The Gallivanting Grasshopper: Party Cemeteries -- San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico

I leave San Cristobal and German today. At 15:45, I board an ADO bus that will take me on a six hour ride through Chiapas and drop me off at the bus station in Palenque. From there I will walk approximately three blocks to Yaxkin Hostel -- a hostel whose most recent review looks like this:

“We booked a private room, which was even smaller than a broom closet. And when we arrived, there were filthy pieces of clothing of the guest before us still in the room. Eventually we got a new room, but it never got cleaned although they advertise that it will be everyday. Internet is absolute bad here. It's better to go to one of the restaurants and ask for a WiFi password there. Kitchen lacks good equipment. Pans are broken, only one good knife, and the stove looks like its about to explode.”

I'm not a happy lady.

"I feel like I'm just starting to fit," I mourned to German over my final quesadilla at the nameless quesadilla place with the green lamp softly glowing out front.

"Change your bus ticket," German helpfully suggested. As German had suggested before (and Aimee had taken him up on it, extending her stay in San Cristobal by two days).

German has a very positive and very negative effect on travelers. On the one hand, he's one of the most easy-going, friendly and engaged hosts I've ever had -- on the other hand, no one ever wants to leave.

Which can be somewhat problematic for travelers.

I'm so happy here in German's home. I have things to paint, good company and my own room (which is SUCH a blessing). German's coffee is positively divine, I know where to find the best hot chocolate, the nicest cappuccinos/lattes and quesadillas that send me to another plane of existence. I. Don't. Want. To. Move. And if I stayed here for a few months, I could easily find paid work teaching yoga and great places to live (with Boy) for about a hundred dollars a month. I could learn to speak Spanish and how to make tamales and paint some more and --

Unfortunately, move I must. This time tomorrow, I'll be on my way to the ruins outside of Palenque.

If I survive my night in Yaxkin Hostel, that is.

"The picutres at the internet are older. The hostel seems to be still at the beginning of the 80¨s without having done anything since than. The dorms seem to be very old and the bathrooms are not very clean. The mattresses are all with black stains that seems to be a kind of mold. For the amount of mosquitos in Palenque they don¨t even have nets for the beds. The hostel is very dark and the social areas are poor. Even with this heat they don¨t have aircondition in dorms. I won¨t stay here again."

Something else that I love about living with German is just how full is house is. Full to bursting with couchsurfers. I believe he gets requests on the daily and hardly turns anyone away. When I arrived, I was the only couchsurfer. Two days later, two bubbly Mexican girls arrived. German gave the two girls his bed, I kept the spare room, and he slept on the couch downstairs.

Whoa. This fellow takes couchsurfing to another level.

So I spent three days with German and the two young Mexican vagabonds.

One of the girls had worked as a cook in a town outside of Mexico City. She happily prepared traditional Mexican breakfasts for us two days in a row. She also taught us how to make paper flowers --

-- flowers both girls sell to support themselves on the road.

German and I were both more than a little disappointed to see the cheerful girls continue on their journey to Oaxaca. We consoled ourselves with hot glasses of pina ponche -- a kind of Mexican punch with a shot of pox and/or bread.

We watched the women's world cup on Monday. It was the first soccer match I've ever watched all the way through, and I made sure to gather evidence of the unprecedented event. To be able to prove that I've done it once (and don't need to do it again).

Watching soccer was made immensely more tolerable with the aid of a ginormous bowl of peanuts, two glasses of cheap house wine and some tremendously good company.

(Are you taking notes, Boy? This is how you could possibly get me to watch soccer again. But don't get your hopes too high -- this was probably a one time thing)

San Cristobal is one of the easiest cities to walk I've experienced in Mexico thus far (other than La Punta, but that's because La Punta only had like, seven people). It's also one of the most beautiful.

I love walking through San Cristobal with German because he randomly (but always) gives me snippets of culture. We were strolling down one of the more expensive walking streets one evening and he looks at the restaurants and says, "These are restaurants for fresas."

"Fresas?"

"That's what we call people with a lot of money who care too much about their clothes."

"Strawberries? You call them strawberries?"

"Yes."

I am many things.

I am unnaturally addicted to cheese.

I go to bed earlier than my grandmother.

I loathe irons and vacuum cleaners like they were sent from hell to torment me.

But I am not a fresa.

German had his own bed back for one night, and then an Estonian girl arrived.

"I'm almost completely booked until I leave for South America in August," German told me last night when I asked about his fairly full couchsurfing schedule.

"WHOA! Are you afraid that you'll get tired of it? I mean, like you'll just want your own space at some point?"

"No. It's always interesting to meet new people," German just smiled. Like he does.

Since Nele arrived, we've spent our days exploring the markets --

-- discovering random rainbow stairs --

-- going on epically long walks --

(Remember that one time I wrote about the hail storm? Do you remember thinking that I could have possibly been exaggerating how crazy intense it was? Here's evidence that I was not exaggerating (for once). Hail storm damage to a futbal stadium, exhibit a)

-- and having a grand old time in San Cristobal's cemetery.

"It's like a little town," German commented as we meandered through the "town's" "streets.

"If I knew I was going to be buried here, I'd want to design the house before I died. And then just live there until I died. They're just the right size. So perfect and adorable," I laughed, having never felt so silly and happy in a cemetery before.

On Day of the Dead, Mexicans gather here to honor and celebrate those who've died. They bring alcohol, coffee and tamales. They play music.

They have themselves a fabulous fiesta.

"I want to come to Mexico to die just so my ghost can eat all the tamales," I half-joked to German on our walk back to the center.

It might be slightly morbid to say, but I saw this and thought my mom would like it. If my dear mother were to be buried in a Mexican cemetery, this would be her burial house. Cheerful and blue and with a chicken.