This article is about two distinctly various journeys. The 1st to Costa Rica, and the 2nd to Mexico.
It is a clear, moonless night when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the beach. I can't understand how we are going to see anything at all in the blackness, but the guide's eyes seem to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We commence walking, our vision adjusting slowly.
We've come to Tortuguero Nationwide Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. After the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-viewing is now 1 of the far more well-known pursuits in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most important nesting website in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees far more than its fair share of visitors. In reality 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 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 all 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 job, the low survival fee of her hatchlings simply because 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. However we are not allowed to get also close, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She isn't going to seem to be to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. Soon after a bit the guide moves us vacation spots (felixcouch.blog.com) away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong kinds 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 upon a brightly painted saintly icon, The guy took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a signal not of globalization, but of the expurgating electrical power of soda simply because the Tzotzil men and women feel that evil spirits can be expulsed by means of a robust burp. Here, inside the church of San Juan de Chamula, such faith isn't going to seern all that far-fetched.
This is the Zapatista heartland of Chiapas, a lost world of dense jungle and indigenous villages exactly where descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. Throughout the area, 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, one of Mexico's most alluring towns, was the internet 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 personal judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are uncovered right here, exactly where girls 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. Guys can have up to three wives at a time, and I'm not particular to be envious or not!! Each 12 months for the duration of the pre Lenten festival, maybe the most exciting time to check out, the village's males run barefoot through blazing wheat.
4 kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Right here, the males, 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 females pummel tortillas and weave textiles, often with a watchful eye on the sky simply because a lot of homes have gone up in smoke as a outcome of rogue fireworks.