Same old story... in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

The things you miss when you’re away from home often come as a surprise. Yes, there are the usual suspects: friends, family and of course, food, as well as those frivolous items you have to sacrifice when carrying everything you need for a year on your back. But, amidst a superficial whirl of high heels and hair straighteners lies something else entirely - something you don’t realise you miss until it’s right in front of you... The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Mexico’s San Cristóbal de las Casas, a mountainous city in the Mexican state of Chiapas, was the seemingly unmistakable sound of horses trotting along the street. As we traipsed through town in the baking heat, nervously looking back and half-expecting to see a herd of Iberian Mustangs behind us, we realised the clip-clop was in fact coming from the hot tyres of classic cars rambling along the uneven cobbled roads, a modern twist on a sound all too reminiscent of a Spanish colonial town.

And that’s what San Cristóbal is. A former colony filled with exuberant colour, whether it’s the azure blue of Santa Lucia Church, the vividly painted rows of small houses under terracotta roofs, the fruit sellers on the streets outside or even the woven, multicoloured striped attire - the uniform favoured by the dreadlocked and afro-donning youth who appear to run this city.

It’s the vibe these carefree settlers create that pulls you into what they affectionately call San Cris, the city where it’s okay to hitchhike around town, down shots of Mezcal and dance to Mexican Cumbia, the city where the features of every stranger slowly morph into the familiar face of a friend you miss as the night goes on, the city where you can be the age you feel… the city that gives you the worst hangover you’ve had in months.

But we’ll cut out that last part, because that’s what you do when you look back - leave out the bad bits. You forget about those lonely moments in another country, the dull ache that accompanies you on your flight as you're leaving London, when you know you won’t see those you love so much for so, so long. And it’s not until you wake up feeling worse for wear in San Cristóbal de las Casas greeted by that familiar, dry mountain air, the needle-like rays of a fiercely burning sun piercing through a celeste sky, that you remember just how much you miss Madrid.

Guess what I found out in San Cristóbal?

1. Mezcal is a distilled alcoholic drink from Mexico. When Spain invaded Mexico, they brought something similar with them from Europe: "aguardiente" or fire water. However, when this ran out, they had to look for a substitute. They had been introduced to Pulque, based on the maguey plant, so they began experimenting to find a way to make a product with a higher alcohol content. The result is Mezcal, a strong, smoky flavoured liquid drunk in shots.

2. 60% of the city's population is indigenous, which makes the nearby villages very interesting in terms of culture. Check out the photos of our day out in San Juan de Chamula with explanations of some strange stuff that we saw in an indigenous church.

3. San Cristóbal is 2,100 metres above sea level, which is why it has cool, dry mountain air, not unlike that of Spain’s capital city :)