Around San Cristobal

This is a photo of Michelle near the zocalo which I understand to be the central square. Most cities that we have visited have a zocalo, it´s a typical city structure. The woman walking in the other direction has a baby wrapped in a shawl behind her. This is a very common way of carrying babies in this area. Indiginous women especially, will carry a baby while carrying out their work, sometimes strenous work, as if the baby was not on them at all. Also it seems like the babies love it. I have not heard a baby cry yet! Additionally, women carry enourmous loads here on their backs to get their goods to the marketplace. (I´ll try to get some pictures this). It puts anything a man would want to do to shame.....seriously, in fact, I have not seen a man yet carry loads like these women do. Sometimes, they wrap rope around
their foreheads and carry these enormous loads on their back, huge bags of grain, wood, fruit, etc - huge.....literally back breaking work, and not just the young, old seem to do just the same if not more.

The 2 pictures here depìct the Southern part of San Cristobal....very pretty, colonial, touristy, but just 8 blocks North of here, is where the real action happens for the local communities. They have a marketplace that is buzzing with agricultural products and anything else you could possible want. This is where the indigenous women come from the mountains to sell their wares. The women are quite short and wear the weave pattern and colors that represents their indigenous culture. I have been told that it is the women that keep their culture alive. The men leave and go work in the cities, etc, but the women continue to wear the colors of their ¨clan¨and carry on the traditions. It´s beautiful to see.

This is kiko, who belongs to the owner of our hotel. He´s cute, but I´ve been told that he will bite, so despite my wish to have him on my shoulder, I have to refrain. (I love parrots becasue I had one as a kid, named Junior.) Mario, the owner tells me that maybe if we stay for a year, Kiko will be able to go on my shoulders without biting my ear. Unfortunately we will not be here this long, although it´s a beautiful place to live.

We´ve put schooling on hold until we get to Guatemala. There are so many words that we need to memorize before we can really learn the formal structure of the language, so we are shelving school for several weeks. Until then, we are self studying most of the day.

More posts to come.... M&M