Day 53 - Friday 11th November 2005

Near to San Cristobal lies a series of lakes known as the Lagos de Montebello. These lakes were supposed to be spectacular and thus I wanted to visit them, so thats what I did. It was possible to do a tour of the lakes for the day, but fresh from my successfully organised independant tour I opted to go by myself.

Unfortunately I must have been blessed with beginners luck the previous occasion, as things were decidedly more difficult this time around. This was partly due to myself, and partly due to others. Just leaving San Cristobal proved to be difficult - this was the fault of others. I needed to get first to Comitan & the only way I could find was by collectivo taxi. This means three people share the cost of a taxi to a fixed point in Comitan. When I turned up I was the 2nd person in the taxi, so we only needed one more. After an hour of waiting it was apparent no-one else wanted to go to Comitan, so me and the other guy decided to pay the third share between us to get the show on the road.

When I actually arrived in Comitan, I needed to get to a specific bus station to catch another collectivo to the lakes. All well and good. Or it would have been if I could have found the place. I asked about 10 people, and I got about 10 different answers as to the location of the apparently mythical bus station. Luckily I found someone who had actually been to the bus station and knew where it was. Two minutes later I was there and on a collectivo heading to the lakes. Then I got my guidebook out and saw a lovely map of the town, with the bus station perfectly labelled in black and white. So I can’t really blame anyone but myself for wasting that hour of my life.

When I arrived at the lakes despite it being nice and sunny everywhere else, it was raining. I didn’t have my waterproofs on me thus I trudged about for a bit getting more and more wet and muddy. I walked for as long as I could take, saw a few of the lakes then a bus passed me and I had the impulse to jump on it, call it a day and go back to my hostel. So thats what I did.