This post is about two distinctly diverse journeys. The very first to Costa Rica, and the second to Mexico.
It really is a clear, moonless evening when we assemble vacation packages for singles; felixcouch.blog.com, our pilgrimage to the seashore. I cannot recognize how we are going to see anything in the blackness, but the guide's eyes seem to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We get started strolling, our vision adjusting gradually.
We've come to Tortuguero Nationwide Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. When the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-watching is now a single of the far more well-known pursuits in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most essential nesting internet site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees a lot more than its honest share of visitors. In reality considering that 1980, the yearly quantity of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.
The guidebook stops, factors out two deep furrows in the sand - the signal of a turtle's presence - and areas 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 tremendous 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 process, the low survival charge of her hatchlings since only one of every 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 near, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She does not seem to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. Right after a bit the manual moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong types 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 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 power of soda because the Tzotzil individuals believe that evil spirits can be expulsed by way of a robust burp. Right 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. All through the region, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster little one 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 web 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 unveiled here, the place women sell brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the primary square, returning home at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, several of whom are shared. Males can have up to three wives at a time, and I am not particular to be envious or not!! Every yr for the duration of the pre Lenten festival, possibly the most fascinating time to visit, the village's guys run barefoot by way of blazing wheat.
4 kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Right 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 girls pummel tortillas and weave textiles, usually with a watchful eye on the sky because several houses have gone up in smoke as a end result of rogue fireworks.