44. San Cristobal

Last night we took a 13 hour bus from Merida to San Cristobal. Apparently, there isn’t an executive class bus that runs directly to SC and we were only able to book first class seats. I had been having nightmares about the bus – my back, the bathrooms, food, getting car sick – but thanks to a last minute margarita at our local bar, a few thrown together ham tacos, a name-brand, non addictive sleep aid and somewhat frequent stops, it wasn’t so bad. There was a nun sitting behind us. She snored almost the entire way.

The locals call SC Joval. It’s pronounced HOE-VEL, not HAW-VEL. Mispronouncing it earns you a very dirty look from your taxi driver from the bus station. Oops.

We’re staying at Hotel Posada Jovel. It’s not fancy, but well located and priced right. The beds are typically Mexican – hard. Water pressure is almost non-existent, but at least it gets hot and stays hot long enough to get the conditioner washed out.

After checking into our hotel, we found a walk street called The Anador and had breakfast. Before heading back to the hotel for a long nap, we wondered around the Indian craft market at Santo Domingo Church. I’m embarrassed to say that I bartered down a long sleeve embroidered shirt from 90 to 60 pesos. It’s the same shirt I was going to pay 200 for in Merida. But softer. The Mr bought a Zapatista key chain from one of the Indian girls who walk up and down the Anador

San Cristobal has a thing for fireworks. They seem to go of randomly and sound more like a firing squad, or at least what I imagine a firing squad to sound like, but I’ve been assured that someone, somewhere for some reason is letting off fireworks in some sort of celebration. Fortunately, they don’t seem to go off after 9pm

The Mr has a friend from college who lives and works here. And by friend I mean frat brother. We had dinner with him and his girlfriend at a very “posh” Italian place also on the Anador. Pizza and red wine. Turns out we knew a lot of the same people during school. There was this one call guy in particular whom we’ll call Van Man that the Mr’s friend used to live with after college. We’re going to call him that because that’s what we girls called him my freshman year. Van Man as in: Hey, let’s see if we can get Van Man to take us to that off campus party. And after dinner, they did their secret handshake.