This post is about two distinctly different 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 seashore. I can't comprehend how we are going to see something in the blackness, but the guide's eyes look to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We get started strolling, our vision adjusting gradually.
We have come to Tortuguero Nationwide Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. After the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-watching is now one of the a lot more popular activities in ecotourism pleasant Costa Rica. As the most essential nesting website in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees much more than its fair share of visitors. In reality because 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 indicator of a turtle's presence - and spots a finger to his lips, creating the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us around a crater in the beach within 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 rate of her hatchlings simply because only one of every single 5000 will make it past the birds, crabs, sharks, seaweed and human pollution to adulthood.
We are all mesmerized by the turtle's bulk. Though we are not permitted to get too 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. Following a bit the guide moves us vacation spots away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong types labouring gradually 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 guy took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a sign not of globalization, but of the expurgating electrical power of soda because the Tzotzil folks believe that evil spirits can be expulsed by way of a robust burp. Here, within the church of San Juan de Chamula, such faith doesn't 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 area, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster youngster of the struggle for indigenous rights, reveals a continuing undercurrent of rebellion. San Cristobal : de las Casas, a single 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 uncovered here, in which girls sell brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the primary square, returning residence at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, numerous of whom are shared. Males can have up to three wives at a time, and I am not specific to be envious or not!! Every single year for the duration of the pre Lenten festival, perhaps the most thrilling time to check out, the village's males run barefoot via blazing wheat.
4 kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. 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 ladies pummel tortillas and weave textiles, often with a watchful eye on the sky because several homes have gone up in smoke as a result of rogue fireworks.