Apparently if you are caucasian and stay long enough here you are required to have dreadlocks. So on to Guatemala we go!

We made another grand departure from our itinerary, and stuck between threats of rain and an ever-growing desire to get to Guatemala so we can start our spanish classes already, we decided to bypass Palenque (for now) and headed straight to San Cristòbal de las Casas, a lovely mountain town where pine trees intermingle with the palm trees.  It is decidedly chilly, and for the first time we found blankets on our beds instead of having a ceiling fan.  Our bus ride was eleven hours long, which was actually nice because we were told it would be twelve. I can´t complain much, we both slept most of the way (the bus left at 10pm), and this being Mexico we had more leg room than you do on an airplane.  (That will change once we leave Mexico though and we start riding the chicken buses.)

We arrived not knowing exactly where to go, but we got a great sell from a tout for a hostel that offered a free taxi ride from the bus station - what more could a weary traveler ask for?  (There is nothing we hate more than paying for a taxi.  Remnants of being a starving actor in NYC I guess.)

We´ve been here, what, two or three days now, I´m having a hard time keeping track of the date.  It seems at times that we are in Tibet, with all these colorful flags hanging over the narrow, hilly streets like Tibetan prayer flags.  We both have a thing for stairs, and find it hard to resist a good set anywhere, and we´ve had several nice adventures climbing up the hills to find nice little churches at the top.  The town itself is gorgeous, with every building painted these crazy awesome colors, everything is bright blue and orange and yellow and red.  Several of the main streets are blocked off for pedestrians only, which makes walking around a lot nicer too.  Everywhere people are selling things, usually something to wear or something to eat.  Women walk around with babies slung on their backs and an armful of brightly colored blankets or scarfs or whatever.  My eyes love all the color, I would love to buy a stack of blankets to take home, but of course my backpack wasn´t made to accomodate much in the way of souveniers.  I wish I had a bag like Mary Poppins!

Our food adventures continue as well.  We have a tendancy to frequent these tiny little places called comedors, where someone will set up a few tables, and then make one or two dishes to sell that day.  Sometimes it is something familiar like pozole, sometimes it comes with a name we´ve never heard of and we just have to wait to find out what we will be eating.  Sometimes they don´t even ask us what we want, they just sit us down and bring whatever they feel like.  Without exception the food has been good, although sometimes it comes with bits and pieces that we politely shove to the side.  David ended up with a stew that had bits of things that may have been vegetable, may have been fruit, it was hard to tell, and though there were clearly three different kinds of meat, it was impossible to know exactly what kind of meat they were.  (Our vote was for pork, chicken and beef, but I hope he didn´t commit some unforgivable sin.)  The last pozole I got made me sweat it was so spicy, that darn habeñero.  They have dishes of it on the tables, and just the smell makes my eyes water.  Yesterday we sat down and the man yelled "torta, torta grande!!" at us a few times.  We've had tortas before, it is sort of a mix between a hamburger and a sandwich, with lettuce and tomato and maybe some avocado over some kind of meat.  He finally brought us these enormous sandwiches, with some fried ham that smelled delicious, but nestled on top of the ham were two raw hot dogs.  The last hot dog I ate was about ten years ago, and that was only because we went to Cony Island and that is just what you eat when you go to Cony Island.  Mixed in with everything else I managed to eat it though, I'm certainly getting more used to eating unusual things.  But you feel like you are sitting in someone`s kitchen, so picking it off would have seemed rude.  Manners over taste buds!

Not all of our meals are weird though.  Last night we found another great taco place.  And, believe it or not, but David is eating beans!  It is still somewhat reluctant, but he isn´t holding back either.  He has even had a few bites of my peanut butter, something I never expected.  See what adventuring does for you?

Our plan at this point is to head down to Guatemala tomorrow, to a city called Quetzaltenango, or, for short, Xela (pronounced SHEY-la.)  It is, I believe, the second biggest city in Guatemala, and has a repuatation for being the place to go if you are serious about learning Spanish.  It sounds a bit snobby to me, but they say the cities of Antigua or around Lake Atitlàn bring so many more tourists that you end up speaking English so often that your progress on Spanish is hindered.  I´m sure we will go to all three places so we can decide for ourselves, but we hit Xela first.  There are a couple of volcanoes around for us to explore on the weekends, and I´m sure we will have a great time if we can find a good teacher. 

After we´ve studied for a month or more, we will again start the exploration.  We are hoping that when we get to Tikal, we can return to Mexico on the river crossing and get back to Palenque.  It was a tough decision to skip it when we were so close, but we want to be ready to start classes on Monday and didn´t want to be delayed another week. 

We had the option of paying about $30 each to pay for a shuttle bus to take us to Xela from here, but we decided to rough it and save some money.  We got a bus down to the border town (about $7 each) tomorrow morning.  From there we hop in a taxi to take us the 5km to the Guatemalan border town of La Mesilla.  From there we will have to find and jump on a chicken bus either direct to Xela, or we may have to connect in Huehuetenango.  That part of the bus should cost us less than $5 each (according to our guidebook, which is now three years old.)  So it will take a little longer, and we will no doubt find the chicken bus an adventure in itself, but isn´t that the point?

Oh, I should mention that we got a new Lonely Planet guidebook for Central America.  We found it in a used book store here, and it is well worn and dog-eared.  As we paged through it we found some things circled and others crossed out, little notes written in the margins and the names of unlisted hostels marked on the maps.  I half expected to find "Property of the Half-Blood Prince" written on the inside cover.  Let`s just hope that we have the same set of tastes and expectations as did the previous owners!