From San Cristobal
we had the most completely idyllically fantastic time in the jungle so we stayed an extra day and just got back to san cristobal tonight. and only abby threw up on the 6 hour twisty turny bus ride but i considered it for a couple hours. san cristobal is cold but while we were away they started putting up the christmas decorations and everybody is out in the street bundled up and merrily eating and running about because it{s friday and anyway the houses here appear to be just as cold inside so why not be outside?
i just bought a little bag from an indian woman dressed in a fur skirt. we have been very curious about these skirts because we see them everywhere and they appear to be made out of the entire hide of a very shaggy black sheep. so mom asked what it was made of and the woman said borrega. she was a very short woman, just came up to my shoulder. we didn’t know about borrega so we asked if that was like a cow or a sheep maybe and she consulted in maya with her friend, laughing, and said it was kind of like a sheep. so upon further questioning she explained with good humor that the skirt was made of borrega wool, spun and then woven and then lots of tufts of hair extracted somehow to make it all look furry. so then i said well that{s a relief, i figured if you were walking around wearing an entire sheep hide you{d be pretty tired. and i demonstrated walking with my legs buckling lower and lower. they laughed hysterically at my mistaken impression and so i added, i figured it would be just as easy to walk everywhere in between two accomodating sheep. and they laughed so hard they bent over in their weird furry skirts. it was a success. and they said i could take my picture with them and they used their hands to give me horns.
in the palenque ruins i saw two toucans. one i found all by myself. it was excavating a hole in a tree with its enormous beak and then it wiggled all the way inside, turned around and poked its comical head-beak out and looked around with a curious eye.
i took a picture of a lizard. and i waded in a beautiful waterfall.
