Ocosingo

This is a high-security cybercafe. To prevent theft, the monitors are recessed beneath glass panels, so that the viewing angle is kind of like looking down at a plate of food but without ever actually eating anything. It's a little tiring on the neck and another good reason to make eye contact at the dinner table.

The walls of this cafe are decorated with two things: a price sheet (8 pesos an hour) and a portrait of Jesus Christ.

I'll write about today quickly, because Sanjai is nearby making a phone call and will probably return soon with an interest in finding dessert--most likely plums dipped for a long time in sugar water. Earlier we tried cups of corn doused in sweet and spicy red sauce. Overall this trip has been delicious, which you can probably tell from how much I keep writing about the food.

In the morning (after breakfast, naturally) we visited the ruins of a Mayan city. We posted a short blog from there using Sanjai's cell phone, which oddly only worked on top of the temple where we were hiding from a sudden storm. We had guessed rain was coming when we saw all the local salespeople packing up their wares. One group clustered beneath a blue tarp, then when the rain let up moved gingerly out of the ruins still hiding underneath it. It looked like something that might have fit in a Chinese New Year's parade, but missing a dragon head.

For lunch, Sanjai managed eight tacos, all al pastor; I stuck with six and mixed in two beef. Felipe would have been proud.

In the afternoon, we hired a driver to take us to a supposedly spectacular waterfall where the movie Predator was filmed, Misal-Ha. It was, in fact, just that. We climbed behind the waterfall itself with the help of a rope, then crept deep into a cave where we saw bats and a Mexican man swimming in the dark.

Tonight we'll sleep in Ocosingo, a town that Lonely Planet describes as "agreeable." That's an understatement: the place is charming and the air is cool. We found a little hotel overlooking the bustling central plaza. The room is clean and has a fan that produces a neat strobe effect when its blades pass under the light bulb. Of the twelve other parties checked in, eleven are here on business from other parts of Mexico.

What we talked about at dinner: diabetes.

Tomorrow: it's not clear what will happen. We'll try to charter that plane to the Laguna, and if that fails, we'll probably visit the nearby ruins of Tonina, then go motorboating in a "deep fissure" near Tuxtla Gutierrez.