The Night Bus onto the indigenous town of Santo de las Cristobal in the state of Chiapas!
 
The next day after another square circuit, a sample of the food market laden with fly covered meat of all varieties swinging in the heat and a very bad smell, we managed to skype home, and then caught a taxi to the local bus station, ready to board for the short trip to the city of 'Juchitan .' Here was where we saw the 'high pressure sales women techniques' so familiar to the Zapotec ladies as they pounced on some poor Mexican guy and even though he had 3 boxes of taco's came away laden with more...... the lady was so scary I just kept looking at my feet as Ads went to attempt the difficult job of ordering our bus tickets! Result, second class bus it was, more grimey BUT it had air con AND the windows opened, I was in my element!!! God what a 'bus nerd' as Ads puts it, I am becoming! On arriving in Juchitan we then had a mere(!!) 7 hours until our midnight night bus and with no luggage storage, 60 kilo's between us to carry! We didn't want to not see anything of the city so caught a taxi to the square and the sight here was pretty different to other zocalo's..... The palace was totally covered in grafetti, the centre was dirty, skinny horses stood wearily in the heat creating a pretty grim stench and overall the place didn't feel the most safe. One quick lap saw us end up in some teenagers bar for a cheap eat and beer and then back to the place we felt the safest for 4 hours, the bus station! Thankfully it went quite quickly thanks probably to the bad attempt at 'off the head poetry' verses we came up with, enthused by 2 other travellers in front of us who were writing poetry and scribbling art drawings in their diaries so we thought we needed to 'join the revolution' man .
 
Not much to say about the night bus apart from it was very cold and long.... You could see the outline of many mountains, could feel them in your stomach as you wound around them and in addition we saw hundreds of wind turbines on route. Our driver amazingly stopped to eat at 2am and wearily eyed we all bundled out. At this point, I watched as another bus pulled up and the driver then banged on the small luggage compartment after which another bus driver to my surprise climbed out looking knackered and a right state, definitely not fit to drive on! I laughed as I said to Adam,' thank god he is not the second driver for our bus' and then gulped when I saw him walk to our bus with a very large coffee and prepared himself to drive it!!! From then on not much sleep was had by yours truly as I was convinced the speed he was doing the mountain corners at would see us sitting upside down in the gorge below at any moment..... Thankfully I was wrong and feeling shocking we departed the bus in the dark morning of San Cristobal de las Casas at 5.50am, now in the state of Chiapas.
 
Thinking it best not to wander around in the dark, we sat in the station with a strong coffee like many other travellers, waited for the sun to rise then set out to find some accommodation. Ads managed to display some pretty good Spanish skills and found a lady in the taxi rank promoting her hostel....the words, 'free taxi, breakfast and your room is ready for all of 140 pesos' in Spanish sold it to us and onward we rode to 'Casa Jardin' where the couples' 10 year old tired son let us in! The place was kind of cool, like a rustic old farm house where basically you lived as part of their 'family community' (plus Labradors!) so to speak as the place was their house! From the outside you would have thought it was derelict, covered in grafitti with barred windows but inside was abit funky (people would have paid thousands fro the ancient sinks and stuff ...now I am a kitchen nerd!) and they had made a real effort with our room, bright drapes, Mexican artwork..... despite the damp smell and smelly bathroom we didn't really care where we crashed and out like a light we were till gone midday!
 
Realising we only had the afternoon to see the town, we dragged ourselves out, put our entire wears in for laundry and headed to find food! Already on the taxi journey I had fallen in love with the place, it is described as Mexico's most 'delightful, colonial and indigenous town where travellers spend days just soaking up the atmosphere', and without doubt it definitely was, I could have easily spent a week here just chilling! Although we were now in Chiapas a poorer area of Mexico, the less touristy more authentic feel really hit me here and the rustic hilly back streets plus laid back charm made it our favourite place in Mexico to date! Plus we found a back street local café where coffee was 15 pence, and breakfast 50 pence just perfect!! Our budget meant that more than one dose of caffeine could be on the menu for a change .... and perhaps even cake!! After we wandered down to the plaza area, again cafes lined the edges but these had more of a local feel than previous, the cathedral was remarkably different also, painted in bright yellow/red with numerous Indian ladies from San Juan Chamula dressed in bright traditional clothes selling their many wears and tears..... It saddened me slightly to see the young girls, many scruffy, selling also and hence we felt less guilty on blowing our budget on some beautiful locals' crafts later!
 
Walking through a busier main street we headed up to the Santo Domingo and on arrival both marvelled at the façade of the front of this place, it was unique in detail and pretty breath-taking. Inside was more rustic than others I would say, no gold but definitely a years gone by feel and in the attached history museum, we both sat soaking up the silence of a small square, admiring the colours, arches and magnetic beauty of the place........After a much needed late siesta we ate at a tiny quaint place close by where Ads sampled 'chilli con carne' which here consists of huge lumps of beef steak and beans plus amazing garlic butter! Then back to the damp but sweet rustic farmhouse it was.
 
Day 12 - The 1000 metre gorge of Sumidero Canyon!
 
Today we headed out via a small tour bus to sample the infamous beauty of the Chiapas region and on leaving the town, were amazed at the hundreds of local cars, vans, taxi's you name it, covered in balloons lining up for hours as part of the local festival to reach the chapel on the hill . Heading towards the canyon we passed for an hour through some beautiful valleys and mountain mist, before arriving at our home for the next 2 hours, a wooden yellow speed boat! Given life jackets, we all bundled in then set off towards the Sumidero Canyon, a place that once native warriors hurled themselves off of rather than endure the Spanish conquest!
 
At first we were sceptical that it would be good to go and see another canyon so close to seeing the Grand Canyon as it may take away from the beauty of this one, but indeed the trip was worth it. As we headed into the canyon, the cliffs on either side got higher and higher and at the point of 1000 metres we were pretty impressed! Rising high into the sky, even the camera couldn't fit it all in, it seemed to rise for miles! We also got to see a shrine in a small (thank god!) cave, and many stunning waterfalls, birds and pelicans. One particular waterfall was 200m high and had the most bizarre layers of moss leading all the way up it which looked pretty wicked as our boat sat almost underneath . The only slight shame was the state of the river in that hundreds of plastic bottles and litter floated within in it. On the journey back we saw 1 crocodile then 3 together, then a baby one and finally a much bigger one which I was chuffed to capture on video swimming into the river but glad when the boatman then decided we best move on!
 
On the way back we stopped at a small village called Chiapa de Corzo, which had a gorgeous red 16th century crown shaped fountain in the centre plus a great market, where upon a local lady showed us her large pots of 'broth; which, reminiscent of the highlands in Vietnam made me decline, but Ads sat down and ate some pretty good tucker! Arriving back the cars were still queuing and 5 hours had passed! Trying to sort our next trip to Palenque which consisted of many small minibuses which unfortunately I needed to sit in the front of but with no local speaking English this proved a tad hard. Very tired, coffee and cake was needed in a small café on the square, where thankfully we also bumped into Chiki and Travis again and that eve ate with them at an Italian place. It was great hearing about all of their travels and learning more also about Japanese culture and the beautiful small island of 'Rota' near Guam that they both teach on. Definitely must pay a visit there one day! Then on leaving we heard a German couple say hey to us and the couple that were also on the same tour the four of us had met on in Oaxaca, were sat down next to us! It's a small world even in Mexico!! Knowing we had to be up at 5am (ouch!) we made plans to hopefully meet up with Chiki and Travis again then headed back to pack and after getting bitten in the night by what hopefully weren't (but probably were!) bed bugs, we decided that departing our rustic but cheap farmhouse style hostel wasn't necessarily a bad thing!!!