San Cristóbal, a cold town in a warm country

San Cristóbal de las Casas sits in the Jovel valley at two thousand two hundred metres, ringed by pine-covered hills, and it is the one place in Mexico where you will want a jumper in the evening in any month of the year. Founded in 1528, it kept its low tiled roofs and long straight streets, two of which, the Andador Guadalupano and the Andador Eclesiástico, were closed to traffic and now carry most of the town's life between the cathedral and the hilltop churches at either end. Climb the steps to Guadalupe at dusk for the view across the tin roofs. The Templo de Santo Domingo has the most worked facade in Chiapas, ochre stucco pressed into columns, saints and double-headed eagles, and the artisan market that fills the ground in front of it is run largely by Tzotzil women selling wool, amber and woven cloth. Na Bolom, the house of Frans and Trudi Blom, records decades of work alongside the Lacandon communities; the amber museum in the old Merced convent explains why resin from Simojovel, some thirty million years old, is worth what it is. The town is also the base for the villages. San Juan Chamula, ten kilometres out, keeps a church with no pews, a floor of pine needles, ranks of candles and healing rites in which bottled soft drinks have replaced older ferments; photography inside is forbidden and the rule is taken seriously. Zinacantán grows flowers and wears them, embroidered in violet and turquoise. Eat sopa de pan and tamales de bola, drink chocolate, and try pox, the local maize and cane distillate. The coffee is grown a few hours away and roasted in town, which is why it is so good here.