so last night...

...I found myself walking the streets of San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico with my nuevo amigo Paul--a former elected official of the Irish Labour Party--and we're both looking for any excuse to practice our pitiful spanish, amongst other things. A rather attractive young woman in a fetching sombrero blanco sitting at an outdoor cafe waves at us so we decide to take advantage of the situation. We saunter over, I barely mutter "Hello, I like your hat" in the kind woman's native tongue, when ten of her best friends walk out of the cafe and they all start demanding to have their pictures taken with us. And the first woman made me wear her hat.


Many of them wanted individual photos with us. This went on for maybe ten minutes. Then they said good bye and left. Earlier that day we had visited Oventik, one of the Zapatista Autonomous villages. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the variety of human activity.