Vagabond and Beyond: Holy Coke!!!

As I write this post we are currently waiting to board a bus that will start a 15 hour trip to Mexico City after spending a week in the colonial town of San Cristobal de Las Casas which is set in a highland valley surrounded by forests and indigenous villages. Initially we booked in for two nights but ended up staying for 7! During our stay we visited a Mayan Medicine Museum to find a cure for Sarah’s cold, did a speed boat trip down a Canyon that was both epically beautiful and covered in rubbish at the same time, visited an indigenous town where they sacrificed chickens and coca cola was the offering of choice to the saints, played an intense version of scrabble called grabble and had a few good nights experiencing the local tipples of Mezcal and Pox.

El Hostalito, our home for the week was a hostel/bike shop run by a Spanish guy named Joaquin who planned on cycling around the world but got distracted by the town of San Cristobal after he started his journey in New York. Like most of the other travellers staying in El Hostalito the plan was for a short stay but everyone got on so well that a short stay became a weeklong one for most.

First off, was a trip to San Juan Chamula to see the religious practices of the locals and to try some Pox (ironically pronounced Posh). The village, extremely religious appears to be sponsored by coke! I still can’t fully explain the craziness of a town that strives for a simple religious indigenous life except when it comes to their favourite beverage of coca cola. The focal point of the town is the church and an odd place it is… Inside there are no seats, about 100 glass caskets with statues of their favourite saints, thousands of lit candles with different meanings placed by locals all over the ground, a floor covered in pine needles, people being rubbed with eggs by healers to cleanse the body, live chickens being sacrificed (I kid not) and of course a few dozen crates of that holy beverage coca cola! You’ll have to take my word for this as cameras are strictly prohibited in and around the church as the Tzotzil people believe cameras can steal your soul. Like at home, after church we went to the pub except when I say pub it was a long table in the back garden of someone’s house in the middle of nowhere. The owner of the house brewed his own Pox, a local drink made from sugarcane that was served in a soft drink bottle and came in too many easy to drink flavours. It is commonly used for ceremonial purposes among the Mayans and means medicine/cure. Pox was commonly used in religious ceremonies but increasingly coke has been substituted for it, something to do with the gas of the drink and the soul! Pox brings out the best stories from people, for example one character who shall remain unnamed for obvious reasons to come. To get an idea of the kind of person we are talking about; he mainly eats uncooked organic food, practices yoga, plays a hang drum, doesn’t read the news or watch TV, fond of a herbal plant or two and plans to live in a commune after his travels. Anyway, on one of his detox’s the only thing he did for 2 days was drink his own urine to purify himself or something along those lines. He was pure entertainment for our time there and not too shabby on the hang drum either. After San Juan it was back to the rooftop terrace for some more Pox and the inevitable hangover the next day.

Next up was a trip to Canyon Sumidero to see crocodiles and the natural beauty of the Chiapas region. Halfway through there is a massive area covered in plastic and wood waste where there are about 20 boats trying to clean it up 7 days a week. Except for this unusual polluted spot the river canyon was amazing. Check out the pictures below to see some of the waterfalls, wildlife etc. The photos don’t do the canyon justice but you get the idea.

It’s rained the whole week in San Cristobal, rainy season decided to hang around for another couple of weeks! Hurricane Jova is in the region and Emily and Andrew (who have been on a similar route to us) have had their bus to Guatemala cancelled twice due to landslides and heavy rains. They finally got going third time lucky and we are heading in the opposite direction back to the sun and away from the wet and cold weather. After all, escaping the Irish weather is part of the reason to go travelling. So trips to the local market and Mayan medicine museum have kept the rainy day’s ticking by. Sarah picked up a bit of a cold (most likely from the change of moving from the warm beaches to the cold mountains) so bought a ‘Vick’ like medicine from the local Mayans (it worked!) Sometimes when the rain was too heavy to leave the hostel, we watched hours of DVD’s (some truly awful films) and played grabble which I found to be too competitive and tense for these relaxing times. Check out some of the photos below of the colourful and entertaining market that we ventured out to see when the rain did stop.

One night we moved on from Pox to Mezcal. “Mezcal is tequila’s brother. Like tequila, it is distilled from the agave plant, but mezcal doesn’t have to come from blue agave, or from the tequila-producing areas of Jalisco. In other words, all tequila is mezcal, but not all mezcal is tequila.” Drinking the mezcal led to talks with Joaquin, the hostel owner, about a few of us doing a 5 day bike trip to a paradise beach a couple days ride away. News of hurricanes and landslides the next day kept any thoughts of a bike trip to the beach a dream best kept among the few on the terrace drinking mescal.

So Mexico City is next, and despite the media reports on its dangers we have only heard good things about the place from fellow travellers so we’re looking forward to exploring the second largest city in the world (23 million people). After Mexico City we are working our way back down the pacific coast to Oaxaca and on to Guatemala to a Spanish school where we can settle down for a while and finally unpack the bags, for a little while anyway.