Revolutionaries and Swine Flu, Oh My!

We are in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

As for the Zapatistas we have seen lots of dolls, postcards, posters etc. But the checkpoints we passed through are easy because of the California plates and our light skin. The first they looked in, asked our nationality, and waved us on; the second they just waved us through.

As for Swine Flu there are a few people wearing masks, maybe one out of every 10. It seems people are excited the shutdown is over. We got into San Cristobal yesterday after an 8 hour drive from Xela. Thanks to the change to daylight savings and our having left early since everyone in the hostel in Xela was up at the crack of dawn, we were here with daylight to spare and enjoyed strolling the picturesque streets.

We left Suchitoto the morning of May 4 and after driving 9 and a half hours got to Xela just before dark. What a luxury to pull into a town where you don't have to look at the map! While we were familiar with Suchitoto, Xela was a good old friend that took very little brain power.
I was extremely excited when I realized that we could go to La Bakeshop for more awesome Mennonite baked goods in the morning before we left.

The only problem was we didn't leave the next morning... When Dave went to get the van, it started spewing oil! Thankfully the man who ran the parking lot had a nephew who was a mechanic. While we were for the nephew, there was time for La Bakeshop and the glorious cinnamon donut. The nephew came and the problem was a faulty oil filter we got when our oil was changed in Nicaragua. After a trip to two autoparts stores and about 30 minutes of fiddling by the nephew we had a new oil filter and no more spewing oil. The downside was it was already 2pm.

We had debated contacting Elsa, Marco, Maria (our host family from before) but decided not to because we didn't want to bother them, and we just wanted to sleep. But while waiting in line for the ATM, we ran into Marco who insisted we come to the house that evening to say hello. I am so glad we did. It was great to see them and talk about our travels.

Yesterday morning we had take 2 of driving to Mexico and it went off without a hitch. We also had our fastest border crossing of 25 minutes for both sides, including driving 4km between offices and me insisting we go in and make sure the car permit was in order, which it was.

Pictures soon. The wifi at our hostel isn't working and there isn't a card reader on the free computer...