Puerto Chiapas and Tapachula, Mexico

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico, only about 8 miles from the Guatemala border. 

Puerto Chiapas isn’t really a town—it's an attractive dock area with a couple of huge palapas containing shops for the cruise ship tourists. The tour booth by the cruise ship had only Spanish-speaking staff. Charlie managed to find a large van shuttling people to a nearby town so he bought tickets, and we got a couple of the last seats. Once on the van, we discovered it was headed to the city of Tapachula, Mexico. A young man on board was practicing his English by (mostly) reading from an official script enthusiastically promoting the area. There were a couple of Canadian women from the ship also on the van, and one of them was fluent in Spanish. We tagged along with them, which helped right away when it came to deciphering the confusing instructions on how to catch the shuttle back to Puerto Chiapas. Tapachula is very crowded and lively, to put it in the best possible terms. It is also overflowing with immigrants. Not your typical tourist destination.

Marimba music is big in this part of Mexico. There was a band playing and dancers in traditional garb on one corner of the main square when we arrived. We ducked into a small, air-conditioned museum near them, and I was grateful for a cool, calm place to come to terms with the crowded streets outside. After a brief respite, we headed back out into the storm of humanity, posed in front of the Tapachula sign, and looked for a pharmacy to get some cold medication. We found one on the main square, but it too was crowded. We continued down a side street and found another pharmacy a block or so away. We got what we needed and came across the La Fonda Hotel, with a restaurant recommended by the young man on the van. Another cool, calm oasis away from the crowd. 

After lunch we went back toward the central square and located the huge local market down a steep hill. The diversity of the crowd was striking. My favorite part of any travels. We walked around the entire periphery of the market, then climbed the hill back to our shuttle van pickup spot. 

For some reason never adequately explained, the 2 pm shuttle was not running. While waiting for something to happen, Charlie struck up a conversation with a serious-looking young man named Woody. French-speaking Woody and English-speaking Charlie managed to talk for a good half hour or more using pidgin Spanish. Another young Haitian man who spoke English explained what was happening--he and many thousands of other Haitians are fleeing their country due to a series of natural disasters and political unrest, and more recently a lack of food. The man was hoping to get work in Canada eventually. It made me think of Irish ancestors who fled Ireland during the potato famine.

The Haitian immigrants, along with many more thousands from other areas of the world, are basically in limbo in Tapachula as they await paperwork in an overwhelmed system. Over 130,000 asylum seekers ended up in Tapachula last year alone. A humanitarian crisis in a city I'd never heard of until now. 

A bus finally came, we boarded and went back to our lovely floating hotel, taking advantage of teatime at 4 pm--a popular event due to a talented string quartet from Eastern Europe that plays there every afternoon. In striking contrast to Tapachula, a scene that continues to haunt me.

Peace & love,

Jill