but it doesn't have the Swiss Road network. It means that it is a challenge to cross this state.

After 7 hours of bus from DF we finally reached our destination, the main city of the Oaxaca State, Oaxaca. Easy right ! Our local host was waiting for us with his pink shirt at the main bus station. It made it easy for us to spot him…
What a nice attention of him to come pick us up at the station. That's one of the many nice thing Mexican people do for us (apart from being way TOO generous and thoughtful with us).

Our host name is David Cruz. His family welcomed us for a couple of days in the old city of Oaxaca.
This poor family resumes part of Mexico history in itself. Señor Cruz (David’s father) moved several times to the US as an illegal immigrant to make money for his family. He did it for the last time from 2005 to 2007 (2 years and 3 months in total to be accurate). For Mexican people, immigrating to the US is a good way to make money and to improve their family’s lifestyle. The southern states of Mexico are extremely poor, there are few job opportunities and even less opportunities for poor families to climb the social ladder.

Cruz Family

So, for Señor Cruz, moving to the US seemed to be the solution. It meant making money, quickly; making sure that his family back home would have a decent life; and saving enough for his children’s tuition fees. But it quickly turned out that for him money was not enough. He was missing his family. Desperately missing it…
At this point he started drinking more than he should have. And he quickly became an alcoholic. It took him several months to get out of this hell and to come back close to his family.
He now lives a happy life with his 3 children and his wife. He doesn’t drink anymore and spend a lot of time reading the bible. He came back to his religious roots and is convinced that they helped him to get out of Alcoholism.
This story is the proof that money is not everything in life… A good lesson right!

Mexico City District Federal

Hoooo dear Guadalajara! I had to leave you and some part of me will stay there forever I think. But I had to move on, and despite the sadness of leaving those people that made my stay in this wonderful city so unforgettable, I was also happy to move on and to finally start our travel, our adventure!

Here was the capital, with his 21+ Millions people, his dirty air and crazy nights. I walked (A LOT) almost every day but I won’t make a touristic guide here (you can find that online easily, I trust you). But some words on my impressions… People are incredibly slow. It looks like they walk with some kind of disease and don’t mind so much having someone walking behind them (which is kind of funny sometime if you can understand what they are talking about). The second thing I can say apart praising Templo Mayo and La casa azul, is, as always, people will try to get as much money as they can from you. For instance, they won’t mind letting open a museum at the same price with most of the painting not available (did I say most of them? Well, ALL of them bar one…).

Then I had some time with my cousin who just arrived before going straight to Oaxaca (The city as well as the name of the district, which is simply a dazzling choice).
Before letting you go, you can still get some of my pictures of the city/museum on the flick’r account, but right now, some bizarre things I’ve spotted in the capital:


The first one really made my day: a flying Jesus! He somehow managed to exchange his place with some priest. Can you do that David Coperfield!

Flying Jesus!

 Then, maybe my lack of religious knowledge is not helping here, but what the **** is on the head of Jesus? Really, it's disturbing...

Jesus super star

 Finally, the cleverest doc' in town: As you can see this doctor raised the pourcentage of people coming back because of a torticolis by 80%!!!
I tell you, TV is bad.

Clever Doc'

That's all for Mexico City. I just upload many pictures on the Flick'r account. i'm now with my cousin and the travel can finally start: next stop Oaxaca!

François

Mexican sense of humor?

As you walk in Guadalajara, you might get by some weird signs. I once was in a mall to see this sign. It didn't seem to bother anyone but it make me laugh. Now I'm wondering if the Hungarian people are proud of their pizza and pasta!

Yammy Hungarian pizza!

Another sign made me laugh, imagining I would say to the people inside: "Can I come?".

What kind of store can it be?

You can also check that for one more dirty joke.

Some days in Puerto Vallarta

Thanks to Yvonne, I had a free ride to Puerto Vallarta for 3 days. The car was full with her mother, cousin and nephew, so you can imagine I didn't had the time to be bored.
The closer we were from the coast, the hotter it was and, after going through some little mountains, we could finally see the ocean. Personally, it was the first time I saw the Pacific ocean, and frankly it didn't move me that much (hoooooo): BUT other did move me during this trip (yeeeaaah).


As few of you know it, Mexico is hosting the 2011 edition of "La Panamerique" (haaaaaa, hum, what's that?). Well that's the Olympic games of America, and you can pretty much see how a big deal it is in Mexico as ALL the city are under construction. Well, maybe not all, but most of the ones I've visited. Puerto Vallarta is no exception and if you can see a nice beach on the pic below, it was heavily photoshopped.

no, just kidding, I just turned right and pushed 2 or 3 workers out of the way.

The day I arrived, the temperature was well over 30°C, but the killing part was the humidity: more than 65%. With this oven-like condition, you can try to access to one of the many (like really a lot) of Oxxo. It's a chain of supermarkets where it's always air conditioned. Therefore you can go in there, look at ALL the product a very long time (the time needed to get a bit dry), then buy a bottle of water with a face saying "hooo, I could have buy so many stuff, but you don´t have the brands I want... Too bad".
If you don't, you might look like that:

The hair below looks like they have been on the pool 2 min ago, but it's super dry on top!

A quick tour of the city taught me how annoying could be touristic cities; do I really look like Canadian? American? Well, I guess it doesn't matter much for them as you speak English and you like you have tons of money.


Apart from that, it's a very nice do surf and eat sea food rolled up in a taco or on a tostada. Pay attention to the tostada though, it's like a huge chips. and like them, they break easily and never in the shape you want them to do. It's kind of complicated to keep your cool eating those as you can be sure, at  one point, your laps will receive food. From you or your neighbour.

Some sun and some rocks

Filthy Tostadas (but so delicious)

Finally, some quick word on my return: I finally got an haircut!

Luis: "ho ho" me: "What? What? What did you do? What did you dooooo??"

Also, not being able to edit my pics is somehow helping me to make better pictures. Well, not for the moment, but I can see where I screwed up, and I'm NOW thinking I should do something about it... We will see how it goes...

La Lucha Libre

(Please, be aware that some part of this post could hurt your sensitivity -Outch, my sensitivity!)
I finally went to the very famous Lucha Libre. Most of the Mexicans I know here never went to one and I was kind of surprise of that. But then I remember I never went to see a football match of my city (Angers) neither (gasp).
Thanks to Couchsurfing (again), an event was organized and from a bars called "Red Pub", we were supposed to be magically transport over there. There is many bars that looks English around here but this one have something particular: you can be drinking in one of the legendary red bus of London. As you are thinking "it's amazing, it's even better than drinking the blood of a goat",wait for it: you can also be transported to la Lucha AND drink (which is, you have to admit, pretty awsome, WAY better than the blood of goat, even if you are thirsty). A burger and some beers later, the bus was full and eveybody was singing some improper songs. Our group was composed of many different nationalities (the nice thing about couchsurfing, really) from the beer drinker of spain (and it's a "she"), to the timid German who looks like Shaggy (but where is scoobydoo?!) without mentioning the argentian who could have as well steal the main role in Black Swan.

Wazaaaaa

This (very) happy group was then in the (doom doom doom doom) ARENA COLISEO! What an epic name no? The Arena itself wasn't so big (30 square meters more or less) and the stadium was filling in little by little with happy people ready to shout insanities.


Basically, La Lucha Libre, is the American catch you can see on tv sometimes (or if you are really bored, I guess you can check those links out: here or there). In la lucha, the fighters have more fat and they hid themselve with a mask, but otherwise, it's pretty much the same.
I understood during the "fight" how particular was this show as you could combine the primal essence that animate football fan to get pationated about sport, and screaming over someone with the drama of the never ending tv show "The Fire Of Love". You have bad guys who are really bad (here, it was a japanese), and you have good guys who are really good. I wasn't understanding all of the fluffy chat during the battle
(ho, yeah I didn't tell you? Fighters can request the micro cos' inside of them they only wanted to be an opera singer, really) but I'm pretty sure the talks were something like this:


-Guay (man, in spanish in the text), why did you steal my cat the other day?
-I didn't steal it, guay! *nodding to the crowd he actually did, like in some retarded puppet show*
-ho guay! You put it on fire, how could you do that to Poquito?! *the crowd is now booing*

-Ho yeah I did it and I took extreme pleasure in doing some bad action not because I'm sick in my head, but because, you know, I'm the bad guy. Shitty job, really, I wanted to date this hot chick the other day, but you was blonde, you know. She can't date bad guys, SHE WAS BLONDE!

 

This goes on until it's pretty clear the good guys has NOW all the good reason to kick his ass (before he was only playing with him because he doesn't really care about being champion of La Lucha).

Followed by some pretty dirty tricks from the bad guy (it's normal, he is the bad guy, he can sneak-attack people, break the rules and so on), to which the crowd was outraged by. Then the good guy start doing dirty trick (but that's ok, you know, remember Poquito! And it's against a bad guy so it's fine and the crowd is happy).



Who wants a hug?



Sometimes you also have a bit of Saint Seya with the good guy almost "dead" and the bad guy being to full of himself, would do a mistake and the good guy, coming from the grave, would win the game: tindin!

Victory!

Maybe the best part was in the public which sometimes stole the show. The bleachers are well separated from the down part, the most expensive, from the up part, the cheapest. And when I say well separated, I thinking fences. I suppose the atmosphere really can be explosive but this night was all fun and nice. Let's see some examples of what people were shouting at each other (with rhymes please)

Rich against Poor
    se les va el camion
    pobres, pobres chinguen a su madre (poor, poor, go f*ck your mother)
   
Poor against Rich
    Su puta madre (your mother the whore)
    Putos los de abajo (Assholes of downstairs)
   
For everybody to enjoy as the crowd just turn against themself for time to time:
    Guera coqueta enseñanos las tetas (Hey blondie, show us your tits!)
    Guero guerito a ti te gusta el pito (Blondie, you like cock)
    El que no brinque es puto

pobres, pobres chinguen a su madre!

The night out was all fun except for some minor problems like the beer at 50 pesos the half-liter (yes, it is expensive for Mexican standards) and some guy in the street with a broom.
Everybody should travel with there favorite weapon AT ALL TIME without being judge don't your think?

BBQ

Sometimes, you need to get opportunities when they come up. Saturday was a day like that. I’ve got an invitation from someone I don’t know (haaaaaa couchsurfing again!) to a BBQ at someone else’s house. I had to get ready in less than one hour with something to drink and something to eat. I’m not really saying I’m doing surhuman things here, but the easiest solution would have been to keep sleeping and to cure my hangover. But two things I’ve learn from this month (already!) in Mexico are: Mexicans are super welcoming and as much as they are welcoming, they are not so much reliable. It’s a cultural thing, really. Someone could organize something some days in advance, but then you got no news at all and your crazy Saturday night turns into a loosy ones, eating ice cream in pajama and watching Dirty Dancing (no, I don’t feel gayer saying that, or just a little).

Lesson number one: try to plan as much events as possible on week-ends, cos’ half of it will be cancelled and a quarter will simply disappear into someone else delirium tremens.



So, Teresa (as picture below) picked me up (how nice of her as she leaves at a walking distance of the place!), and I had my first barbecue of the year! Obviously, there were lots of meat, cheese tortillas, alcohol and guacamole. From what I saw, nobody bring any meat, it’s the host duty. It’s relatively cheap (5 Euros per kilo) but from an European perspective, it was unexpected. Be warned, Mexican people, if you dare going to a BBQ without expensive pieces of bleeding animals!

 

No one was hurt during this special effect montage

I had the chance to talk with truly interesting people at this party. The first funny one was Japanese whose game was to cite as much artistic materials as possible. It started with music, where he flooded me of unknown bands (for me, but that doesn’t count because I don’t know much anyway). As I wasn’t very responsive to his “attack”, he switched to painting (bad luck on this one too, I count barely recognize the neo-cubism from the future drawings of my nephew). But then, he changed to movies, where I could show how big was my … knowledge. My mistake, I couldn’t stop him from reciting the list of the best movie of all time. One hour later of this non-sense, we changed for tv-shows and as he spoiled me the end of “How I Met your Mother”; only then I could pretend the urge for an alcoholic beverage and fly away.

There is two different way socially acceptable for going away from this sort of situation. First one: keep going on in the process to be wasted, and second, going to the bathroom which will help the first point. Apart from that, you will be seen as a rude and senseless person (fortunately, I’m French, so I’m already seen as someone like this, which give me room for pretty much everything).

The next guy was the host and the only person I picked up the number from. He explained me briefly what was his philosophy: the Taoism. In few words: Balance, energy and acupuncture. I guess I’ll be soon on a table with tons on needles on my back. Once again, there is two things that pop up in my head from this kind of discussion with people like that: They all had a very down moment in there lives that pushed them toward radical changes and they all claim still working of those new lives. I don’t know if those claims are truly sincere (for me it’s always difficult to truly realize how far you are from a result, inside of me, I have this voice telling me you are not doing THAT bad), but it open the discussion to new perspective and the openness of those persons is indubitable.



Yes, it was falling buckets of water from the sky again

Finally, last but not least, this German looking Mexican with his serious attitude; as always, for guys, it’s easier to talk deep topic with unknown people. Girls may not get that, but the perspective to not see someone again opens a lot of doors for us. The pressure of fucking up the conversation drop down into “I don’t care” land and we can finally speak freely. All topics are available: religion, racism, politics, family, etc. Therefore, we talked genetics. He could be a very interesting guinea pig, I tell you, with the topic being: “Are our personalities made by our environments or by our genes (or both)”. I would say the tendencies, those days, is to believe in a very open world where everybody are build by the environments with a small intervention of the genes (if none for some people). It is very not politically correct to points out characteristic made by genes such as the ability in sport, intelligence or the violent behavior. I’m not going to state anything here, as I’m really incompetent on this field. I will solely report his story.

Quickly after a subtle starter of conversation (cheeeers mate!), I directly attack him on his look:

- Man, you look nothing like a Mexican.

- Well, I lived in Mexico all of my life.

- And both your parents are Mexicans?

- Yes.

-Are you sure there is not a German “factor”?

In fact, he was 50% Spanish, 25% Mexican and 25% German. But those last percentages took some weird proportion in his life. Not only he inherited from a serious and deep thinking look, but his whole behavior would differ radically from “basic” Latinos. One of the first things that struck me in Mexico was the way people can stare at you. They look straight at you, at your soul, from the first moment. They also tend to get close to you, touching and interacting. I would say that’s a very Latin way of talking, but he was different. As we talked, as he was explaining me how different he was from the other of his country, he wasn’t looking at me (or rarely). His body language wasn’t close but it wasn’t open either. He really reminded me of my German and Dutch friends I met through my European experience. Not only that, he is a very punctual person, doing working maters “by the book” and being annoyed by his coworker not doing exactly this.

In comparison, his cousin was here, all smiling, opened up to anyone: very Mexicanish. The differences were huge!

The night finished really nicely (by the great victory of Mexico over USA in the golden cup: 4-2 after being at 0-2), and I really hope to see all of them very quickly to see a match of lucha libre!

I can see there isn´t much comments here… Hum, what could I do to interact with you guys? I have 2 or 3 topics in mind for a future post, but I’m not so sure about the priority. What do you think: The cars, the food, Taoism or Lucha Libre.

I will certainly end up doing all of them, but you can force me to work on one, more than others. Give me hints of what you’d like!

Taboo

As I was about to write those lines, part of me was all “FTW! You’re not gonna tell something like this!

NO WAY

! What about your fine reputation? What about the people who think you are some kinf of superhero? What about me?” but my other part was all like “but it’s funny… Come on…”.

I won’t continue this strange dialogue as you already know how it ends up. The victory of funny-me over shame-me was partly due to great amount of alcohol and by the fact I may be eaten alive by a catcher of “lucha libre”, and then, it won’t matter, would it? (“Lucha Libre” is a sort of American catch, but here, everybody is masked. So, imagine DareDevil and Spiderman fighting in a ring. I’m hoping going to see that soon).

But I digress. Let’s back to the shameful topic.

Last week was pretty tough for me (well for my stomach I would say) and as I was religiously taking my pills against a classic tourista, I had some… side effects. But I didn’t turn green, that would have been just too awesome. No, I had something you can’t really come up with in a conversation with strangers. The thing is, I’m surrounded by them!

-“Greetings, dear foreigner from Europe –To be said with the English aristocratic accent, otherwise it ain’t funny –. What can I do you for? –They aren’t so good in English, you know-

-“Well I’m having a huge hemorrhoid crisis up my ass, would you be kind enough to check it out to see if it’s not only the ISS stuck inside?”

So, from this point, it wasn’t so funny (for me at least). Now imagine I could barely walk, or sit and every “alone time”, I was almost crying. Here comes the funny, no?

Anyway, my roommate is a doctor, but even with the medications he prescribed to me, it was getting worst and worst: I had to go to the hospital…

At this point, it was hurting enough that I was imagining breaking some kind of record. My future doctor would call up all the noobs to show my ass off and I would end up on a table, surrounded by Mexicans laughing diabolically at the damage of their chili foods.

Let’s put of the chronometer here:

T0: I entered in the Hospital.

T0+1min: I had a little ticket to wait.

T0+10 min: my pants were down.

Maybe I was lucky… But I prefer to believe that seeing the white ass of an European is some kind of a reward for the best employee of the month: that explain why it was so fast, you see.

When I first seen my doc’, I almost laughed.

Remember the guy of “Machete”? It was his brother.

No kidding, straight from a western movie where he is obviously the bad Mexican guy. You know the one who won’t die with 59 bullets in his body, but you have to wait the very end, when he is hit by a train at full speed armed with razor blades and then disappeared in some kind of lava. But even then, you never know…

That one.

He basically gave me the same stuff than my roommate, just stronger (I’m relieved I didn’t go through all that for nothing, you see…).

It wasn’t so grievous at the end and I can tick “doing a full moon at a stranger” from my to do list. J

Tropical

The weather has been hot and humid most of my time, here, in Mexico. Last Saturday, it seemed a reasonably nice idea to go take some pictures of the Gay Pride. After all, Guadalajara is the capital gay of the country, right?
You would expect people to be super open to these sorts of things here, but not so much. Or at least, not as much as I thought, because when I was saying ('still' in my pretty bad Spanish) that I was about to go to see the "Marcha Gay", people would narrow their eyes looking for some sign of homosexuality in me.
They all remained super nice to me, but there were this "is he?" kind of look sometimes.
Anyway, I went to this celebration and after a nice meal (Thanks Fer!), we were on our way.
There were A LOT of people, and we waited, waited... waited...
I think it was like 1 hour and half, but nothing could be seen (yet). For the happiness of all, the sky gave us some drops at times; it was so hot everybody enjoyed it. Even the slight rain which followed.
As you know, each human being is made of sugar and when it rained for real, some had to go over the shelter (and missing waiting for another hour for nothing? Fool!). Eventually, the wind started to blow, then more water, more wind and... wait, is that possible to have even MORE water?

All of a sudden, the 3 little drops of the beginning change into a storm and without knowing it, we were all under the shelter wandering if it could really be that bad.

Therefore, we thought the gay pride would not happen... But it did, a bit. Surely they had to cancel some things, but it went well. The ones present looked even more happy with the rain and the party could kick in :)