This article is about two distinctly various journeys. The very first to Costa Rica, and the second to Mexico.
It truly is a clear, moonless night when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the seaside. I cannot recognize how we are going to see something in the blackness, but the guide's eyes seem to be to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We get started strolling, our vision adjusting slowly.
We've come to Tortuguero Nationwide Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. Once the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-watching is now one of the a lot more well-known routines in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most essential nesting web site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees far more than its fair share of guests. In truth considering that 1980, the annual amount of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.
The guide stops, points out two deep furrows in the sand - the sign of a turtle's presence - and places a finger to his lips, making the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us around a crater in the beach 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 reduced survival rate of her hatchlings since only 1 of each and every 5000 will make it previous 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 as well close, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She does not seem to be to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. After a bit the guidebook moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong types labouring slowly up the seashore 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 man took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a sign not of globalization, but of the expurgating electrical power of soda since the Tzotzil people feel that evil spirits can be expulsed by way of a robust burp. Here, inside the church of San Juan de Chamula, this kind of faith does not seern all that far-fetched.
This tropical family vacations (blog.com) is the Zapatista heartland of Chiapas, a misplaced world of dense jungle and indigenous villages in which descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. All through the region, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster child of the struggle for indigenous rights, reveals a continuing undercurrent of rebellion. San Cristobal : de las Casas, 1 of Mexico's most alluring towns, was the web site of an armed Zapatista revolt in 1994.
Outdoors San Cristobal, the village of San Juan de Chamula is literally a law unto itself, with its very own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are revealed here, in which women sell brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the principal square, returning house at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, numerous of whom are shared. Males can have up to 3 wives at a time, and I'm not specific to be envious or not!! Each and every year in the course of the pre Lenten festival, probably the most thrilling time to check out, the village's men run barefoot by means of blazing wheat.
Four kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Right 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 women pummel tortillas and weave textiles, often with a watchful eye on the sky due to the fact many homes have gone up in smoke as a end result of rogue fireworks.