# Farming The Sky



## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Between San Cristóbal de Las Casas and the Tabasco State line and then on to Villahermosa or other destinations up there, there are three principal ways to proceed. One can drive up Highway 199 through Ocosingo to Palenque, a splendid drive with many attractions along the way; Highway 195 through Larrainza, Jititol de Zaragoza and Teapa or Highway 87 to the Tuxtla Cuota at Raudales and on the expressway to San Cristóbal through Tuxtla Gutiérrez. All are beautiful alternatives once one is accustomed to them and all worthwile journeys but today I want to talk about the drive from San Cristóbal up Highway 195 on one´s way to Tabasco but with the goal of observing some of the most beatuiful and spectacular sheer mountainous scenery interspersed with countless agriculturally oriented villages on the planet.

Do this thing that barely anyone not native to the región does. Start in San Cristóbal and drive to Larrainza and then on to Tres Puentes and Puerto Cate and Jicotol de Zaragoza with a diversión to El Bosque and you will observe and be a part of splendid and impossible mountain vistas beyond anything you have ever imagined. Then you willl observe nearly vertical mountain slopes, seemingly impossible to even negotiate, in your car plowed and planted at indiscernable heights of up to 3000 meters with eveything from corn to bananas to coffee and surrounded by endless perfumed alpine forests . A vertical landscape so wildly beautiful as to make it indescribable in words and people get up and till these fields daily just to make a simple and marginal living. 

These virtually vertical fields existent in Chiapas planted in corn, beans, maguey, bananas, coffee, beans and many other agricultural products must have been planted and tilled and harvested by people with physical skills beyond our imaginations. My admiration is complete and unreserved. 

The landscape there indescribably spectacular and beautiful. Take the drive, if you can, before you die.


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