San Cristobal De Las Casas
Time spent: 62 Days; 3 Aug 2024 - 4 Oct 2024
Elevation: 7,218 ft
Currency: Mexican Pesos
Lodging Cost: $22.79 per night; Casa Huipil
$19.77 per night Airbnb
Arriving in San Cristobal de Las Casas from Tuxtla Gutierrez
You really shouldn't have too much trouble getting from the Tuxtla airport to San Cristobal. It's fairly straight forward and you can book a bus ticket online. I use ADO whenever I can when traveling through South and Central America. It's a major bus line. It is reliable, has comfortable seats and low priced fares. You can book them online and it will tell you the address of the bus station in Tuxtla. Just take an Uber from wherever you are in Tuxtla at the time you need to. The bus ride is about 75 minutes and a nice ride up into the mountains. Your ears will pop and when you get off the bus it will be about 10 degrees cooler than it was in Tuxtla.
I mention in the Tips & Tricks section about downloading Google Maps to use offline. This is how I learned it the hard way. While my phone service was good in town, for whatever reason the bus station was a dead zone. Now San Cristobal doesn't have Uber, but there will be tons of cabs right outside the bus station and I was planning on using the ole "point and show your phone method" with the driver but I couldn't at first. I had to go back in the bus station and log in to wifi to screen shot it. No biggie, but just figured I'd mention it. They took me to my hostel and after that I never came remotely close to needing a ride in town again. Everywhere was walkable.
I told this kid to quit staring at me and mind his damn business
Catedral de San Cristobal de las Casas. On Sept 7, 2017 the area was hit with a massive 8.2 magnitude earthquake and they spent 5 years repairing the damage to the 500 year old church.
Casa Na Bolom, The Jaguar House
Exploring the Town
San Cristobal is one of my favorite places in the world. It is perfect for everyone. If you are a short term traveler, there are plenty of tours to take around the area and plenty of churches and markets to go to if you want to stay local. For long term travelers there is an upscale Chedraui grocery store about a 20 minute walk from the main square and tons of low cost restaurants (even the ones in the heavily tourist areas are pretty reasonably priced).
Plaza de la Paz is the center of the action and several streets branch off from there. There are several streets that are blocked off and dedicated to just foot traffic. You'll find tons of restaurants and souvenir shops here. Generally the further from the Plaza, the cheaper things get.
If you see any "beg-packers", usually white kids with greasy dreadlocks and torn clothes, selling garbage homemade jewelry to fund their trip, don't buy shit from them. They just park their asses in front of real local shops with a blanket of trinkets laid out.
It is also where you go to book any tours you want to go on. There are probably 20 different tour agencies but most generally offer the same 4 tours which I'll cover below. If you want you can price shop but they are usually within 50 pesos ($3) of each other. Another thing I reference in the Tips & Tricks section is how to book these trips. Don't do it online. You'll save a shit load of money and I actually felt more secure doing it here because I had a direct contact with the agencies.
If you are feeling froggy, try some fried grasshoppers. Not bad with a little hot sauce and lemon. They weren't bad, tasted like smoke flavored sticks. Your dentist may wonder why you have bug legs stuck in your teeth.
It's smart to build a church on top of a giant hill. Keeps the old and enfeebled riff raff out of your place.
Where to stay
This one is totally up to you because San Cristobal has every option. Upscale hotels, single room hostels, dorms or Airbnbs. I stayed at a hostel called Casa Huipil for the first week to check out what it was like. I had my own room but it had a shared kitchen and common areas. It was fun. Excellent owner, he took us on a walk up in mountains. Got to meet people from all over. There were people from Russia, Germany, Korea and Mexico staying there. But it really wasn't for me, I was going to be in San Cristobal a while and it didn't have a great workspace or a TV in the room. While I was there I found an AirBNB that was actually nicer and a couple dollars a day cheaper. I booked it for 6 weeks but I loved the city so much I extended it to 8 weeks. I really would have just extended it to last the whole length of my visa but she already had other guests booked for the dates I needed.
Casa Huipil. I was there from 3 Aug 2024 to 10 Aug 2024, last I checked Google said it was "temporarily closed" but I hope they re-open again.
My room at the Casa Huipil hostel
Local Tours
There are four main tours to go on when in San Cristobal. If you check online it will look like a lot more but they are just variations of the same thing. A couple have an overnight option but all the ones I did were just one day. You can click on the images below for more details about each tour.
This is a pretty quick tour to the nearby town of Chamula. You will be able to go into a sacred church and see local market. It only takes about 5 hours total including travel time. Cost: 300 pesos ($17)
This is an all day trip it leaves around 6AM and gets back around 8PM It takes you to a really big waterfall and then Lagos Montebello and a couple of other surrounding lakes. It goes all the way to the Guatemalan border. You can actually see the border and go into Guatemala. Cost: 750 pesos ($43)
Arcotete is a an ecological park and then you head to the Rancho Nuevo caves. This is a short-ish trip. Takes most of the day but you'll be back before dark Cost: 350 pesos ($20) but there is an additional fee of 50 pesos ($3) to go to a deeper, darker section of the cave.
If you thought the last tour was a long day, then get ready. You leave at around 3AM and get back around 10PM This one takes you to Agua Azul which a set of rapids and smaller waterfalls, Misol-Ha which was one giant waterfall you could walk under and then Palenque, an amazing Mayan ruin. Cost: 850 pesos ($49)
Final Thoughts on San Cristobal
This place is really a hidden gem, at least to tourists not from here. While it is tricky to get to because they don't have an airport, it's well worth it. Even without the tours there is plenty to do. Just walking down the street feels like going back in time. The architecture is amazing. All the curving one way streets makes it feel like a remote village in Europe. The churches are cool too. Iglesia de San Cristobal has a hell of a tough hike up some stairs but you can see the whole city from up there.
Also Mercado Viejo is not to be missed if you want a local experience. It is about 8 blocks off the main square and has all kinds of hustle and bustle. Also has some great cheap food. I love sitting at a bench crowded by locals and having a hot sandwich and a cold beer.
If you really want to go off the beaten path I'd walk across town to the Reserva Ecologica and Jardin de Orquideas. It is about a 40 minute walk. But it is a really beautiful orchid garden and ecologic reserve. It has a trail through the woods that leads you through a switchback up a mountain where you can see the whole city.
Mercado Viejo. You buy the chickens "as is"
I just went out for lunch and suddenly there was a fucking parade! This was the Festival Internacional Cervantino Barroco. The whole week after this they had more stuff to do and people were out in the main square at night with live music. It is sometime around the beginning of October
View from the top of the Iglesia de San Cristobal
Going to Guatemala? How to get from San Cristobal to Quetzaltenango
After San Cristobal, my plan was to go home and visit family. But being new to this I hadn't looked at too many maps and didn't realize how close Guatemala was. After going to Lagos Montebello and seeing it was just a short ride away I decided to check that out first.
Getting there wasn't that tough but it was a bit of a trek. It really isn't that far but it turned into an all day trip for me.
They don't have the big ADO buses but there are a few places that offer transport. They aren't hard to find, they are where the restaurants and shops are. You will see signs saying Guatemala, Lake Atitlan and such.
They handle pretty much everything. You go in and there are some forms you fill out. Remember that little receipt like piece of paper you got at the E-gate in Cancun or Mexico City? You better still have it. Give them that and come back the next day and they will have your paperwork ready. It was surprisingly expensive compared to everything else. About 1300 pesos ($75)
I was headed to Quetzaltenango or as it's more commonly referred to in the area, Xela (pronounced shay-luh).
They set it all up for me and had a van pick me up at around 7AM in front of my AirBnb. We stopped at a breakfast buffet at a roadside diner after a few hours on the road. That van takes you to the Guatemalan border where you will have to get out with all of your stuff and go to customs. They didn't inspect anything, just stamped my passport and gave me 90 days. Then we just waited for about an hour to be picked up.
Here you will do a little rotating around. Some passengers in my van were headed to other places so we all got in our vans and headed off. Here is where it got a little wild. The ride from Mexico to the border was fairly easy but it was all windy mountain roads and traffic the whole way.
When we arrived in Xela we had to switch vehicles again, there were 3 random cars just waiting at a gas station, cab drivers I assume, and this is where the language barrier came in to play. Even with the passengers showing them addresses we had a hell of a tough time getting organized in the right cars. But they eventually figured it out and I got dropped off directly at my Airbnb in Xela. Total time: About 13 hours. I don't know if that is the norm but be prepared.