Sunday, April 20, 2008

Mexico trip, family, and friends






Laini and I just returned from Mexico (southern Mexico actually, and the state of Chiapas to be exact). For those not familiar with that area of the Mexico, check out some of the info on Wikipedia. In a word, WOW! Strangely, almost no Americans travel to Chiapas, tending to visit Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, and the like (which I'm sure are great too), so we mostly met travelers from within Mexico (traveling from Mexico City or Monterey), Germany, Italy, France, and Israel while visiting and exploring what we could of the region in a little over a week there. We also managed to squeeze in some visits with family in CA while we were there too (some of those pix are mixed in above).

Instead of our travel-norm of doing things more leisurely on our own -- finding opportunities to sit and draw the surroundings for hours and days -- we opted for day tours with small groups and sometimes a guide to give us more of a chance to get places we normally couldn't--mostly because this was going to be a shorter trip, but also because, as I said, there were certain places we just wouldn't be able to access on our own. Pretty much without fail we were overwhelmed with the kindness from the locals, amazed at the rich colors of the buildings, and blown away by the beautiful textiles and leather goods. For anyone looking for a little bit of an exotic location to go on their next vacation I can't recommend Chiapas enough! Our home bases were primarily San Cristobal de las Casas and Palenque and there's SO much to see I only wish we could have stayed longer, or could afford to go back very soon! But alas, there're things to do in the "real world" that we need to attend to! Back to work! (which is fantastic too, don't get me wrong! :)

And for more pics about our trip and Chiapas in general, check out Laini's blog. She'll be doing several posts about our trip and the area we explored over the coming days.

Be well everyone...and do some traveling yourself!

2 comments:

Alex S said...

You weren't kidding about the humidity- Laini's hair really frizzed out in that upper left photo in the second batch. GREAT photos! Welcome back & so glad you two had such an awesome, joyful time! My favorite photo is of Leroy. (oh, that reminds me, does Leroy have a passport? He will need one for this Friday.) As I just wrote to Laini, you should see no major infrastructure changes on the house...its (mostly) only visual damage where I yanked the water disco balls out of the ceiling. Don't worry about it!

Matt Camp said...

Wow, that is beautiful, I've always wanted to give Mexico another go and this place looks great. And Laini's hair looks awesome.