Greetings from San Cristobal!

We have arrived. It wasn't as easy as we thought, but we are now comfortably sitting in our new home, our apartment in San Cristobal. Our journey down south began with a standard flight out of LAX with a layover in Mexico City where we were suppose to catch our connecting flight. The Mexico City airport is vast and to travel to some terminals you must exit the airport, board a bus, and be dropped off at a different area; in our case it was at the Benito Juarez portion of the airport. I was told by some of the staff there that it is a new addition to the airport. The airport has energy saving modern architecture with a ceiling where there are rows of large holes to let the sunlight in. Remarkably mind-boggling if you stare at it for too long.

In the midst of our awe we were unpleasantly surprised to find out that our connecting flight was canceled. If you haven't been in the airline loop lately the major airline Mexicana recently went bankrupt and our flight was through an affiliate of theirs. We should have paid closer attention to the foreshadowing as we landed into Mexico City where abandoned airbuses marked with Mexicana insignia lay still like dinosaur bones in a natural history museum representing a time past.

So, to add insult to our injury, we contacted the travel agency we went through (OneTravel.com) who put us on hold as they apparently went to do absolutely nothing to assist us in our predicament. We called back and received the same treatment from different representatives who all wouldn't give us their names and claimed the manager had left for the day. We warn anyone who is considering using this agency, they are unreliable, disorganized, and heartless it seems. Having to get to our destination regardless of reimbursement and cancellation we decided to purchase new tickets through a different airline. So, after a few brutal uncertain hours in the Mexico City airport we were on our way to our new home.

We arrived at Tuxtla-Guttierez, the capital of Chiapas, late in the night and shared a taxi with a very helpful gentleman. During the course of our hour long taxi ride I discovered that he was a professor at a local university who specializes and works with the local indigenous peoples and the struggles they face. If I haven't emphasized the serendipity I feel when I am here let me go ahead and do that right now. Needless to say, we exchanged contact information and I am sure we will be contacting our new friend often during our stay here.