San Cristobal- M

We left Jose's relatively early for D and my's clocks after a pretty wild night hanging out with Jose and the rest of the patrons. Our first task was to clear the mountain range (the same range that helped contribute to all that pesky wind earlier). We had asked both Jose (Joe) and his Mexican wife separately whether the free road was good or not. Jose's wife was a firm proponent of the toll road. Jose pulled D aside later, however, and told him that he had people who would come time amd again to stay with him JUST to ride the free road. Well, we were convinced. I have to say, it was an amazing experience. The scenery was lovely and the road was intense. Maybe it was just that I was still a little out of it from the night before or that we hadn't waited for coffee or breakfast that morning just opted for packaged bars instead in the interest of time (it always takes at least an hour for breakfast to be prepared and consumed)but it was difficult riding that first little bit over the mountains. The switchbacks were STEEP and tight. The edges of the road just disapeared into nothingness.. There was no baracade of any type (this is not terribly unusual) but the drop was immediate and in some cases hundreds of meters down. As we neared the top, having only passed about three cars and one motorcycle in the whole climb, we hit the wind and I got a bit nervous. The moment that we passed the peak though, everything was totally different. Suddenly the foliage was lush and green (the mountains blocked the weather and a totally different climate greated us on the other side. I was expecting to have just as many switchbacks to contend with on the way down but is was not to be the case. We just stayed high for the most part, climbing even higher to reach the town of San Cristobal. We were driving through pine and cloud forest with nearly zero visability when we reached a beautiful village clustered around a lovely lake at something like 7,000 ft. We tried to take photos but couldn't really capture the reality. It was about an hour later, frozen and damp from riding through the clouds that we arrived at San Cristobal. It was pretty incredible to pull into the beautiful colonial town so far in the mountains, away from everything else. I thought that San Cristobal was interesting, though the poverty there was more pronounced than it had been in most of the other areas of Mexico that we visited. People from the small mountain villages would come to town to try to make money in the tourist trade. It was certainly a tourist spot and that turned D off to the whole thing. We spent a few really cold days there, enjoying the amazing coffe and some of the great restaurants that had popped up to cater to the weathy extranjeros. Overall, an interesting place but not my favorite destination even though the trip to get there was incredible. M