Mexico has three coffee-producing states, and I’ve been to all of them. Oaxaca and Veracruz turn out great brews, but many coffee-holics swear that Chiapas produces the best cup of java in the country. I had the chance to check it out on a recent trip to San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the heart of Chiapas. I ordered the local product in coffee bars all over town in between jaunts to museums, handcraft shops, and other hotspots. It proved a much-needed pick-me-up. There’s so much to do in San Cristóbal that you can get exhausted trying to cram it all in.
Fortunately, frequenting the city’s excellent cafes and restaurants is as much a part of San Cristóbal life as handcrafts, cultural offerings, and day-trips are.
For starters, you need a day just to walk around the historic center. It’s a mile square, so there are plenty of streets to wander. Much of this area is actually residential—but far from boring. You see the colorfully painted facades of homes, little neighborhood stores, and small parks (often with a church) where children play tag and old men sit on benches reading the newspaper.
Two long pedestrian-only streets in the centro are thick with shops, restaurants, cyber cafes, and hotels. The two streets, one going east-west and the other north-south, intersect at the Cathedral. This is Ground Zero for tourism in San Cristóbal, and a good area to scope out.
If you need a little caffeine before hitting this stretch, try the chic La Selva Café on Avenida Crescencio Rosas, near the southern end of the Andador Turístico, the north-south pedestrian street. Housed in a colonial building, La Selva is fitted out with ultra-modern wooden furniture and a long bar. The coffee is rich, full-bodied and organic, and a café au lait will cost you about $1.50. (You can also buy bags of their coffee to take with you.) If you have a laptop computer, you can check your e-mail at the same time—the café has wi-fi and the waiter will give you the access code.
If you’re into shopping, it’s easy to pick up souvenirs in San Cristóbal’s historic centro. Arts and crafts are no-brainer purchases—and you’ll find plenty of places to shop for them here. Stop in shops along the way…but hold off buying until you’ve checked the prices at the daily market outside Santo Domingo Church, at the north end of the Andador Turístico. Here you’ll find woolen scarves, wood carvings, and everything in between. Amber is a popular item in San Cristóbal, too—the amber found in Chiapas tends to be a striking red, rather than the more common golden-brown tone. You’ll need to go to jewelry stores to get amber, but you’ll find shops both on the Andador Turístico and on Real de Guadalupe, one of the east-west pedestrian streets.
By now it’s time for lunch. For a filling, tasty meal served quickly, the Centro Cultural Café Tierradentro, located on Real de Guadalupe, is a good pick. The café offers a half-dozen menus of the day, including a vegetarian option, at prices between about $2.70 and $5.75. Menu lunches include a soup, a main course, and a fruit-based beverage. (You can finish off with a coffee, but you’ll pay an extra $1.50 or so.) The café is located in the roofed central patio of a large colonial building and has a leftist-student chic about it. If you want to go upscale, several nearby hotels offer set-menu lunches as well; you’ll rarely pay more than $6 unless you order a la carte.
From here you’re near the north end of centro and Casa Na Bolom. There are several museums in San Cristóbal, including a museum of Maya medicine, a popular culture museum, and museums dedicated to jade, coffee, amber, and regional costumes—but Casa Na Bolom is probably my favorite. This large hacienda-style complex, whose name means “house of the jaguar,” was originally the home of Danish archaeologist Frans Blom and his wife Gertrude Duby. History buffs can check out the rooms filled with 1950s photos of Lacandón Indians from the Chiapas lowlands, and with artifacts from Blom’s excavations in Chiapas and Guatemala. If you’re not keen on ruins or on indigenous life, just wander around the house and grounds.
The house is a rambling affair with several interior patios and high-ceilinged rooms furnished with Blom’s and Duby’s belongings. (One bedroom even has an eery, still-lived-in look, as though Duby just stepped out to greet a guest.)The gardens out back extend for several acres and are filled with local plant varieties. Winding paths through these gardens are bordered by rows of wine and liquor bottles that have been shoved top-first into the ground, so that only the bases are visible. Literally hundreds of liquor bottles were used to line these paths, and I can’t help wondering how Blom and Duby managed to collect them all….
Na Bolom today is also an indigenous cultural center and a small hotel. According to Na Bolom staff, a suite is always kept available for visiting Lacandón Indians. And by tradition dogs are allowed—Gertrude Duby was very fond of dogs, and once kept 14 on the grounds.
Wine bar La Viña de Bacco, on Real de Guadalupe, is a good place to end the day, followed by dinner at one of San Cristóbal’s excellent ethnic restaurants. There’s a little bit of everything here: Argentinean, Japanese, Lebanese, and of course Mexican, just to name a few. I enjoyed several excellent meals at Italian trattorias here. One outstanding choice is the Trattoria Italiana on Elide Marangón. I had delicious home-made pasta here several times—two courses plus wine or dessert—and usually paid under $20.
For easy day-trips from San Cristóbal, El Sumidero is a must if the weather is right. Sumidero Canyon is a deep gorge through which the Grijalva River flows. In places the gorge walls are over 3,000 feet high, and the area is alive with wildlife, from tropical birds to crocodiles. Hour-and-a-half boat tours through the gorge can be arranged either in San Cristóbal or at Sumidero Park.
You can easily keep yourself busy for a week in San Cristóbal—I certainly did—or enjoy the sights in a more leisurely fashion if you’re lucky enough to live here.
As to my coffee taste-off, I’m not sure I ever decided on a winner…but I certainly had a great time doing the research.
Editor’s note: Glynna (and our other Mexico experts) will be speaking at IL’s Live and Invest in Mexico Seminar, Puerto Vallarta, Nov. 12-14. If you’ve yet to book a place, tomorrow is the last day to get the Early Bird discount–$200 per person. Learn more about this event here.
To read more IL articles about Mexico, see:
San Cristobal: Mexico‘s Colonial Gem at Bargain Prices
