Our last full day in San Cristóbal only had two things on the agenda: a COVID test for those who needed one to return to the United States and dinner this evening with the group. The rest of the day was ours to explore the town. In the courtyard of our hotel, three vendors invited by Norma were on hand: Francesca from Amatenango selling embroidered blouses and huipiles; Gabriela’s friend Jessica brought coffee and pinole, which is made from roasted ground corn mixed with cocoa, agave, cinnamon, chia seeds, vanilla, and other spices, and finally, the third table was filled with pottery and other beautiful artifacts. We picked up another blouse, the last one of this adventure, and a pound of coffee grown in a cloud forest. COVID test and shopping done, we headed into town for a final round of sightseeing.

Iglesia de Mexicanos was the first church that caught our eye in the distance on our attempt to wander the historic area of the city.

I’ll never see sunflowers in a church the same again, reminders of Zinacantan.

We are out on the streets for nothing more than greater familiarity with San Cris. After the previous days of profound cultural immersion, it’s nice to have nothing more to do than check out the amazing murals of this city.

With dinner scheduled for 6:00, we needed to get lunch out of the way in order to have an appetite later.

We dipped into La Lupe restaurant, hoping that the darker clouds flirting overhead wouldn’t rain on as we took our seats outside, but this musician moved in shortly afterward, showering us with music. Notice his bag? It’s the same kind Caroline bought three of, small, medium, and large, a kind of Matryoshka purse.

I don’t want to believe that all this street art is from the same person or group, though I have to then wonder if the crazy eyes are just some serendipitous characteristic popular in San Cris or why so many murals feature them.

I wonder how many people in the U.S. think about the name burrito and recognize that it translates to “small donkey?” Then, as I ponder the Donki Burritos N Bowls I slip down the whole “donkey little donkey,” imagining “big burro little burro” and switching images of the animals and wrapped foodstuff. It starts to become a chicken/egg situation.

Had we never visited a Mayan cemetery, I wouldn’t have had an inkling of an idea what these targets with an empty center were used for.

The eyes have captured me; I’m seriously enjoying these murals. Then, I finally noticed the tag TERAZ. Thanks to the magic of search engines, entering San Cristóbal Teraz Murals, I’m delivered to the Instagram page of Teraz E.T. The mystery is solved: this is not by chance; it’s the imagination of this person working to entertain us with his psychedelic creations that are seemingly everywhere here in town.

This is but one head of three painted on the front of this building. Should you want to see the rest, I can highly recommend that you really should visit San Cris.

Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is the church up another hill, though not to the tune of 23 flights of stairs that were required to scale the heights to Iglesia de San Cristóbalito.

This is a first for me: an altar featuring neon lighting.

Not wanting to simply turn around and head back through the center of town, we left the hill the church was on via its opposite side. A small road led down the hill and back around to the right, offering us this view of some plots of land reminiscent of an overlook we took in while on Kauai, Hawaii.

Viva Chiapas…a solid sentiment.

This is obviously not done by Teraz, but the eyes certainly seem inspired by his work.

There’s no doubt who created this and that I have a soft spot for the style.

Some cosmic, multi-cultural, multi-dimensional mural art going on here. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the swastika, but as it’s not turned 45 degrees, I’m going with it as being related to Hinduism, not fascism.

Maybe had we looked for a map that details the murals of San Cris, we’d have found one, but if such a thing doesn’t exist, it should.

Oh, this one is all about me. Hear all the evil, see all the evil, and scream about evil. Obviously, there’s more to this mural than just that, as I think the monkey on the left is a Zapatista and the one on the right a follower of Che Guevara, but what is the reference of the one in the middle? [To me, all three depict Zapatistas – Caroline]

Monkeys are everywhere but don’t confuse the plantains with bananas. This truck, with its loudspeaker blaring into the neighborhood about the availability of plantains, is not something I’ve ever seen in America.

Who could have imagined that our afternoon wandering would bring us into so many monkey-themed moments? Up until the moment we saw the sign for La Antigua – Galería de Arte & Café, we had no idea what street we were on and if we’d been on it before. But this was where we first saw the work of Tex from ArTex Centro Cultural Independiente and the incredible huipiles of Alberto López Gómez of K’uxul Pok.

This chance re-encounter would be fortuitous as I’d wished that I’d taken more photos in the gallery as maybe we’d be interested in buying a piece after we returned to the States. So, I got busy taking photos of the works I was most interested in and that I’d failed to capture a few days ago.

I also finally got the nerve to ask about the price of these, knowing that if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Oh, that’s all? Jeez, I think we can afford that. But we don’t have a free centimeter left in our bags; there is NO way we can squeeze even a stamp into those suitcases… “We can ship it to you!”

Caroline and I agree that this is our favorite from the three in contention, and it was taken off the wall as it was about to become ours, proudly held up by Victor. There are other mentions of the Monkey Men in a previous post or two, so I’ll leave that there; plus, I’m trying to keep this entry short as I’ve been writing non-stop for a week now, and I’m ready to move on. As of this writing, the painting hasn’t arrived, but I did receive a shipping notification.

What is this, John? It’s polished stones of the well-worn sidewalks we’ve been traveling on. Not an outrageously beautiful photo but an important memory.

There are no amount of photos I can snap off that will leave me with the impression that I’ve saved what I need to feed a memory wanting to hold on to the essence of this place. Then again, I have no idea yet what the essence of San Cris is, which is great as it implies we’ve visited an enigma compared to a city like New Orleans that holds no allure after our encounters that had me feeling I knew enough.

Iglesia de Santa Lucia, completed in 1892, is still being repaired following the massive earthquake of 2017, I’m hoping they repaint the turquoise highlights that used to grace this church.

And we just keep walking…

…until we reach the next church, this one is the Iglesia de San Francisco. Back in 1577, there was also a convent here, but it’s now long gone. The current church was built in the 18th century.

Our last photo of the day is from Cacao Nativa definitely a happy place. A perfect ending to a perfect trip.

If you are astute, you’ll notice that earlier, I spoke of a farewell dinner this night at 6:00, well that happened but not without some self-inflicted drama that I’m going to share. Caroline will wish I didn’t offer the thoughts I’d written that night, but I can live with my embarrassment as it’s not the worst I’ve done, and I still feel that with a week between then and now, my tension is worth remembering.

Here we are at our farewell dinner that I inexcusably shot in the head after leveling a “fuck you” at one of the other guests. What a mortifying embarrassment that I gave in so easily to their baiting. Eleven others in this group of 12 had already shared their trip observations, and I was last. I might have gotten 60 seconds in before this other person mumbled some unintelligible words under their breath toward me and my comments.

I knew this was coming due to the snipes that had already been offered by this person, and still, I wasn’t prepared for how quickly it arrived. So, what words triggered this? I objected to characterizations of some of the people we were visiting as being dirty in their poverty; I listened acutely to the conversations behind and around me. I followed this up with my dislike for the undercurrent of disparaging the local men. This was from tired, repetitive questions asking where the men were; obviously, they were doing labor as we saw it all the time. Questions of male alcohol abuse, violence, and taking the wages of the women were a near-constant refrain. Not only did we see the men of the community, but it had also been pointed out multiple times that they were out working or had left for the United States to work there and support their families here.

It was then that the mumbled interjection took place. With my untouched dinner still in front of me, my time at this dinner came to an abrupt end when I shamed myself, embarrassed my wife, created the spectacle of the evening, and then I walked out in a huff. Then, here I was standing outside, the sad asshole who couldn’t contain himself playing right into this guest’s wish that I wasn’t there; she won; I took the low road.

A sad stain on an otherwise perfect adventure resonating in my own way with my fellow human beings that are more fully realized than many others I’ve encountered in travels in America and a few on this particular journey. But John, you’ve known this bias against those that our dominant culture considers “other” for nearly 50 years of my conscious mind. These fellow citizens are tools used to keep humans apart. You can’t comment about they and them, trash-strewn environments, and personal hygiene while anonymizing people in hostile categorizations. The people we were meeting are part of us, and we them.

We were gifted a moment to share intimacy in the homes and dreams of people who allowed us in, assuming we were human too, but behind their backs, we are a culturally impoverished bunch of cruel yet privileged troglodytes.

Maybe I can discover some way to meaningfully apologize for what we’ve burdened ourselves with so people surviving in the corners of this corrosive isolation might come to understand our abhorrent ignorance. But that would require we find a fraction of the love I’ve seen in abundance here in the ancestral lands of the Maya.

I’d also pointed out in my 60-second missive that I sensed that the Maya we’d visited were wealthier than the majority of people at the table, who all had an abundance of cash, while the Maya, on the other hand, had a cosmological love that I felt is lacking in our country and is the true measure of riches.