Soggy San Christobal - and no Zapatistas : (

High up in the Chiapan Mountains, San Christobal was made famous in 1994, when Zapatista rebels stormed the city in an attempt to liberate their indigenous heartland from the clutches of government control and decades of poverty.

I am not sure what I was expecting - maybe the streets covered in Anarchist graffitti, squares filled with balaclava wearing rebels and dark smokey bars where revolutionary debate would be thrashed out and Comandante Marcos would address curious travellers and invite them into the hills to see what all the fuss was about - but I was not as I thought (and to be honest also hoped) it would be.

Certainly beautiful (if a little chilly and wet in the evenings) it has a lovely hippy vibe, with cobbled streets, shops stuff with pretty things, great cafes with even better coffee, bustling and beautifully colourful markets selling everything from ponchos, to amber jewellery, embroidered bags, belts, throws and pretty much anything else you can think of, and even REAL vegetarian food! Somehow though, after my initial excitement, it felt a little flat.

That said, I had a lovely couple of days. I celebrated Halloween with two hilarious Danish girls at a local bar and woke up with whiskers painted on my face and a shocking hangover. I powered through and visited the small indigenous village of Chamula. A fiercely traditional place where pologemy is still practised, it is quite normal to VERY young women walking about with babies strapped to their exposed breasts, and where you cannot take photos because they believe its steals their souls (!).

I got to witness the following weirdness, as part of their regilious ritual for All Saints Day: The main plaza full of elders dressed in black and white sheepskin smocks (think fluffy sandwich boards with a belts holding it together) drinking bottles of coca cola in rows on mass - get this - ´to keep the evils spirits away´(!). Women wafted strong pine smelling incense about, while the men (now wearing their traditional hats with which looked like made to measure plastic bags to keep off the rain) chanted in low voices and moved towards the church. I on the other hand, was in flipflops and and got drenched.

Inside, it was decorated with beautiful bouquets of flowers, the floor scattered with pine needle and candles burinign in every corner. Seems normal enough until you notice that around the Virgin Mary has been drapped a string of illuminous green flishing disco lights, which add a certain air of Vegas to the whole thing. Why? I have no idea. I am just glad I missed the sacrficial killing of the chickens!

Back down in the town that evening (and a few more pretty things from the market later) it was the local childrens time to get in on the party. Cue streets filled with rampaging ghosts and gouls, pick up trucks crammed with devils and vampires, and a parade led by actually quite scary youths driving motorbikes, weilding enormous (and very real) knifes and brandishing flame throwers. eeek!

So all in all San Christobal was pretty cool, though the obvious and widespread poverty makes the 1994 uprsising all the more understanding, while at the same time the lack of overt resistance to it leaves me feeling even more just where this revolutionary movement of which they speak actually is!