This article is about two distinctly different journeys. The very first to Costa Rica, and the 2nd to Mexico.
It's a clear, moonless evening when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the seaside. I cannot recognize how we are going to see anything at all in the blackness, but the guide's eyes look to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We get started strolling, our vision adjusting slowly.
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 1 of the more well-known routines in ecotourism pleasant Costa Rica. As the most crucial nesting site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees a lot more than its fair share of site visitors. In truth because 1980, the yearly number of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.
The guidebook stops, points out two deep furrows in the sand - the signal of a turtle's presence - and places a finger to his lips, generating the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us about a crater in the beach inside it is an huge creature. We hear her rasp and sigh as she brushes aside sand vacation packages for singles [blog.com] her nest.
In whispers, we comment on her plight and the solitude of her activity, the minimal survival rate of her hatchlings due to the fact only one of 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 near, 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. Soon after a bit the manual moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong forms labouring slowly up the beach 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 sign not of globalization, but of the expurgating electrical power of soda due to the fact the Tzotzil men and women believe that evil spirits can be expulsed by means of a robust burp. Right here, within 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 where descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. All through 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 particular 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 virtually a law unto itself, with its personal judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are unveiled here, in which females promote brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the principal square, returning house at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, many of whom are shared. Guys can have up to three wives at a time, and I am not certain to be envious or not!! Each yr in the course of the pre Lenten festival, maybe the most exciting time to visit, the village's guys run barefoot by way of blazing wheat.
4 kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Here, the guys, 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, often with a watchful eye on the sky since several houses have gone up in smoke as a consequence of rogue fireworks.