I spent 6 weeks in San Cristóbal, partly to improve my Spanish, but mostly to enjoy some of the really great XC flying Chiapas has to offer. The wonderful city of San Cristóbal in combination with nice flying made this a highlight of my trip so far. The weather was flyable almost every day, and for many days my goal was to fly to Comitán, a 100 km objective. I never made this goal, but I came close a couple of days. I’ve been uploading my flights to Leonardo here.
Chiapas is still a relatively undiscovered area for flying, and I had some interesting experiences with the locals where I landed. In this case I landed next to a school, and the children and teachers wanted to take a picture. I was fortunate to meet so many great people in Mexico’s countryside.
My stay in San Cristóbal coincided with the 3rd fly-in of the site. It was their biggest fly-in so far, with 133 pilots attending. Below is a picture of launch. Some pilots were able to fly all the way to the Guatemala border, 150 km.
San Cristóbal was the most interesting town I had visited in Mexico. It had a very unique mix of indigenous/mayan, spanish descent, and international people living there. The indigenous people were Tzotzil, and still speak this Mayan dialect. They can be easily picked out because they still wear traditional style clothing. The town receives visitors from all over, and there were restaurants and live music to fit just about anyone’s taste. I really wish I took more pictures here, as it really is a colorful and interesting town.
I stayed at a campground my entire time in San Cristóbal and met several other travelers that were also driving through central and south America. There were lots of great overlanding vehicles that passed through here, below are some of my favorites.
