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San Cristobal de las Casas is not your typical Mexican resort or quaint tourist development: this is a high altitude, high attitude, intact colonial city dating from its founding in 1528.
The city proper is set in a lush green valley amid the sometimes fog-shrouded mountains of Chiapas state, at 7,000-plus feet.
This is a city in love with color and tradition, music and art. The occasional overcast skies due to the mountainous setting are offset by walls of scarlet, indigo, and titanium yellow.
The Mayan ladies wear incandescent shawls and the traffic lights, half-sized, well placed and visible, flash in ruby-red letters.
Come winter, the corn fields are cemeteries of brown and barren stalks, and planted wherever a space exists or can be created.
What would be a meadow or pasture anywhere else in the world is given over to maize, the staple crop of the people.
