Insterested in San Cristobal de las Casas

[Wanderful]

Hi! My husband and I have been living in Patzcuaro, Michoacan and are interested in coming to San Cristobal de las Casas for one to two months. We'd love to make contact with other expats in this area, and would appreciate referrals as to properties there that could be available to house-sit or rent during October/November.
We hope to hear from anyone who can help or advise us about San Cristobal de las Casas!! Thank you so very much!
Saludos,
Alexandra and Stu

[RVGRINGO]

Welcome. I hope you find a contact in that area.

[Queretaro]

I was just in Patzcuaro last week, what a beautiful place! I have the little viejito doll I bought from the people in plaza grande on Sunday sitting on my desk now.

If you would like information on San Cristobal, please feel free to contact me. My wife and I lived there for 3 years up until a year ago and got to know the area very well. We love it and go back regularly. If you would like any information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

You will find it feels very similar to Patzcuaro (without the lake).

[Hound Dog]

Originally Posted by Wanderful

Hi! My husband and I have been living in Patzcuaro, Michoacan and are interested in coming to San Cristobal de las Casas for one to two months. We'd love to make contact with other expats in this area, and would appreciate referrals as to properties there that could be available to house-sit or rent during October/November.
We hope to hear from anyone who can help or advise us about San Cristobal de las Casas!! Thank you so very much!
Saludos,
Alexandra and Stu

Tell me this Alexandra, what do Pátzcaro and San Cristóbal have in common in your imagination? I don´t mean that as a confrontational question, simply as an inquiry.

Now, let me give you my perspective. The places could not be more different.

I could have landed in Patzcuaro but did not and I could have landed in San Criostóbal but did. Where I landed is irrevelant but so?

Explain yourelf intellectuallyspeaking.

[Queretaro]

Hola HoundDog,

I am a little bit confused by your post, by I would guess it was directed at me, and not alexadra, since I am the one who said they felt very similar, and I am pretty sure it was not my imagination, as I had my wife with me who has also lived in San Cristobal for an extended amount of time.

I would be happy to explain to you why I felt that way. To start off, the obvious, both towns boast of a population of about 100,000 people and as such are of simular sizes. To get to both towns you drive along a pine forest (coming from Comitan in SC and coming from Morelia in Patzcuaro)When you arrive at each cities bus station a small but functional. Both terminals are on the outskirts of the downtown as you have to walk down a main street for about 1.5 km's to get to the main zocalo. As you walk down the street, you are surrounded on both sides by old building, mainly 1 story, that have the tiled sloping roofs common in Mexican towns that are in the mountain and get a lot of rain. As you look into the horizon at each city you can see rolling green hills so near it feels like you can touch them (obviously in Patzcuaro the side with the lake did not have that).
In both cities main plazas are surrounded by sections with arches, coffee shops, and by crafts stores selling goods produced in the towns just outside of the city by the local indigenous groups that live in nearby communities and come to the main city to sell their goods. Both towns have the same cobble stone roads once you get away from the same center (in Patzcuaro they are closer to the center while in San Cris you have to get out towards Na Bolom). In the streets you hear Spanish and the native languages spoken by those who live there (Purepecha in Patzcuaro and Tzotzil in San Cris). The main market has the same smells and feel as that in San Cristobal (the main one behind the artisans market), as well as the tarps that hand so low that nobody over 5 foot 5 could fit under them without ducking. Even the young kids that came up to me and asked me to buy there cheap artisanry with the same bad spanish (Compráme) were the same. I even got offered the same cheap clay turtles in both places. Each town boasts a wider variety of international food than you would imagine due to the variety of foreigners that have made a home in them (best pizzas I have ever had are at El Punto en San Cris, and the best Argentinian dish I had was in Patzcuaro). In both places, don't be surprised if a group of "hippies" (for lack of a better term) appear in your restaurant while you eat and start putting on a show. In both places I meet a disproportional amount of artists and writers using the towns as their retreat from the hustle and bustle of the big cities. Both towns have small, poorly conserved streams running through them, that only seem to smell clean after a rain.
The similarity does not end in the towns themselves. In both cases you can jump on a collective (all old VW vans, with the same layouts on the inside) and be at a town in which the locals dress in their traditional dress and speak a language other than Spanish in their daily lives. You can see ancient ruins that most tourist have never heard of within 1 hour of each city (Toniná and Tenam Puente in San Cris and Tzintzuntzan and another whos name escapes me in Patzuaro to name a few). Both spots are starting to become coffee producing areas (even though San Cris is still far superior in this regard).
Even the weather felt the same (just going by the week we were in Patzcuaro). The days were partly cloudy, always looking like they were about to rain, and then in the late afternoon, like clockwork it does, just like San Cris. The roads got slightly flooded as the age old drainage systems could not deal with the rain and the some of the inclined streets looked like rivers.

I could go on, but I hope you can see where I saw the similarity now. There are of course some differences. Many more foreign tourists in San Cristobal.

I am not sure how where you landed has to do with it either. If you do not mind me asking, how long have you lived in San Cris? I left less than a year ago and thought I knew most of the foreigners (English speakers) in town.

[Hound Dog]

We have been there since 2006 and visited before that. I guess you do not know as much as you thought about the foreigners living there.
Are you married to Laura by any chance?

[Wanderful]

Originally Posted by Hound Dog

Tell me this Alexandra, what do Pátzcaro and San Cristóbal have in common in your imagination? I don´t mean that as a confrontational question, simply as an inquiry.

Now, let me give you my perspective. The places could not be more different.

I could have landed in Patzcuaro but did not and I could have landed in San Criostóbal but did. Where I landed is irrevelant but so?

Explain yourelf intellectuallyspeaking.

"Intellectually speaking"... I stated that I reside in place A and that I have an interest in place B. Where did I imply that the two had a great deal in common? I hope you recognize that this leap has been made on your part. And I don't mean that as a confrontational observation.

I've known and loved many different geographic parts of Mexico, and appreciate particular qualities of each. My husband and I plan to experience living in various areas. We want to take our time exploring and enjoying their varied qualities, before settling down anywhere.

I have never been to Chiapas, although I've traveled to the north and east of it. We'd like to get to know it. San Cristobal de las Casas sounds like it might be unique to many other areas in Mexico we've come to know. The indigenous culture, colonial architecture, landscape of the region, and the weather are all appealing.

We hope the locals there from NOB are friendly, as they have been in Patzcuaro. Whereas I know that some expats prefer to find locales with the fewest number of their countrymen in residence, we're not like that. We're enjoying our life in Mexico very much, but that life includes socializing with (at least a few) fellow gringos.

I'm glad you apparently like living there.

Best regards,
Alex

[Hound Dog]

Alex and All:

Sorry for any misunderstandings. We have spent time in both Pátzcuaro and San Cristóbal de Las Casas and find we like both places but decided to make a home in the latter community. Just our preference, that´s all. What the hell, we also like the village of Ajijic at Lake Chapala despite an overabundance of foreigners so there is no accounting for taste.

Now that I think about it, other communities we have learned to love over the years while wandering around Mexico include the Orizaba-Cordoba urban corridor and the Tuxtlas and Lake Catemaco all in Veracruz State and Mérida in the Yucatan. We actually started to move to Mérida but the climate was too much for us reminding us of the years we lived in Mobile and visited New Orleans where the seed humidity lives. That climate could (and will) curl your hair.

[Queretaro]

Hola Hound Dog,
I am sorry I miss-understood your email, it was a late night response (which I should avoid doing) and I probably misinterpreted it. I apologize for the confusion.
Yes I am married to Laura. Then while we may not have meet, we at least have know people in common. Is your name Bob by any chance? If so, Laura sends her best.

[Hound Dog]

Originally Posted by Queretaro

Hola Hound Dog,
I am sorry I miss-understood your email, it was a late night response (which I should avoid doing) and I probably misinterpreted it. I apologize for the confusion.
Yes I am married to Laura. Then while we may not have meet, we at least have know people in common. Is your name Bob by any chance? If so, Laura sends her best.

Yes, Queretaro, I am the Bob to whom Laura tried to teach Spanish in San Cristóbal. Please pass on my regards to her. You are, it seems to me, fortunate to find a life´s mate as attractive physically and intellectually as Laura. I hope we meet some day in Chiapas since, as much as I like Queretaro, I don´t think we will returning there as we are Southern Mexico freaks.

Dawg