The Thomas Crown Affair - Part 1

We left you all in Gautemala, after which we made the border crossing back into Mexico and on to San Cristobal de las Casas (just the 11 hours crammed in a mini van, thats all). San Cristobal is another beautiful colonial town (read: numerous churches and cobbled streets), , but this one comes with a rebellios streak. Chiapas, the region within which one finds San Cristobal, is the home to the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), or more commonly known as the Zapatista movement. This post modern revolutionary moment is most widely known for their armed uprising against the Mexican military at the San Cristobal Zocalo (town square) in 1994 and the fact that their front line troops are primarily women, dressed all in black. The town and the movement also has some relation to the Cuban revolution, as Fidel Castro met Che Guevara in Chiapas while exciled from Cuba. Therefore, all across the city we found Zapatista inspired grafiti, Zapatista hand crafts and homage paid to Che and Fidel.

Apart from taking in the beautiful colonial sights of the city (again read: numerous churches and cobbled streets), we took to the Sumidera Canyons located an hour out of town. These Canyons reach a height of 400 metres, providing some pretty spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, the river that flows through the canyons is also the local dump, so the vista was often intervened by masses of rubbish floating in the water. The river is also home to some crocodiles which we stumbled upon late in the day. Mat thought the one we found was too big and too still to be real, so suggested we play along with the tour operator´s joke that it was a real crocodile. Apologies were made to all on board when he realised that the 3.5 metre croc was well and truly alive ('look at the size of em Terri').

Unfortunately things turned a little sour after the river boat cruise while perusing the local crafts at the market in Chiapa de Corozo, Mexico´s oldest town. Apparently one too many streetside tacos from the night before had taken their toll, and a small shart occurred. Nothing major, but a shart is a shart and the stats to the left reflect this. The clean up was a funny affair too, as the 3 peso local toilet came with no toilet seat and only 3 squares of one ply toilet tissue. You do the math! Fear not, the photo below is not of the shart, but of the joyous moments before...


From San Cristobal, we took an overnight bus to Oaxaca (pronounced Wo-ha-car), a city reccommended to us by Nic & Shane from Waikanae Beach and Jorge from Spanish lessons at the Waikanae community centre. Oaxaca is another beautiful colonial city (again read: numerous churches and cobbled streets), and the home of Mole, a Mexican dish of chicken (usually) with a chilli chocolate sauce made with 21 spices (think of a non-alcoholic and nice tasting version of Jagermiester for food). Nothing more can be said about this dish other than wonderful - 'Holy Mole' is the name of the restaurant we will be opening when we return home with an illegal Mexican immigrant in the bag.


We wearily decided to tackle another set of ruins from Oaxaca, making the journey to Monte Alban. Set a top a mountain overlooking the Oaxacan valley, these ruins have been extensively rebuilt and cleared of natural bush. While these ruins failed to make the playoffs for best ruins visited, they were still a spectacular sight and worthy of a visit. The centre of Oaxaca is the Zocalo, or town square. This place is a hive of activity, with restaurants lining it´s fringes and events within the square every night. While in Oaxaca we were able to catch some local middle aged woman doing a flower dance of some description, catch some tunes from the local symphony orchestra and join in a massive religous gathering of some note. Every night there was some other expression of the local culture which had our attention and had us thinking about the use of similar public spaces in New Zealand.


Finally, and the link to the title of this post, we made a memorable trip to the Oaxacan contemporary art musuem. A fantastic collection topped off with a brilliant shop within which we stumbled on to a set of four beautiful art prints. The 25,000 peso price tag did not appeal, but we asked to take a closer look at the prints. Soon we found that it was in fact a set of 38 prints, produced by 38 different Oaxacan artists on the 100th anniversary of the death of Jose Guadelupe Posada, a 19th century Mexican print artist. The price tag was still a little steep, but we were then informed of a local studio that was selling the complete set, unsigned, for 4,500 peso (US$450) - how convenient! ´Lets Buy It´ was the call, supported by a suggestion that it could be an ealry birthday present for Caroline and sit outside of the travel budget. Over three days we made 15 visits to La Curtiduria, the gallery in question, which remained closed at all times. Nothing major, just the equivalent of walking from Parliament to the Basin Reserve every time.


Dejected, we discarded our dream of owning a set of prints, until 8pm on a Friday night, when we were provided with a mystery phone number and the name Maria - perhaps she could help us out 12 hours before we were to leave Oaxaca. Maria could in fact help us - she owned La Curtiduria and would have a set ready for us in the morning. We waited at the Zocalo for her arrival, peso in pocket and bag for carrying prints at the ready, but alas, there was no sign and we departed for the bus station having wasted many an hour trying to locate a set of these prints. Our hopes dashed, we headed for Mexcio City 4,500 peso better off...



Happy Birthday to Meg, hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy the gifts to come.