Where are you from? Um..um...Seat 10!

Last weekend I took a little road trip with my roomie Megan and a couple of friends from Mexico to a town in Chiapas called San Cristobal de las Casas.  Three of the girls from Washington, DC and 45 other students from Ibero University in Mexico are doing their service work in this city, so we decided to go visit them for a little bit. 

It was about a 7 hour bus ride from Tapachula, up the coast of Chiapas heading north.  One of the stops we made was in a little town called Arriaga, about 200 km north of Tapachula.  This is the main hub for migrants waiting to hop on top of the train that goes north.  Apparently a few years ago the tracks in Tapachula used to be the main location for migrants waiting to hop the train, but after Hurricane Stan destroyed most of Tapachula in 2005, the tracks were abandoned.  There's a really interesting website that follows a few migrants starting in Tapachula and going to Arriaga before they jump the train, http://www.sequential-one.com/blog/?p=4534.  From what I've read, Arriaga is a pretty dangerous area because there are gangs that take advantage of the migrants passing through (don't worry Mom, I wasn't in any danger).  I'm getting off track (pun intended) but it just gives you an idea of how much migration is everywhere here.

Anyway, from where we got on the tour bus to Tuxtla Gutierrez (capitol of Chiapas) we passed about 6 checkpoints where either officials boarded the bus to check between seats and in the luggage bins, or we had to hop off the bus where people checked our bags.  This is how I almost got deported from Mexico. I had been sleeping and noticed that the bus stopped.  A man in a blue uniform with a menacing face (I thought so at least) got on the bus and was checking it out, he stopped by my seat and asks me a question that I didn't quite hear. I had one of those moments where I was terrified to be confronted by an official, mixed with translation issues so I kind of shouted back nervously, "Seat number 10!"  Turns out he was a migration officer and was asking me where I was from.  I thought because of pure stupidity he might send me back to the U.S. But I made it okay.

As soon as we arrived in San Cristobal, I was relieved by two things.  One, that it wasn't boiling hot and I was not sweating profusely for the first time in 4 weeks; and two, that the place was crawling with gringos and foreigners and I was not the only guera in town. This past weekend may have been a record of receiving only one shout out from a passer-by "hey baby!" while here in Tapachula, I would say there's an average of about 10 "hey baby"'s and "hello beautiful"'s each day.  Tapachula does not have a lot of tourists nor gringo visitors, hence the whole world staring at me like I am an alien when I walk by. San Cristobal is a very small, romantic colonial city located in the highlands of Chiapas and was the location of the Zapatista Rebellion in 1994 (google it). Now it has kind of transformed into a romanticized haven for tourists with cobblestone streets lined with European-looking and some even European-owned cafes and a plaza filled with hippies as well as indigenous women and children selling scarves, bracelets, and other crafts. There are pedestrian walk-ways and antique looking cathedrals.  Apparently there are streets known as "Gringolandia."  I had a great weekend going to cafes and hanging out with my friends from DC and also hanging out with my friends Raquel and Adriana who are from Mexico City and are doing their service work at DIF also.

Just chillin at a European cafe in Mexico

Nothing like eating breakfast from a Zapatista fruit cup!

Being super-touristy in the plaza (and not too many people are staring)

It was kind of funny though because on the ride home as we got closer to Tapachula I had that anxious/excited feeling when you've been gone from home for a little while and are just about to arrive home.  Apparently despite all of the downsides to living in Tapachula (unbearable heat, cockroaches, creepy men), I really love it here and wouldn't want to be living anywhere else.