San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas

Today we spent the day walking around town and looking at the many crafts they sell here, mostly textiles, clothing, and dolls. The architecture is pretty nice, colonial and bright colors with red-tiled roofs. This photo above was taken in the evening with the sun poking through the mountain clouds. Weather has been cool, in the low 60s at the most, but still way better than Fairbanks! We ate vegetarian food again for our 2pm lunch/dinner because it is difficult to get vegetables when traveling cheap. When we aren't in a big city we generally just eat some form of a taco (taco, gordita, tostada, tlyuda, pelliscada, chalupa, enchilada, sopes, etc.) for most meals, which gets old pretty fast. We checked out the Santo Domingo church, which was beautiful with intricately carved designs on the church facade.

Then we hung out for awhile trying to get pictures of people, which was different because we were doing it secretly not to offend any of the indigenous people who might not like their photos taken. Most of the photos got deleted because they didn't turn out but a few survived (we need to practice more taking discreet photos). The women are mostly doing crafts and trying to sell them to the tourists. Their poor kids help their mothers out on the street, desperately trying to get you to buy bracelets, belts, and other crafts (see photo below). Emily ended up buying a skirt at the street market and Luke is in the market for a highland wool vest, which are really nice. Most of them are kind of small for him though, because the Mayan are such small people! The XL seemed to fit a bit better, but he hasn't found the right one yet.

Tomorrow and the next day we will take tours our of the city and check out some nearby indigenous towns and go on a big river canyon boat ride.

Gringo gets attacked by kids selling stuff

Pink building with interesting design

Indigenous ladies with babies in front of the church