Wow, amber with insects in it!
Lagos de Montebello
Tenam Puente
Chinkultic
We´ve been away for a couple of days, going south to the town of Comitan, about 2 hours by bus towards Guatamala (we heard there was a huge earthquake there, but didn´t feel a thing). You go to Comitan to see some pretty lakes, called the Lagos de Montebello, and some great Mayan ruins, Tenam Puente and Chinkultic. The ride down was quite nice, through lovely forests and past some indigenous pueblos. We found a fairly good hotel through our guidebook (Lonely Planet Mexico) and then walked down to the square. It´s one of the nicer squares we´ve seen on this trip and one side is lined with restaurants. We went to a place called Henry´s Enrique, who knows what the name means. But they make a very good Sopa Azteca, which is a rich tomato broth, with tortillas, avocado, cheese and chicken. Amy had a wonderful pozole. With this, we were fortified enough to go out and do some ruin climbing, so we found a cab and had him take us to Tenam Puente, about 15 kilometers out of town. We dealt with the cab driver so we had only a half hour at the ruins, but that was pretty good since it is fairly small. There are several pyramids and a very big ball court.
When we got back to the cab it started to rain, then it started to POUR. It rained very hard all the way back to town, but by the time we got to the zocalo (square), it had calmed down. On the zocaloc, there is a place that serves organic coffee and is apparenly run by some indigenous coffee growers.
For dinner, it was back to Henry Enrique´s and I chose very poorly. Here´s some advice...never have pizza from a Mexican restaurant. If you want pizza, go to a real pizzaria, as they are much better. The Mexican pizza I had was on a very hard and inedible dough and was covered with some different kinds of meats and cheese. Amy had a hamburger, which was suprisingly good. But I must say, compared to other places in Mexico, especially Oaxaca, the food here in Chiapas is not great, except for the place run by expats.
As we were sitting eating dinner, many taxis drove up to the curb in front of us. Many, many people got out, mostly young teenagers. Out of one Volkswagon bug taxi, SIX people climbed out, not including the driver. I was quite impressed. All of these people went into this courtyard, apparently going to some concert or show or something, but when we looked into the courtyard, we could see nothing at all. I finally figured out it was a portal to another universe...that is the only explanation.
Walking around town after dinner I noticed something else that was strange...every other shop was a shoe store. I´ve never seen so many shoe stores in my life, especially in such a small town. I guess the people here have a lot of shoes in their closets.
The next day started off quite rainy, but soon cleared up. We decided to take a one hour colectivo ride out to the ruins of Chinkultic and to the Lagos de Montebello. We found the colectivo station and climbed in with a few locals. Note: going on colectivos is a great way to get around in Mexico. The are very cheap and quite fun. I don´t know if I would want to go very far on one, but the trip out to the ruins was about one hour and was very enjoyable. From where the colectivo dropped us off, it was a two km. walk to the ruins, but a nice guy in a car picked us up and took us there.
Visiting Chinkultic was a blast. For two hours, Amy and I had the ruins all to ourselves. They are quite beautiful, being located up against a hill with a cenote (a kind of bottomless pool that you usually find in the Yucatan) on one side and a regular lake on the other. You first come to this nice little area where there is a square and some pyramids surrounding it. It has been very well preserved except for one mound that is covered with trees. This shows how all these ruins were found and how much work it takes to uncover them. From this place, we went down a little path, over a small creek (which was the source of some nasty mosquitos) and up a hill about 200 feet to the temple. The temple is a smallish pyramid (see the picture above) and from the top of this pyramid is an amazing view of the countryside. You can see all the way to Guatemala from here and many of the lakes. We just hung out up here as it was such a nice place to sit and contemplate the day. On the lake below was a fisherman in his tiny boat, toodling around and having a grand old time, I assume.
On the other side of a big hill is a very well preserved ball court, pretty big compared to most Mayan sites. There were also some stellae showing Mayans doing different Mayan things, such as subjegating their captives.
After about 3 hours climbing around the ruins, we walked back to the road and hopped on our colectivo to the lakes, about a 10 km drive. Unfortunately, it was getting pretty cloudy and the normal tourquoise color of the lakes was a rather bland green. We took a hike of about an hour, overlooking one of the larger lakes, but then decided to head back, as the rain clouds were getting nasty looking. At the colectivo stop was a nice little food stand where a couple of local ladies made some wonderful quesadillas, made from flora de calabasa (some kind of squash blossoms) and cheese. One of the ladies spoke a little english and she told us she spent some time in Camden, New Jersey. Go figure.
We got back to San Cristobal around 6pm and after a rest went to a local wine restaurant run by a couple of expat Italians, called Vino de Baccos. They have some marvelous wines, most from Mexico and South America. Ricky is the waiter and he moved here 5 years ago after falling in love with a local girl. The only US wines in their place are from E and J Gallo and that´s only because the other partner´s name is Gallo. It´s a fun little spot, though, and the food isn´t so bad, either.
Today we´ve been mostly shopping. Chiapas is famous for its amber and here is the only place in the world where red amber is found. There are amber shops everywhere and the jewelry is quite beautiful. Almost every shop has a mini museum, where they show rare pieces of amber with insects in them. Amber is fossilized tree sap and the kind here is about 25 million years old. Occasionally, an insect that didn´t see the amber coming got trapped and then just kind of got frozen in time. Apparently, they are perfectly preserved and scientists can get DNA out of them. Think the original Jurrasic Park.
Tonight it´s back to Pierre´s fantastic French restaurant and tomorrow we are taking a tour of a very deep canyon, called the Sumidero. We are going to take a boat ride on it and it´s supposed to be very beautiful. Saturday it´s back home and we´ll be quite happy to be back in our own bed with our cat, Zeke. I´ll put some of our own pictures on the blog, as the pictures´s I´ve been putting on have been downloaded from the web. It´s been a great trip, but you know what they say...there´s no place like home.
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