San Cristobal

Today I arrived in San Cristobal after a hellish 12 hour bus ride from Oaxaca. There is all this talk about the beauty of taking the night bus, and how you don´t lose a day, you just sleep on the ride and are ready to go when you get to a new city, etc. etc. Humph. I spent the night, beyond uncomfortable, tossing and turning and freezing. These buses are not made for people with long bodies or legs, and at one point I was literally almost upside down with me legs thrown over the back of the seat. If a time lapse camera had watched me, they could have made a short movie...Every time I would emerge from a delirium, I´d look around and everyone was sleeping like babies. Even with some insane bloody action movie with horrible Spanish voiceovers. I hated these bus rides in Thailand too, and have wondered if I am the only one who seems to find them so uncomfortable, or if anyone else thinks that 35 degrees is too cold for a bus...

The day has been a crazy blur, and not in the funnest way. I seriously think I was chilled to the bone, and was nursing a blister from 2 nights of dancing in Oaxaca (worth every moment of pain), while trying to get some business done, like finding a good place to stay for the week, finding a language school, etc. I was thinking today again about traveling alone, and the crazy ups and downs that come with it. When it is good, it is SOO good, and the sense of freedom, fun and accomplishment is amazing and incomparable. Yet the very next day, trying to cope with tasks that need to be done while feeling exhausted or lonely is just so hard. There´s noone else to turn to and say ¨could you take care of this?¨. It´s all you, and can be so hard when you just want someone else to share things with you--good or bad. I am learning a lot about myself, which is awesome, but it is definitely not the nonstop fun of traveling with a great group of people. Well, maybe not nonstop. But close.

So, San Cristobal. I´m really happy to be here, although it is not especially warm, being quite far up in the highlands. It´s a beautiful colonial town, in Chiapas, and has all the goods of all of the colonial towns: cobblestone streets, big beautiful churches, an interesting history. There are lots of great things to do out of town here, like visiting waterfalls and some traditional villages. There is also a boat ride through this very narrow canyon, with cliffs that rise 3000 feet straight up on each side. I´m excited to go explore some of these things, starting tomorrow.

Today I started my Spanish classes that I will be taking for a week. There are only 2 of us in the class, and I can already tell I am going to learn so much. I´ve been putting off taking classes, but now that I have started them I´m really happy. Just knowing some basics is really going to change a lot of things for me, especially just in my day to day goings on. Before I left Oaxaca I had to mail a package (to one of you lucky readers....how exciting!) and finding a box was like the hardest thing I have ever tried to accomplish. That was the first thing I asked our teacher today: ¨Where can I buy a box to mail this package?¨ Soon I will sound only like a moderate fool rather than a complete idiot...

Tomorrow one of my favorites, Louise, arrives in San Cristobal after a short time at the beach. She is coming to meet me at the hotel where I am staying, and my plan is then to convince her/lure her into traveling with me for a while. She is in Mexico for two more weeks, and I think we will be on the same basic path for the rest of the time here, so I hope to spend a chunk with her. She is fabulous...

Okay, off to enjoy the couple warm hours here...maybe some hula hooping. Damn I´m getting good.

Lots of love,

Kira