Thursday, 03/25/2010

Quick update:
On Monday we left Guatemala with the hopes of making it to San Christobal de las Casas, a famous historic city in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. No chance. Too far. We decided to spend the night in the city of Villahermosa. After some frustrating searching we actually found a beautiful hostel with good beds and great prices. Spontaneously we decided a nearby nature reserve the next morning. My highlight: The tiger cage. After the tour was over, I went back. The big yellow-black tiger was lying about 15-20' away from me in the shade. Through the fence I started looking right at him. After about a minute, he got up and come over. He started walking along the fence, alternating left and then turning right again and so on, never moving more than 2 yards away from me. I was kneeling. So I decided to test how the tiger would react to an attack threat - and suddenly quickly stood up behind the fence right as he past by.   The tiger - no noise, nothing - right away also jumped up, paws on the fence, ending up in a position slightly taller than me. Thanks fence!! ;-)
Later that day we made it to San Christobal - who I have to say is even better than San Miguel, which I consider my Mexican hometown. Slightly larger, and way more cute walking-only streets lined with shops, cafes, bars, restaurants etc. I do have to say that I believe the atmosphere is better in San Miguel, but of course I'm biased.  
After spending the day yesterday exploring (during which I finally bought a hammock, so now I have a bed anywhere in the world where I can find two trees [or something similarly useful] close enough together). It was a nice relaxing day, and - we enjoyed the much better food Mexico has to offer compared to what I've seen of Central America.
This morning we took off for the Pacific Coast - and am sitting in a restaurant in Huatulco, Oaxaca now, trying to figure out what to do next. On the way down here, in some little town, we suddenly encountered a traffic jam in front of a bridge we had to cross. We were able to figure out that some demonstration and a political campaign speech were going on, and the bridge was gonna be closed for a while. A friendly guy close by gave us directions to bypass the bridge (sounded like a little detour). Following the directions, we suddenly noticed how most vehicle (that came from the same place) turned down a little dirt path. We followed. Down dusty roads/paths, the caravan slowly made it's way through the river delta.  After crossing two rivers at shallow areas and some more dirt paths we got back on track after ~ 15 minutes - really cool.

Sorry - no pictures yet, have to get on that. They will follow soon.

And here some pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/joegrass76/ZipoliteWay#