The Return, Pt. 5: Finally, San Cristobal de las Casas

It is such a lovely feeling to step outside of one's own room, into the sunshine, in bare feet, and into one's own kitchen. To make a cup of tea and enjoy it in the sunshine, to say "Hm, what should I do now? Suppose I'll lie in the hammock a bit." This is what my mad rush down through Mexico brought me to and now I can appreciate every second of the return to the far south.

The first week was a bit rough as all of my previous plans regarding San Cris fell through (well almost all of them), but luckily they were quickly replaced by serendipitous happenings, thanks to God. A quick trip to the beach, ah lovely lovely Boca del Cielo, helped me to get my thoughts in order. I ran into an old friend from Mexico City and we spent the whole week catching up and engaging in extravagant time-wasting activities while he told me story after story about his recent trip to Cuba. And just as I was about to be homeless once again, a friend of this friend graciously and unexpectedly offered me a room in his home, free of charge.

I have to say thank you, thank you about a million times a day. I've been so very lucky.

Also in these past couple of weeks Abigail has arrived, just in time to give me some additional perspective on the madness and beauty that surrounds us. We worked in the Casa del Pan organic garden once again, where we worked alongside a beautiful Canadian family and a new garden worker whose interests range from compost to windsurfing to therapeutic massage.

It's amazingly easy to spend an entire day just seeking out ingredients for and making no-bake cookies. Vanilla was the hardest, "Oooh" A woman who runs an herbal stand in the market tells me, "That's very hard to find, I don't think anyone will have it, try the other herbal stand around the corner." Well, we couldn't find that stand but indeed, around a different corner, after asking several more people and receiving similar responses, we finally found a little bottle of vanilla essence, made in Veracruz. The cookies turned out beautifully, a friend told us they looked like they came right out of a magazine and that we could make some good money selling them around town. Hm.