After Oaxaca my next stop was San Cristobal de las Casas. San Cristobal is a highland valley in Chiapas and was one of the four places that the Zapatista rebels choose to launch their revolution in 1994.
I spent a few days exploring the old town and also watched two mexican movies in the cultural cinema. The first was a documentary about the Zapatistas which was very interesting as until this time my knowledge of the Zapatistas was limited to that provided by the Mexico Lonelyplanet guide. The other was a mexican science fiction movie, the name of which I can't remember.
I hired a motorbike and visited some of the nearby indigenous mountain villages. Next I took a bus at 3:45pm to Palenque expecting to arrive around 9pm that night. This journey was one of the stranger bus journeys that I've taken on this trip. After a few hours of driving we encountered a military checkpoint, like all police and military I've encountered in Mexico they were heavily armed. Their search of the bus was fairly thorough, even involved checking the air conditioning vents. For some reason they ignored me completely but some of the other passengers had all of their belongings searched.
After about 30 minutes they decided to let us proceed and then we stopped again. This time the driver made an announcement in Spanish, most of which I understood. For our safety we were going to wait for 2 more buses and he would have to turn of the lights in the bus to save the battery. That was it, he didn't feel the need to expand further on this. At this stage it was about 9pm and we were somewhere in the jungle parked at the side of the road with the engine and lights off. After an hour we started driving again, I noticed that we were now 3 buses with a federal police car escorting us and another behind our convoy of buses. We made it to San Cristobal at 12am without any further problems.
The next day I got talking to some locals and asked what this was all about. The increased military presence and checkpoints was due to ongoing issues between the military and the zapitistas. The escort from the federal police was because of bandits robbing tourist busses on the particular stretch of road through the jungle. Thankfully with our police escort we didn't encounter any problems and the Maya temples were worth the trip to Palenque. The Palenque temples are problably my favorite of all the Maya ruins I've seen in Mexico.
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| San Cristobal de las Casas |
I spent a few days exploring the old town and also watched two mexican movies in the cultural cinema. The first was a documentary about the Zapatistas which was very interesting as until this time my knowledge of the Zapatistas was limited to that provided by the Mexico Lonelyplanet guide. The other was a mexican science fiction movie, the name of which I can't remember.
I hired a motorbike and visited some of the nearby indigenous mountain villages. Next I took a bus at 3:45pm to Palenque expecting to arrive around 9pm that night. This journey was one of the stranger bus journeys that I've taken on this trip. After a few hours of driving we encountered a military checkpoint, like all police and military I've encountered in Mexico they were heavily armed. Their search of the bus was fairly thorough, even involved checking the air conditioning vents. For some reason they ignored me completely but some of the other passengers had all of their belongings searched.
After about 30 minutes they decided to let us proceed and then we stopped again. This time the driver made an announcement in Spanish, most of which I understood. For our safety we were going to wait for 2 more buses and he would have to turn of the lights in the bus to save the battery. That was it, he didn't feel the need to expand further on this. At this stage it was about 9pm and we were somewhere in the jungle parked at the side of the road with the engine and lights off. After an hour we started driving again, I noticed that we were now 3 buses with a federal police car escorting us and another behind our convoy of buses. We made it to San Cristobal at 12am without any further problems.
The next day I got talking to some locals and asked what this was all about. The increased military presence and checkpoints was due to ongoing issues between the military and the zapitistas. The escort from the federal police was because of bandits robbing tourist busses on the particular stretch of road through the jungle. Thankfully with our police escort we didn't encounter any problems and the Maya temples were worth the trip to Palenque. The Palenque temples are problably my favorite of all the Maya ruins I've seen in Mexico.
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| Palenque Ruins in Mexico |
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| So far my favorite of the Mayan ruins in Mexico |
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