San Cristobal de Las Casas

Kendra and I arrived in San Cristobal and were immediately overtaken by it`s beauty.  I did my best, sucessfully to convince Kendra to study Spanish in the cute colonial town for a week so we`d have an excuse to stay.  While she studied I went and helped out Matt (a Californian staying at the same hostel) with his project.  The project was part of his masters thesis, but they ran out of funding and the project basically got abandoned.  Now he is working on it with some of the locals and the funding from his father and an NGO.  He is building a wash station for doing laundry for a community of squatters.  They got cut off from the water supply bythe government because they don{t own the land and obviously don´t pay taxes.  So they have been using the water from a little polluted, algae infested and bacteria infested stream to wash their laundry.  Consequently the women have been getting rashes on their legs and the family gets rashes from then wearing the clothes.  So the washing station he is building will use, filter, and reuse rain water.  He has also installed some rain water collecting barrels with basic filters for the community to use as drinking water and was surprised that when he tested the water (the only filter being used is a t-shirt  to eliminate large particles) was on par with drinking water in the USA and Canada.  Kendra and I have gone to the project a couple times, mostly to have a look around and fiddle around where possible.  Yesterday I went and was able to help Matt and another man hang the supports for the cannals that will collect and channel the rainwater.

The days here (at least when you sitin the sun) are quite warm, and since we are high up I have even managed to get a slight sunburn on my scalp, but the evenings are really cold.  Some nights I have to wear 5 layers and huddle up in a blanket beside the camp fire that we have every night.  To sleep, Kendra and I both use about 6 or 7 blankets each to keep us warm.  I don´t know how Kendra has managed to surivive without running shoes.  She still wears sandals with bare feet at night.

San Cristobal is filled with churches, squares, and markets.  The Mexicans and Mayans here are also big fans of firecrackers and fireworks, as well as parades and sirens.  Weget woken up byfireworks most nights and mornings, and during the day there are often car alarms and sirens going off announcing parades.  Tomorrow, Dec. 12th, is abig celebration having to do with The Virgin Guadalupe, which I don´t know much about, but apparently is pretty important in the religion around here.  We stumbled upon a big fair/carnival going on a couple nights ago which will most likely be on all week.  There were street vendors and food stalls leading up to it for blocks, a very fast and frightening looking ferris wheel as well as some other fair rides which we were a little too afraid to try out in Mexico, and christmas lights and christmas streamers covering the streets and stairs up to the church.  There were also stages and bands playing live music.  Natives dressed in very colourful mexican blankets and headresses with multicoloured streamers coming out of them were doing some dances with maracas inside a church in front of a pyramid shaped arrangement of candles.  Parents were carrying or dragging along little boys dressed almost like pirates with white curchiefs on their heads and moustaches drawn on and little girls with frilly colourful dresses and their hair all done in braids and ribbons.  There was also an interesting concoction of smells including pine needles, pizza, corn, sweets, frying churros, pickled vegatables, meats, chilli sauces, piss, alcohol, sweat....