This is San Cristobal...
This Tuesday was a day of getting back into the routine of school after our two-day epidemic. We packed into Nathan’s Pathfinder and joined the flow of traffic weaving toward the hilly streets of the city as we headed to language school this morning.Ten days ago we flew into Chiapas’s capital city of Tuxtla. It sits at 1200 feet elevation in the bottom of a bowl rimmed by two mountain ridges. San Cristobal de las Casas is an hour’s drive up one of these ranges to 7000 feet. It is a city of about 150,000 people and has a beautiful climate most of the year. We are currently in the driest season, although the humidity is still quite high. The nights are damp and the temperature drops to 55 degrees. Once the morning sun tops the hills that surround San Cristobal, the fog clears rapidly and it warms to about 75 degrees.
Tourism is a big focus of this city, especially in the colorful downtown area. On most days, we’ll see many European and North American tourists wandering past us on the narrow stone streets. There is a significant hippie population and the town is reminiscent of other small mountain towns like Cusco or Manitou Springs.On our way to school each morning, the traffic quickly becomes a confusing network of cars, bikes, and vans. The predominant form of traffic speed control is the tope, or speed bump. They are everywhere and range in severity and frequency. There are about 10 between us and the language school.San Cristobal has many old VW Bugs in excellent condition, a rare sight for this Northerner. They lend a fitting background to the hippie crowd and provide a few members of the team with active games of Slug Bug on the daily trip to and from the school. We pass mothers walking their young children to school, produce vendors opening their storefronts, and construction workers closing off old routes and opening new holes in the roads. Feral dogs weave in and out of traffic with remarkable success. It is a colorful worldEach morning trip ends with a short walk up a beautiful pedestrian street to the language school where our 3 hour class runs until noon.Russ, for the team
