Living the Revolution
Palenque
With my tail between my legs I skulked out of Merida on the bus and once more headed for luscious jungles and the beautiful town of Palenque, which is famous for it's waterfalls amongst other things - yes ruins. You know how, many children have a comfort blanket? well my comforter seems to be the jungle, I always head there when the going gets tough. This particular jungle had something very special to offer me, a waterfall deep into the interior and plummeting hundreds of feet down into a jungle canyon where it has formed a large swimming hole. As I descended the makeshift steps down the wall of the canyon I stopped several times and prayed that this waterfall was going to be worth it because I knew I had to come out the same knee crunching way. The waterfall was worth every leg wobbling step and the icy cool water was a blessing in disguise not just to cool my sweaty body but also just to sit on a rock and steep my weary feet - all I needed was a knotted hankie on my head and I would have looked like the rosy cheeked grandad on one of those old cartoon postcards from Skegness or somewhere. I also visited the mystical Ancient ruins of Palenque but I'll let you off the hook this time and head off without further ado to my next destination, San Cristobal.
The journey to San Cristobal from Palenque can only be described as eye popping. Setting of early again, the bus started to climb immediately up into the mountains, and it continued to climb for at least another hour or so, through the lush jungle terrain, before it finally levelled out. The relief didn't last very long before once again the bus was chugging its way through mountain passes with sheer drops of hundreds of feet just inches away from the window I had my nose pressed up against. It wasn't too bad going up as the bus was pretty old and rickety and couldn't really pick up any speed, not so on the downhill stretches though, and I think the driver must have been on a promise or something the way he was driving that bus. All the same, the scenery was spectacular and it was a bit like being on the roller coaster at Blackpool only cheaper. It was quite a long journey and the bus stopped twice for pee breaks, each time at a cafe next to a beautiful waterfall, firstly at the Agua Azul waterfall then at Misol Ha waterfall.
My first impression on reaching San Cristobal was "I think I'm going to like it here" and even though my bottle had deserted me recently, my gut feelings hadn't, it's a great little town with some great little bars and a multitude of good quality, cheap eating places. During my time in San Cristobal, I frequented two bars in particular, the Revolutionaries bar which was about twenty foot square and had a nine piece band on a stage the size of a hatchback car, and The Reggae Bar across the street complete with a Bob Marley tribute band. The Reggae Bar also had a nightclub attached to it at the rear which only opened at weekends and was a great place to Salsa or Merengue the night away. San Cristobal is one of those places that you visit and feel totally at home almost immediately and I would have stayed a lot longer had it not been for a chance meeting with another traveller who had intended going to my next destination, Oaxaca but had changed his mind because of reports of civil unrest there. Information like that was like a red rag to a bull and I was on the overnight bus that evening.
The colonial City of Oaxaca is considered to be one of Mexico's finest but the sight that greeted me when I got of the bus was anything but. All around me, walls were daubed with red painted slogans saying murderers and things like tourist go home, the two main Plazas had road blocks of corrugated iron leaving only a small gap to walk through and everywhere thousands of angry people were huddled under temporary tarpaulin shelters - "what the hell is going on" I thought to myself. As I walked through the main Plaza a young woman offered me a Kojak style lollipop then asked me in broken English to make a donation to the cause. I asked her to explain to me what was going on and she took me, rather nervously to the steps of a church where we met up with more young people and the horrific happenings of two days earlier was explained to me in full. This group of young people were university students and they were there supporting a two week long sit in staged by school teachers and parents. The sit in was a protest against the local government's decision to stop all its subsidies to the children of the Indigenous mountain people, effectively denying them any chance of even the most basic education. The teachers were also demanding that their salaries should rise to the same level as all other teachers in Mexico. Two days earlier on the 14th of July at 4am, the teachers, parents and children were sleeping in their homemade shelters as they had done every night for the two weeks prior, when two helicopters flew overhead dropping canisters of tear gas. Minutes later the police marched in shooting indisciminately into the shelters allegedly killing six women and four children and beating anyone else they came across with their batons. The police were finally halted by the enraged protesters and driven from the plaza but not before they had arrested and taken away 16 of the most prominent teachers who have not been seen since. During my stay in Oaxaca I didn't see a single Policeman which had a strangely unnerving effect on me, not because I was a tourist in an angry town and had no protection, but because it made me suspicious about what the authorities were planning next. Protests to the national government have apparently fallen on deaf ears and the whole incident seems to have been brushed under the carpet and hushed up. I get the impression that the local government have effectively controlled and restricted any publication of the incident as I am pretty sure the worlds press do not know about this. As I sat on the church steps listening to the students, two men walked past and spat on the ground in front of me and shouted what I am sure was abuse at me. The students immediately jumped to my defence and got into a verbal exchange with the men who left shortly afterwards. Although in a minority there are some of the residents of Oaxaca who believe that tourists are to blame for this this whole ugly mess, and to an extent they are right. If the reports I heard are correct, tourism and the wealth it creates for certain corrupt politicians, is the widely believed reason for the government's withdrawal of subsidies and subsequent violent actions. The indigenous Mayan people who sell their goods on the markets here, are said to be Mexico's only pure direct descendants of the long gone Mayan culture. The clothes they wear and their traditional way of life are the main attractions for tourists visiting Oaxaca and the government is said to have stated that if they were educated then this way of life would disappear. Almost a noble gesture, some may think, but most people believe that the lost tourist revenue that lines the pockets of the hierarchy. is the real thinking behind this philosophy. When the teachers and their majority of supporters took to the streets in protest they believe that the effect on tourism there actions had, prompted the government to take such dramatic action in an effort to protect their nice little earner. The students who had befriended me were trying to raise funds to produce posters and fliers in different languages to hand out to tourists in an effort to let the world know what happened here, so I gladly accepted their request for grammatical help on an English version.
The next and penultimate stop on my journey to Mexico City was to be Pueblo to learn about Mexico's revolutionary history but I can't imagine that hearing about the past will be as interesting for me as witnessing and experiencing the turmoil of the present - we'll just have to wait and see.
With my tail between my legs I skulked out of Merida on the bus and once more headed for luscious jungles and the beautiful town of Palenque, which is famous for it's waterfalls amongst other things - yes ruins. You know how, many children have a comfort blanket? well my comforter seems to be the jungle, I always head there when the going gets tough. This particular jungle had something very special to offer me, a waterfall deep into the interior and plummeting hundreds of feet down into a jungle canyon where it has formed a large swimming hole. As I descended the makeshift steps down the wall of the canyon I stopped several times and prayed that this waterfall was going to be worth it because I knew I had to come out the same knee crunching way. The waterfall was worth every leg wobbling step and the icy cool water was a blessing in disguise not just to cool my sweaty body but also just to sit on a rock and steep my weary feet - all I needed was a knotted hankie on my head and I would have looked like the rosy cheeked grandad on one of those old cartoon postcards from Skegness or somewhere. I also visited the mystical Ancient ruins of Palenque but I'll let you off the hook this time and head off without further ado to my next destination, San Cristobal.
The journey to San Cristobal from Palenque can only be described as eye popping. Setting of early again, the bus started to climb immediately up into the mountains, and it continued to climb for at least another hour or so, through the lush jungle terrain, before it finally levelled out. The relief didn't last very long before once again the bus was chugging its way through mountain passes with sheer drops of hundreds of feet just inches away from the window I had my nose pressed up against. It wasn't too bad going up as the bus was pretty old and rickety and couldn't really pick up any speed, not so on the downhill stretches though, and I think the driver must have been on a promise or something the way he was driving that bus. All the same, the scenery was spectacular and it was a bit like being on the roller coaster at Blackpool only cheaper. It was quite a long journey and the bus stopped twice for pee breaks, each time at a cafe next to a beautiful waterfall, firstly at the Agua Azul waterfall then at Misol Ha waterfall.
My first impression on reaching San Cristobal was "I think I'm going to like it here" and even though my bottle had deserted me recently, my gut feelings hadn't, it's a great little town with some great little bars and a multitude of good quality, cheap eating places. During my time in San Cristobal, I frequented two bars in particular, the Revolutionaries bar which was about twenty foot square and had a nine piece band on a stage the size of a hatchback car, and The Reggae Bar across the street complete with a Bob Marley tribute band. The Reggae Bar also had a nightclub attached to it at the rear which only opened at weekends and was a great place to Salsa or Merengue the night away. San Cristobal is one of those places that you visit and feel totally at home almost immediately and I would have stayed a lot longer had it not been for a chance meeting with another traveller who had intended going to my next destination, Oaxaca but had changed his mind because of reports of civil unrest there. Information like that was like a red rag to a bull and I was on the overnight bus that evening.
The colonial City of Oaxaca is considered to be one of Mexico's finest but the sight that greeted me when I got of the bus was anything but. All around me, walls were daubed with red painted slogans saying murderers and things like tourist go home, the two main Plazas had road blocks of corrugated iron leaving only a small gap to walk through and everywhere thousands of angry people were huddled under temporary tarpaulin shelters - "what the hell is going on" I thought to myself. As I walked through the main Plaza a young woman offered me a Kojak style lollipop then asked me in broken English to make a donation to the cause. I asked her to explain to me what was going on and she took me, rather nervously to the steps of a church where we met up with more young people and the horrific happenings of two days earlier was explained to me in full. This group of young people were university students and they were there supporting a two week long sit in staged by school teachers and parents. The sit in was a protest against the local government's decision to stop all its subsidies to the children of the Indigenous mountain people, effectively denying them any chance of even the most basic education. The teachers were also demanding that their salaries should rise to the same level as all other teachers in Mexico. Two days earlier on the 14th of July at 4am, the teachers, parents and children were sleeping in their homemade shelters as they had done every night for the two weeks prior, when two helicopters flew overhead dropping canisters of tear gas. Minutes later the police marched in shooting indisciminately into the shelters allegedly killing six women and four children and beating anyone else they came across with their batons. The police were finally halted by the enraged protesters and driven from the plaza but not before they had arrested and taken away 16 of the most prominent teachers who have not been seen since. During my stay in Oaxaca I didn't see a single Policeman which had a strangely unnerving effect on me, not because I was a tourist in an angry town and had no protection, but because it made me suspicious about what the authorities were planning next. Protests to the national government have apparently fallen on deaf ears and the whole incident seems to have been brushed under the carpet and hushed up. I get the impression that the local government have effectively controlled and restricted any publication of the incident as I am pretty sure the worlds press do not know about this. As I sat on the church steps listening to the students, two men walked past and spat on the ground in front of me and shouted what I am sure was abuse at me. The students immediately jumped to my defence and got into a verbal exchange with the men who left shortly afterwards. Although in a minority there are some of the residents of Oaxaca who believe that tourists are to blame for this this whole ugly mess, and to an extent they are right. If the reports I heard are correct, tourism and the wealth it creates for certain corrupt politicians, is the widely believed reason for the government's withdrawal of subsidies and subsequent violent actions. The indigenous Mayan people who sell their goods on the markets here, are said to be Mexico's only pure direct descendants of the long gone Mayan culture. The clothes they wear and their traditional way of life are the main attractions for tourists visiting Oaxaca and the government is said to have stated that if they were educated then this way of life would disappear. Almost a noble gesture, some may think, but most people believe that the lost tourist revenue that lines the pockets of the hierarchy. is the real thinking behind this philosophy. When the teachers and their majority of supporters took to the streets in protest they believe that the effect on tourism there actions had, prompted the government to take such dramatic action in an effort to protect their nice little earner. The students who had befriended me were trying to raise funds to produce posters and fliers in different languages to hand out to tourists in an effort to let the world know what happened here, so I gladly accepted their request for grammatical help on an English version.
The next and penultimate stop on my journey to Mexico City was to be Pueblo to learn about Mexico's revolutionary history but I can't imagine that hearing about the past will be as interesting for me as witnessing and experiencing the turmoil of the present - we'll just have to wait and see.
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