Zapatistas, crocodiles and back to school!

Dear all,

It’s been a while since my last blog and with a good reason: I am back home!! It’s taken me quite a while to ground again, and today I have finally found the time to write the last blog concluding a three month rollercoaster ride! Every day I wake up and think about what about has actually happened, and I can tell you a lot of beautiful things that I am truly grateful for! It’s taken me almost a year to take the decisions I took over the last couple of months and up to now, no regrets whatsoever.

So what has actually happened since the last time I wrote? I think I was still in Merida travelling with my amazing newfound Argentine friends. I was said to say goodbye to them because I really had a good time travelling with them. It’s the people you meet on the trip that make it worthwhile and I consider them true gifts! They already asked me to come with them on the next trip through the North of Argentina in March, but due to school I will not be able to. I will definitely look into ways of visiting them in Buenos Aires. So I said goodbye and took another night bus to San Cristobal de las Casas on my own. San Cristobal is as amazing as every traveler says it is. It’s is a huge colonial city with colourful buildings, plazas, churches, and a huuuuge market (ooops…. I will go and get a bit more money…. haha). As I walked into my dorm (14 beds, one of the biggest dorms so far) I met a really nice Irish guy that had just embarked on a journey I was finishing, so he invited me to dinner that evening. And as these things go in the hostel, before I knew it, our entire dorm was joining and we spent an amazing night with good food in one of the coolest restaurants/bars of San Cristobal.

In San Cristobal I had the luck that just when I arrived, a special off the beaten track excursion was about to start. With two other girls and a little too touchy feely Mexican anthropologist, we went to two Zapatista villages in a small Ford Ka. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) is a revolutionary group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Chiapas is one of the richest states in Mexico but suffers from massive inequality and poverty. Since 1994, they have been in a declared war "against the Mexican state," though this war has been primarily nonviolent and defensive against military, paramilitary, and corporate incursions on their territory (source Wikipedia).
So how do you get to a village like this? Join a crazy anthropologist that leaves you in the middle of the road next to the guarded gate of such a village and you are well on your way! Even though he claimed to have a good relationship with the Zapatistas, he chose to hide and told us he would wait for us, a little strange…. So at the gate the procedure is as follows: you hand in your passport to the guy at the gate (all are wearing hoods, no guns) and wait for an hour or so until the community council is done with reviewing your passport. After that you have to approach the gate and answer some questions: Where are you from, what do you do, are you with an organization, what is the purpose of your visit and what are you going to do with the information obtained here. Then you have to wait for another hour to finally hear you cannot talk to the Zapatistas…. A bit of a disappointment, but understandable, as they are under a lot of pressure from the government and tourists are probably the last thing on their minds. We did get to walk around the village, which in itself was already quite impressive. Every house is decorated with revolutionist graffiti, large images of Emilio Zapatista, Commandante Esther and Che Guevara. On the way back, we were told, we would be stopped by the Mexican army asking us what we were doing here. Due to the unique mix of people, the soldiers started to wonder why we were here. So our little Mexican friend told them he was in love with me, and that the other girls were my friends and that if the soldier wanted to, he would give him one of their phone numbers! Sometimes you really do not want to speak Spanish! And as the soldiers searched through our car and our bags, one of them pulled one of my tampons out as if he had never seen one before and it was a new sort of weapon… uhum…. Embarrassing!

The following day, I chose for a little less off the beaten track activity and went on a boat trip through the Cañon de Sumidero, a gorgeous piece of Mexico, wow! The gorge is magnificent and you get to see crocodiles from only a few meters away, where’s Steve Irwin when you would like to see him wrestle one of them?! Back in San Cristobal I met two really nice Danish girls and as girls do, we went shopping! After a lot of uuuuh’s, aaaaah’s and woooow’s they couldn’t stop telling me how grateful they were for showing me the market! They went crazy (as I did a couple of days ago!). Together we travelled to Mexico City where we found the best Chinese restaurant ever, cheap, lots of food and good too! The girls left that same evening, I the following morning. I was joined by a pastor on the way home, so a promising journey ahead!

My parents came to pick me up from the airport and my brother had also taken the afternoon off to have a nice little family reunion! I spent some days at my parent’s place and now I am back home, embarking on a new journey: the Master in Latin American Studies. It’s been a week since I have started and I am already loving it! Today I handed in my first essay and I am reading my second book due today…. yess it’s an intensive first two months they say. I have got classes three days a week in Amsterdam and the other days of the week I am in Eindhoven studying and looking for a part-time job, so any tips are welcome!!

I wanted to thank all of you for the mails, messages on facebook, on my blog, text messages (even though I don’t think I received all of them due to the problems with my cell phone) and other forms of overseas contact. I never expected so many of you would actually enjoy reading my blog haha!!! Anyways, as I mentioned earlier, it’s the people you meet during a journey that make it worthwhile, and that definitely also holds for all of you! I look back on an amazing time and am looking forward to seeing all of you again soon!

Once again, thanks for all your warm, sweet, nice, funny messages, I really enjoyed reading them!!

Big hug!!!

Karlijn