This article is about two distinctly diverse journeys. The initial to Costa Rica, and the second to Mexico.
It is a clear, moonless evening when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the seaside. I can not understand how we are going to see something in the blackness, but the guide's eyes appear to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We commence walking, our vision adjusting gradually.
We've come to Tortuguero National Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. As soon as the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-viewing is now one particular of the a lot more popular actions in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most important nesting website in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees a lot more than its fair share of visitors. In fact considering that 1980, the yearly amount of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.
The guide stops, factors out two deep furrows in the sand - the signal of a turtle's presence - and spots a finger to his lips, producing the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us about a crater in the seashore inside it is an massive creature. We hear her rasp and sigh as she brushes aside sand for her nest.
In whispers, we comment on her plight and the solitude of her activity, the minimal survival charge of her hatchlings since only a single of each 5000 will make it past the birds, crabs, sharks, seaweed and human pollution to adulthood.
We are all mesmerized by the turtle's bulk. Although we are not permitted to get also shut, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She isn't going to seem to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. After a bit the guidebook moves us vacation spots (try this) away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong varieties labouring gradually up the seaside in a silent, purposeful armada.
As the chanting reached a crescendo and the incense thickened to a fog, the chicken's neck snapped like a pencil. The seemingly ageless executioner sat on a carpet of pine needles, surrounded by hundreds of candles, his eyes fixed on a brightly painted saintly icon, The guy took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a signal not of globalization, but of the expurgating power of soda because the Tzotzil people think that evil spirits can be expulsed by means of a robust burp. Right here, inside the church of San Juan de Chamula, this kind of faith isn't going to seern all that far-fetched.
This is the Zapatista heartland of Chiapas, a misplaced planet of dense jungle and indigenous villages exactly where descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. Throughout the region, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster kid of the struggle for indigenous rights, reveals a continuing undercurrent of rebellion. San Cristobal : de las Casas, one of Mexico's most alluring towns, was the site of an armed Zapatista revolt in 1994.
Outdoors San Cristobal, the village of San Juan de Chamula is practically a law unto itself, with its own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are revealed right here, in which ladies promote brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the major square, returning home at midday to prepare a meal for their husbands, many of whom are shared. Men can have up to 3 wives at a time, and I am not specific to be envious or not!! Each 12 months throughout the pre Lenten festival, maybe the most interesting time to pay a visit to, the village's males run barefoot by means of blazing wheat.
Four kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Here, the men, in red-and-white ponchos and flat hats strewn with ribbons, which are tied if they are married, loose if not, launch rockets skyward to stir the gods into sending rain. The ladies pummel tortillas and weave textiles, always with a watchful eye on the sky because several houses have gone up in smoke as a consequence of rogue fireworks.