I've added this picture of our camp spot at Nututun Hotel and the swimming area under the restaurant. It was a really nice place to stay.

The huge Ceiba tree was cool. Ceiba's were called the Tree of Life by the Maya and were thought to reach into the underworld with their skirt-like roots and up into the heavens with their branches. They are usually the tallest trees in the jungle and they grow wide, straight trunks that don't branch out until over the canopy. Usually they are home to numerous bromeliads and orchids, they have a small fruit that birds and monkeys like so they are often found among the branches.


This morning we headed up the mountain to San Cristóbal de las Casas. It's a slow drive up and down mountains on a narrow 2 lane road that passes through numerous small towns each of which has several topes or speed bumps that bring you to a complete stop to get over them. We did not hook the jeep up to the Lazy Daze, we're still nervous about the tow bar and it is easier on Tortuga's transmission as well if it isn't hauling the jeep. I led in the jeep which was helpful because some of the topes are not marked and if I missed them in the jeep, Mimi could see it. Even so, we had cabinets empty out, the refrigerator contents scrambled, lots of stuff in the bins tossed around and various other things related to the up and down of the road and the topes. It also helped as I could get far enough ahead to see around curves and signal the drivers behind Mimi that were desperate to pass her. There are few places to pull over and mexican drivers will start taking bigger chances in their need to pass a slow vehicle. It's in all of our best interests to get them around us safely and gone.

About the small towns we went through, they are mostly indigenous villages of Highland Maya, some are Zapatista and some aren't. There are a few with signs painted along the road stating that they are a Zapatista pueblo with communal medical and social institutions and not governed by the Mexican govt. There are children and women selling things at all of the towns, they set up at the topes and when you stop they offer you artesenia or food items. Some of them have a rope or string tied across the road and they raise it as you approach to force you to stop. I noticed that the locals didn't even slow down and the women holding the rope were pretty good at dropping it just before it was hit. I tried it a couple times too and they dropped it right at the last possible moment.

The women in these pueblos are mostly dressed in traditional clothes, different styles for each pueblo but everyone the same in the same town. I start referring to the towns by the traje of the women... the blue satin with rick rack town, the hot pink and white vertical stripe overblouse town, the hot pink and green embroidered neckline town, the dropped shoulder red embroidery with lace edges town, etc.

A theory our friend Henning has is that distinctive clothing tied to a town and a job (everyone in a pueblo had the same job too, bricklayer, wood carver, etc) was a control tactic by the Mayan ruling class and that the Spanish continued it and now it is considered "the way we do things" and a point of ethnic pride. It makes sense. Easy to tell if someone from the wood carver town is over talking insurrection at the bricklayer town when you've got them all dressed in uniforms. Most of the men now dress in modern clothes, it seems to be the women who carry on the tradition.

Life is hard for these people, particularly the women in my opinion. Women's work includes gathering (from great distances) firewood, hauling it home using a strap around the forehead, all domestic animal care, cooking, cleaning, producing enough artisan items to bring in some money for things you can't produce, hours of shucking and soaking and grinding of corn and, of course, having a baby a year and taking care of all the kids. Plus you add in the time standing out there on the road holding a rope trying to get passing cars to buy some of the stuff you've made.

We pulled into San Cris and got to the Hotel Bonampak which has a walled grass field alongside that is an RV park. As we rounded the corner into the field we saw that it was pretty much full of mainly european RVs. It turns out it was a German caravan. There were no legitimate spots with hookups left but we found a place at the end where we fit.

Our friends Bobby and Patti had pulled in an hour before us and saw us driving in from the hotel restaurant. Perfect timing! We got settled and joined them for dinner and catching up. We figured out we had first met them exactly one year ago in San Miguel de Allende. Since then we've spent a couple months together on the beach in Jalisco, an Escapade in El Centro, a week at their place in Vancouver Wash. and now we had arranged to meet here in Chiapas. They are coming back to the Yucatan with us and plan to also go to Guatemala and Honduras with us in Feb. They actually entered Mexico earlier than we did this year but spent several months in the Baja before taking the ferry over to the mainland.