5. So I ended up staying in Xela for 3 weeks - all because of the coincidence with Coco! - and it was a really beautiful time. Strange, 'cos it's not exactly the most picturesque or peaceful place in the world (me and my ideas that I'm a nature lover) and it does stink of diesel, like most cities in this part of the world, but, I swear, by the end of it I was sincerely in love. My heart got opened by Xela; I coulda stayed a long time. But, as ever, I moved on...
6. And despite thoughts about making my way overland to Peru - thoughts that still haven't died - I hitched back north to Mexico, and made San Cristobal de las Casas by nightfall; it was sort of a touristy town (looks exactly like Antigua de Guatemala) and I stayed for all of two waking hours (slept under a caravan). Then I got picked up by my first woman - a mother and daughter team of teachers who were also, coincidentally, the first smokers that had picked me up and made those glorious Palenque ruins. Ah, what a place! Had been prepared to be disappointed by what a few people had told me - and maybe the lawnmowers and hawkers do take a bit of the shine away - but it was just wonderful. And one day there turned into four, and eventually I managed to fulfil this desire I had of spending the night there by sneaking in past the guards with their machine guns and flashlights and all night long I stayed up the top of the Temple de Las Cruces while an enormous lightning storm lashed down the rain and blinded me with its glory. And, sure, I stripped off and laughed and threw my hands in the air in what was probably my greatest ever shower. Who wouldn't?
7. Then I tried twice to hitch north to Villahermosa - but instead of getting picked up inside of five minutes like normal, I waited for over an hour and it just didn't seem to be happening. Also, I had a bag of beads and other jewellery-making things that a Mexican girl I had befriended had left in the hotel in Palenque ($4 per night), and I knew she lived in San Cristobal. Plus, I was being haunted by these visions of a big river half-way back that way that I just thought might be ripe for a spot of raft-building and a two or three day float. So back south I went, and back to the river where I wandered around for an hour in mud looking at trees to lash together, pointlessly, and when I gave that up I got in a pickup truck and there waiting for me was this young Israeli guy, Yair.
8. And so I had a buddy! And for a week me and Yair travelled together, hitching madly to San Cristobal - getting picked up once by a Mexican guy who then drove us in the wrong direction back to the bus station (it was Sunday morning; he was drinking beer) where he paid our fare to San Cris - and sleeping on roofs, and investigating terribly dangerous options for travel (such as the aforementioned "train of death" down in Arriaga), and generally having a wonderful time. Ah, what japes! Like - when pickup trucks wouldn't stop for us just jumping on them anyway and laughing madly and rejoicing in the laughing Mexicans too! Or comically losing each other on the highway and then racing to Puerto Escondido, where we were joyously reunited on the beach to share our respective stories of truckers and gifted pineapples and more and more madnesses! And PE itself, with its enormous fish dinners, and even more enormous deserts. And then we said goodbye in Zipolite, where someone nicked all my money.
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