Where to eat next ? The last time I wrote 3 days ago we were still in San Cristobal, and that night we found another great place to hang out and relax, Bacco´s Wine Bar just around the corner from our hotel. We have made a major discovery: the best way to eat and relax here is in restaurants run by ex-pats. The local cuisine is not like Oaxaca, it does not exactly have us raving about food although all the tamales we have tasted have been really good and the handmade tortillas taste fabulous. Bacco (Bacchus) is a little wine bar with great wines from Argentina, Australia, Mexico. It is run by a guy named Ricky or Ricci who knows, an Italian who fell in love with a local girl, we have had a 2005 Malbec from Las Moras in Argentina and last night a Rioja . He recommended us to the fresh pasta around the corner at a place called La Crepe and to wood-fired oven pizza at El Punto in Cerillos square. We also really liked a natural food breakfast at a place called La Casa del Pan also near cerillos square, we had organic amaranth pancakes with maguey syrup, and fresh croissants and whole wheat toast and fresh fruit and yoghurt and granola with pumpkin seeds and pecans. Yes, we keep trying local food, today we had the local version of tripe soupe called Mondongo, it was truly nasty. Tonight it will be Pierre´s french cuisine palace again.
Comitan
We both really like tramping around ruins, and there are 2 largish Mayan ruins quite close us here in San Cristobal, called Tenam Puente and Chinkultic, but since we could not do them easily in a day and no one does tours, on Tuesday we went down to a large town called Comitan an hour from here, and down at about 3,500 feet, because we had also heard it was a pretty attractive place. It is attractive, but lonely, since the local attitude to tourists is to kinda look past you with glazed eyes. We did really like our colonial-atmosphere hotel the Hotel del Virrey, they were quite kind. The town has a very large square with f rench-style trees and benches, and some really nice arcades made with carved wooden posts. Also more shoe stores than I could ever imagine one town needs. Also just bef ore we left town we found the archaeologic museum and it is a real beauty! Fabulous pots, a square boxy jar with a bats head on it, lot sof great stone carvings. Very very nicely laid out and free. Comitan has a tradition of rich coffee growers creating a town with a literary history. But it didn´t have the cheerful spirit we loved about Ocosingo which was a much less properous place. Also the food was very standard.
I liked the surrounding country side a lot, the road between San Cristobal and Comitan is initially of the way overforested landscape but then becomes greener, more spread out, with large fields, sometimes plowed by brahma bulls, and plenty of greenery. I think some of the farms are very large scale agriculture, some places they develop hybrid seeds. The locals are quite opposed to genetically engineered corn and I think this area is part of the center of that storm. But we also saw farmers working with oxcarts and lots of donkeys . I found the area very beautiful, big plains and low hills and lots of trees. Also it is not at all hot and muggy like Palenque was, still too high, (althought it can get hot middday so having a sunshade is good) and yet not at all too cold which sometimes is very true of San Cristobal.
So our ruins. They were both great and saved us from being depressed by Comitan. Tenam Puente is only 14 km from town, but well off the highway and after trying to find the right combi place, we figured it is best to go by taxi and we negotiated a ride of 140 pesos to include a half hour wait. We were real sorry to have our time limited because this was a great place. Very nice building s hidden in the trees, every time you went up a level (Most mayan ruins have several leve ls of plazas) you found a different world, and they were in these nice trees with papery leaves kind of like birches or something. It was like being in a Mayan ruin park tranquil and warm. Lots of levels to climb up and we sure had to hurry! costs 37 pesos each to go in.
The next morning we had plenty of time to take a colectivo (community shared bus)from Comitan to Lagos de Montebello, which is a really neat national park with 57 lakes in limestone so they vary in shade from light green through turquoise to brown. The surrounding woodlands are pine trees with many, many bromeliads and epiphytes growing on them, and lovely ferns. Chinkultic is a ruin on the edge of this park, it is fabulous, because the upper level is on a ridge between two lakes and then it drops off on the 3rd side of 4 to a cenote, one of those bottomless limestone pools. The whole area was lovely. We got on our colectivo at 8:20 am, got to the highway turnoff at 9:15, and someone gave us a ride the 2 km out a great paved road so we were there at 9:20. Signs vary about when this opens, some say 10 some 9 and they were open and their local sign said open at 8. The reason I mention this is that if you go, it is so great to be there in the early morning as the low sun lights up the ruins way on the slope above you. I would say go immediately to the right to the main plazas and after enjoying these then cross the bridge between the lakes and go up the fairly slopy path to the upper ruins. Save the ballparks and stelae which are over to the left, til the light isn´t as good. At the lower plaza there is also a cave and we had not brought our headlamps and I wish we had, because in this post-classic mayan areas a lot of the burials and ceremonial areas were in the caves. Definitely great to see this ruin in conjunction with the great, great museum in Comitan. Terrific ar t works were taken from this ruin. At both ruins, most of the area is still laced up in the jungle, so there are mounds hiding who knows what everywhere. As you wander around the bees are humming, the cicadas singing, the birds are twittering and it´s really nice. A very remote feeling. At both ruins we were abslutely the only people there, partly bc it is low season but also they just aren´t on the tour circuit. In Comitan, they said, Oh, why do you want to see the ruins, they are ruined after all, why not go see the waterfall and the lakes instead? But our taxi driv er told us he had gone to the ruins frequently as a boy before they were uncovered, and this is because a lot of the local people still do or did do rituals at these ruins several times a year.
The Lakes of Montebello were also a good stop. Would be best to have unlimited time or a car but I really enjoyed walking in the wet woods looking at the great rainforest plants. And a fair number of local indigenous folks live in the woods, a bunch rode in on our combis with lots of bundles and then got rides from the local forest Rangers (just like Sharon!) who were out patrolling, into their little setttlements. We had a nice stop also to eat flor de calabaza quesadillas (hand patted tortillas, mild gooey cheese and squash blossoms with fresh chile salsa) with 2 nice ladies and their small four year old. One of the ladies had lived in Camden NJ!
The combis were a lot of fun. It was about 20 pesos ($2) each to the turnoff to Chinkultic, and one of the folks on the bus was the guy who takes the entrance fee for the Lagos, he gave us a slick little map. We paid the guy who gave us the 2 km ride, about 10 pesos as a gesture of thanks. After seeing the ruins, we walked back out to the main road through the farmlands, there were a few farm trucks buzzing by and also guys on the sides of the roads spraying their fields manually with we know not what and then a cowboy and his friend on a bike driving their smaller herd of cows back to the junction. At the junction, we had to wait a little while drinking cokes and eating chips from the local stand until the combi that we needed came by . A few buzzed by with full loads going to local towns further down the highway. Our local coke seller really recommended we get on the combi that went to the far end of the park, Tzistao, to see his favorite lakes, but the rain clouds were gathering so we got on the combi line we originally came with to go intead to the park's destination, Lago del Bosque. This was nice enough. For a 15 minute ride, we paid about 7 pesos each. When we got off at the turnaround, there were little cabins and a guy with some horses to rent and some guides and our friends with the yummy quesadillas. And lots of places to hike. There are some ritual caves you can hike to, but we didn´t know how far so we just went about half a mile in and back out again. The trails are real nice, they have little tree trunk steps and handrails whenever you head up hills, same as at Chinkultic ruins. But we were glad we focused on the ruins not the lakes as our destination. We got a combi back for 25 pesos each, about an hour back to Comitan. Then after lunch and a look at the museum, got the next luxury bus back to San Cristobal, 30 pesos ($3) for a 60 mile bus ride with movies and bathroom).
But we are SOOOO glad to be back in the relative luxury and cultural interest of San Cristobal. Back to the good food good coffee and good cheer. We still have our same hotel room, room 25 of Hotel Mansion de los Angeles and we love it. Today we spent mainly shopping for amber and drinking in the sights and walking, walking, walking. We almost went to the little valley of El Arcotete (we hear it´s 15 minutes by taxi, 1 hour by combi, to the dirt track where you walk down) but fear of rain kept us here.
Oh yeah that flat world thing pops up again. One thing that is sold here is glass bead jewelry, all real nice but we wonder is it from here, looks a lot like beads from Indonesia! well guess what today at one of the stalls, we saw -- Sharon´s turquoise kukuis! also purple kukuis and the standard black kukuis. Now we know! The beads are foreign. The local ladies do make fabulous (and also not so fabulous) embroidery, and they make very cute little stuffed animals with the local wool from their sheep. They make ever so much macrame, good lord. But they do not apparently make bead jewelry, someone clever is shipping it in!
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