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<h1>This is the continuation of me and my brother's Mexico adventures. </h1>
<h3>Here are links to <a href="https://steemit.com/adventure/@fmatinata/mexico-adventures-pt1-oasis">part 1</a> and <a href="https://steemit.com/travel/@fmatinata/epic-agua-azul-waterfall-adventure-mexico-adventures-pt-2">part 2</a> of our journey if you'd like to catch up on what epic-ness previously took place during this trip!</h3>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/58f9bb019d.jpg" width="640" height="480"/></p>
<p><em>It took hours of walking, but here we are - this is when we got to the tippy top most point of the mountain city, San Cristobal!</em></p>
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<p>After getting dropped off in the middle of the next town <a href="https://steemit.com/travel/@fmatinata/epic-agua-azul-waterfall-adventure-mexico-adventures-pt-2">from the waterfall paradise Agua Azul</a> on our way towards San Cristobal, we had to walk miles up and down hills through the small narrow mountainy city, carrying and dragging our broken roller bags through the cracked or nonexistent sidewalks and roads... Once we finally made it to the end of the town, we identified what seemed like the best spot to hitchhike and waited there, hoping/expecting another ride. Hours passed and barely any vehicles went by us on this lonely road in the outskirts of town, although it was the only road exiting the city. </p>
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<p>*<em>Mini heart-warming story before we eventually got picked up: <br>
The sun was setting as a homeless man came wandering through the city. Along his unknown path, he came up to us and spoke an indeterminate Spanish; we weren't able to understand even a single word he was saying to us. We assumed he was likely asking for money... We told him we were sorry as we were trying to avoid using money as much as possible this trip, because it was our first trip practicing the sustainability teachings we learned from the @gardenofeden. (Granted we weren't 100% sustainable on this trip, our freshly upgraded awareness and constantly wanting to practice and evolve helped us develop more and more sustainable skills/techniques/solutions, making every adventure significantly cheaper and cheaper, eventually to the point where it didn't cost us a single penny to travel through Australia! We saved tons of money on food, water, transportation, and hospitality thanks to loving and appreciating life and living extremely simply, but that's a story for another day </em>😉 <em>)</em></p>
<p><em>Anyhow, considering we felt bad about not giving this poor man any money, we offered him a banana instead. He was tremendously grateful. I gave him a big hug because I was happy to see him happy, then my brother hugged him too! This triggered another even </em>more<em> tremendous level of gratitude inside of him, and he began to tear up and leak with tears of love, with an endlessly growing smile, feeling something so priceless yet worth infinitely more than money. My eyes got watery just reminiscing about this transparent moment... It probably came as a shock to him that we were willing to hug him, as most "normal" people overlooked him and avoided him entirely, and/or saw him as a stinky hobo and would never even consider shaking his hand... His excitement and happiness were so remarkably overwhelming that it seemed all he'd ever really wanted was some love! Overjoyed with this sensation, he hugged us multiple times, smiling and laughing, ever so grateful! I wish we could understand what he was saying... After we gave him our final hugs and one last banana, the homeless man walked off into the distance, down the road we were hitchhiking on. </em></p>
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<p>Not too long after hugging the hobo, a taxi-bus type of ride (which we had refused to take earlier in the town) pulled over next to us. He wasn't going to give us a free ride, but he recognized us from before. He asked for everyone's prices, noticing that we didn't want to pay for any of them, thus he offered us to pay less than half of the price to give us both a ride all the way to San Cristobal! We decided to take this generous opportunity, as we were traveling with a deadline to meet our next host before he left for an adventure of his own.</p>
<p>On this taxi-bus, we made friends with a big guy who was really interesting and super nice. We talked a lot in between naps during the drive. We arrived to San Cristobal fairly late that night and told him about our story, beliefs, what we were doing, and how we enjoyed traveling, and he found it all so fascinating that he wanted to spend more time with us, so he invited us to sleep over in his home!</p>
<p>We walked together through the city from the drop off stop until we arrived to what turned out to be his parents' home. Everything seemed smooth and serendipitous, despite the fact that his father wasn't going to be home that night, but we were surprised when our friend got ready to go to sleep at his own house a little further down the street with his wife and kids. His mother was seriously not okay with this, as she was very fearful and had some pretty horrible thoughts about letting 2 strangers - especially men - sleep in her home alone with her. Consequently, she asked him to take us somewhere else, but felt she bad for not letting us stay in her home, so she suggested that he take us to the public hospital as homeless people could sleep safely inside there for free, barely "escaping" the cold. Our kind friend drove us to the hospital to honor his mother's preference.</p>
<p>The hospital was extremely crowded when we arrived around 1 A.M. Everyone was already asleep, so we decided to sleep outside. We were actually getting used to sleeping on cement anyway... However, we didn't expect nor realize just how cold it was going to be that night, as we never had a problem with this before... We slept next to a security guards' stand who said he would watch over us and our bags until shift change at 6 A.M. However, we didn't even know it was possible to get that cold anywhere in Mexico during that season! It was so horribly freezing on the unending cement that we couldn't even sleep for more than a couple of minutes through the entire night... We tried to get as much rest possible. My brother would often get up and search for any potential materials which could keep us slightly warmer... He found several materials, but they barely helped us against the cold. Still, at least now we had some rubber car mechanic gloves and a cardboard mattress and blanket...!</p>
<p>As already mentioned in our previous Mexico adventure posts about <a href="https://steemit.com/adventure/@fmatinata/mexico-adventures-pt1-oasis">part 1</a> and <a href="https://steemit.com/travel/@fmatinata/epic-agua-azul-waterfall-adventure-mexico-adventures-pt-2">2</a>, we were highly unsuited for hitchhiking and traveling this particular way, nonetheless we were highly motivated to make it work out regardless! Thus we barely had any clothes to keep us warm, no tent, no sleeping bags, no covers/blankets - just some jeans, sneakers, a single sweater each, and each other... This was a good time to practice my first time ever intentionally cuddling, as well as our first time cuddling together, with the result that my brother had to literally teach me how to cuddle in order to maximize our body heat! </p>
<p>As the morning sunrise came upon us, we got up immediately to take advantage of the warmth! We moved closer to the road in front of the hospital where we met a cute older local couple selling "arroz con leche y cafe" which is Spanish for rice pudding and coffee. My brother asked them if we could hang out by their little cooking fire. As we had been carrying several plantains and we love to share, we asked them if they knew how to prepare them. But of course, they said! They showed us how to cook the plantains in front of them, and they shared some fresh tortillas as they receive them every day to sell as well.</p>
<p><em>*Even mini-er sweet story:<br>
After eating everything we were capable of, I made an incredible connection with a bee that flew into the center of my plate. I said to myself in my mind, "I want to touch this bee with my nose." I was a little nervous when I went for it, but the bee let me rub my nose against its back! I was quite surprised and felt that the bee enjoyed it so I figured maybe I could pet it... and it indeed let me pet its little back as gently as I could! </em></p>
<p>Once we were full and warm, we started getting sleepy again, and repacked our bags to take a quick power nap. The cute old couple's clientele drastically increased as more and more people flowed through the busy sidewalk while the day grew older. We napped near the lovely couple, who were kind and willing to help us. They even offered us to leave our bags in the warehouse where they store their food cart after they finished selling for the day so we could go explore the city! </p>
<p>We took their offer and set off into the city. I oddly enough did not climb any trees this day because of how sore my knees were from walking up and down many hills, especially while carrying our inefficient broken roller bags - carrying it on our heads made it even more intense! Happy that we didn't have to carry the extra weight anymore, we made it our goal to get to the tippy top of the famous mountain city where we're smiling in the first picture!</p>
<p>We walked a lot until we got to a big church/cathedral park where we got a couple of hours of REAL rest on a couple of benches, before getting charged up again and continuing walking up the mountain! I thought infinitely about climbing as we passed by tons of trees, but I had to conserve my energy due to never knowing how our days would unfold in this survival adventure!</p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/5b989f2a68.jpg" width="640" height="857"/></p>
<p><em>We finally made it! After passing by </em><em><strong>TONS </strong></em><em>of little shops selling and offering all sorts of varieties of goods and services along the entire way up the main street (which eventually cuts cars off to become infested with consumers)...</em></p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/5b961511a4.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/5b96306897.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
<p><em>We circled the peak, taking in the far-reaching view of the big mountain city as much as possible.</em></p>
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<p>We hung around the mountain top for the rest of the evening and night, and ended up getting a hostel - our <strong>first and only </strong>time paying for accommodation during our entire first hitchhiking/sustainable traveling experience. We did this for 2 reasons: admittedly, it was primarily because of the cold, but it was also <em><strong>EXTREMELY</strong></em> beneficial for my knees to get such good and excessively needed rest! Due to my brother and I having such staggeringly different and almost opposite body development structures - me being more upper body powerful, and him being significantly more leg power dominant, he didn't need to rest and decided to take advantage of experiencing the night life of this city while I hibernated so good!</p>
<p>The next morning, we went back to meet that couple at around 6-8 A.M. to retrieve our bags and continue hitchhiking. We basically stayed at the top of the mountain though, which meant we had had quite a long walk back! Luckily, it was mostly downhill so we got back a lot easier and quicker than it was going up. On the way, a local artist offered us some delicious local coffee in his shop, and we enjoyed it along with a great conversation about how non-important materialistic goods really are, and how gaining or losing physical goods like that didn't really matter as long as we remained happy and healthy! 💪😄</p>
<p>We made it in time and went to get our bags when the old couple were finished doing their morning business, and fortunately and unfortunately we instantly saw that we had been robbed - one of the laptops was gone. I say unfortunately and fortunately because they only stole one of the laptops instead of both... which was kind of strange, but at least we got to keep one, haha! The cute couple seemed too honest for us to accuse them. All the same, it really disturbed my brother's peace, which he replaced with temporary anger. </p>
<p>Thankfully, the morning's conversation over coffee really put things in perspective for us, and it didn't take long before we were high off of life again (as usual)! 😍</p>
<p>Off we went, dragging our bags from the center of <em><strong>another </strong></em>city, to wait all the way at the start of <em><strong>another</strong></em> far-away highway exit. Thankfully enough, we didn't have to wait long at all and got picked up in the back of someone's truck whom we barely interacted with but were friendly enough to give us a ride all the way to the next town down the road towards Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca!</p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/58f9f47b81.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
<p><em>Off we went!</em></p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/58fa00e882.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
<p><em>Simply beautiful! What a pleasant journey!</em></p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/58f9c0ba9c.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
<p><em>It became a foggy ride...</em></p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgsafe.org/58f9cca9a3.jpg" width="640" height="478"/></p>
<p><em><strong>A SERIOUSLY foggy ride!</strong></em><em> We couldn't even see anything around us anywhere outside of the vehicle... I hope that wasn't the case for our driver </em>😅 <em>otherwise, our driver's got some serious skills!</em></p>
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<h3>My favorite part about loving to evolve is that it just means everything will and can only keep on getting better and better! The more capable and aware we become, the more incredible our lives and adventure that is life shall endlessly grow!</h3>
<p>Also, since I'm trying to keep our adventures as chronologically and up-to-date that I possibly can, I'd like to divulge something about my upcoming posts: My brother and I took significantly more pictures and videos of our travels as we realized you can never take enough digital memories, though simultaneously you do not want to miss out the present moment! You can expect to see a LOT more photos and videos in my posts! It will be so lovely to look back at all these moments, and relive our stories so vividly thanks to this blockchain/Steemit!</p>
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