San Cristobal de las Casas

We arrived in San Cristobal from Tonina about 7:30 PM and checked in at the Hotel Casa Mexicana. San Cristobal de las Casas is a colonial city founded by Diego de Mazariegos and his fellow soldiers after a fierce fight with the native Zoques and Chiapanecos. Unlike many colonial cities it was not built on top of the ruins of an old Maya city. Mazaeriego's original settlement named Villareal de Chiapas de los Espanoles was established in 1528, now days called San Cristobal de las Casas in honor of bishop Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, protector of the common people in the sixteenth century. Located in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains at nearly 7000 ft the elevation made our next five days in San Cristobal very comfortable where a jacket was desirable most of the time.

The first picture in the collage below is of San Cristobal nestled in the valley with a population of 142,364 people, occupies 186 square miles, and is the third largest city in Chiapas. Our hotel is in the center of the city making it easy to walk to everything we wanted to see. Our rooms were on the first floor facing an interior court of a refurbished hacienda and the dinning facilities were across the street in another refurbished colonial building pictured in the upper right. The rest of the collage are random pictures from around the city, mostly within a few blocks of the hotel. Second picture down on the left side is Bibi with a mime who was preforming on the zocalo .

Next morning Ricardo took us on a walking tour of the city with the mandatory visits to the Cathedrals and several museums. The directory lists eight museums and we saw many of them. On the main plaza Ricardo pointed out where the slave auction and whipping block had been during colonial times. After the tour we were on our own and the two of us stopped at a coffee bar for a light lunch hoping to get a good cup of coffee but we were disappointed in what was offered. We found an ATM, got some cash with out any hassle and on our way back to the room stopped at Burger King (!) for ice cream.

The above collage is primarily of a museum housed in an old Cathedral that featured some interesting modern sculptures. Center left is the Zapatista Restaurant where we ate lunch one day. The Zapatista influence was obvious around that part of the city. Zapatistas took over the city in January 1994 and still have a presence even though many indigenous people do not approve of their tactics. The fisherman sculpture, upper right, appeared to be catching fish from the coffee cup Steve had left beside him.

One evening the group walked to Museum Na Bolom, a unique home made into a museum and library. This had been the home of Franz and Trudi Blom, Europeans who had lived and worked with the Lacandon Maya in the 1920's. They were renown collectors of artifacts and made themselves regional experts in local archaeology, anthropology and ecology. Now days there is a controversy brewing regarding the ownership of the collected artifacts. Below are pictures taken of the displays. A visit to the museum traditionally ends with supper served at the long table where in the past the scientists would discuss their day's activities over the meal. Our group participated in the tradition along with about sixty other guests. Our group is pictured upper right at the end of the table.

There were multitudes of markets throughout the city where you could find vendors of any kind plying their wares. There was of course a big city market also and we took the opportunity one afternoon to reconnoiter. The collage below shows the variety of merchandise.