San Cristóbal de Las Casas

Diary:

Keiko got up early to go walking around the Saturday market.

I got up a little later and also went out walking around the town. Went to markets, which were absolutely fascinating. Saw tiny, cute piglets on leashes (like pet dogs) being sold for 40 pesos each (see photo below). We wanted one! The buyers would choose their piglets, which would then get unceremoniously dumped into a hessian sack and thrown (squealing hideously) into the trunk of a taxi to be taken to their new home! Poor things! We could not figure out whether they would get eaten or grown into full size pigs.

All up, we found San Cristóbal to be a very pleasant town with a lot of character and many things to see as you crisscrossed the old cobblestoned streets. Being high up in the mountains, the weather was warm during the day and cool at night, with none of the humidity of the lowlands. It was very pleasant to stroll around and relax at the numerous cafes in town.

Later on we went to the Ticket Bus office. We purchased bus tickets to the Guatemala border town Ciudad Cuauhtémoc / La Mesilla. Despite our guidebooks claiming otherwise, there did not seem to be any direct buses from Mexico into Guatemala, and we were not sure what we were going to find when we got to the border town. We had heard that the bus services from La Mesilla into Guatemala were pretty horrific, and several agencies were running (expensive) private shuttles from San Cristóbal to various destinations in Guatemala. However, we decided we were going to take our chances with the local buses.

Photos: (click on images to see full size)