What I liked the most in San Cristobal, Mexico

If you find yourself in Chiapas, Mexico, make sure you don't miss a visit to San Cristobal. And here is why

Chiapas in general, and San Cristobal more specifically offers A LOT of tourism. The nature and history around is endless and amazing. You will have trouble deciding what to go for and what to skip this time (unless you have all the time in the world). I should know, I was exactly in the same situation.

The free walking tour

Hands down one of the best free tours I had in my life. Mainly because of the guide, Carlos. So if you are there and you are lucky enough to do the tour on a day that he does it, enjoy! You are in for a treat. The tour takes you around the important places, both historically and culturally (and graffiti, lots of graffiti). And a free tour is one of the best things to do while solo traveling, in my opinion

A day trip to Sumidero Canyon

As I said earlier, I had to make some tough choices. I had time to do only one day trip and I opted in for this one. Oh what a good choice it was. First of all, you can do this yourself. Take a bus to the pier with the boats, take a boat tour, skip the bus to all the view points, or take a taxi to a few of them. This is what I would do looking back.

I wasn't as wise then, so I opted in for the total package: a pickup from the hostel, a boat tour and riding around to 4 different viewpoints. The boat tour is the amazing part, I had fun every second of it and the nature (and the monkeys!) were amazing. As for the viewpoints, I really liked one of them, the rest were nice. The part I disliked was the people, every viewpoint was a stop to chill, and some of the people wanted to skip viewpoints even though they (and the rest of the bus, that they didn't ask) payed for it.

A visit to Chamula

This is a tip I got from the free tour. Chamula is a special village about 25 minutes from Chiapas, reachable by public transport. What is special about that village is that the local people are still practicing tribal beliefs and witchcraft. When you get to the village, you can go to the local church and come and watch local people come, pray and make rituals for their wishes, usually for someone's health. A word of warning, this is not for everyone. The "witchcraft" as they call it, includes bringing live chicken and killing it on the spot as a sacrifice, if you want to visit make sure you can stomach it. I'm am aware that there are more places like this around, but this one is used to tourists and actually allows people to roam around while the visitors come to do their thing. This was an experience I will remember.

Local craft beer

Did you forget who is writing these posts? One of the first things I did when I arrived to town was to try and find me some craft beer, and to my surprise the search was short and easy with plenty of results. Unfortunately since I visited there last time some places were permanently closed. Here are the ones that I liked the most and are still open at the time of writing these lines:

• Cerveceria la artesanal - A brewpub located close to the main square. You can enjoy some local craft and one of the best Hamburgers I had in Mexico

• La espirituosa - A restaurant I discovered during the free tour for their mezcal, actually have their own brewery and the beer is nice for a warm day

Final thoughts

Looking back, Chiapas was probably my favorite state in Mexico, and I enjoyed my time in San Cristobal so much that I'm constantly thinking about all the things I said I would do next time. I hope this list will serve you as a good starting point, and that it convinced you to visit. Let me know if you found something else that should be on my list and I will be jealous that I didn't manage to do it yet!