We arrived in Tuxtla early in the morning after having a sleep on the bus (a 10 hour overnight trip) but still felt a bit shattered so took the first hotel room we found (the Grand Hotel Olimpa at 140p) and immediately crashed for a few hours.
In the afternoon we headed out to see the zoo, it's said to be one of the best in the world with the animals held in open areas rather than cages. It is in the countryside outside the city and in a forested area, inside the zoo has lots of areas for the animals. The enclosures are made to be like natural barriers, the spider monkey area was surrounded by an electric fence and surrounding trees trimmed out of their range, but the troop had a good number of big trees to live in. All the animals in the zoo were species found in the state of Chiapa.
The next day we caught a small bus to the nearby town of Chiapas de Corzo for a day trip. There is a large canyon with sides that are nearly 1km high and has boat trips up the river through the canyon. We looked at doing the two hour boat trip, but it was outside our budget (150p each). Not to worry, there will be plenty more boat trips and canyons to see yet. We walked about the town and Carol had a sleep in the park for an hour and a half. In the meantime Kent watched the people go by, two workmen took his interest - it took both of them 1 1/2 hours to dig in four posts, something that one would expect one person to do in 20 minutes! After visiting the supermarket (where Carol sampled some of the cake that is baked specially for the Celebration of the Three Kings on 6th January) we went back to Tuxtla.
After packing in the morning, we caught a mini bus to San Cristobal.
