This article is about two distinctly distinct journeys. The first to Costa Rica, and the second to Mexico.
It truly is a clear, moonless evening when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the seashore. I can't understand 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 walking, our vision adjusting gradually.
We have 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 much more common pursuits in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most critical nesting web site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees much more than its fair share of visitors. In reality because 1980, the yearly number 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 areas a finger to his lips, creating the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us all around a crater in the seashore within it is an huge 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 task, the low survival rate of her hatchlings simply because only a single 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. However we are not allowed to get also shut, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She doesn't appear to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. Following 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 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 because the Tzotzil individuals think 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 where descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. All through the area, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster kid of the struggle vacation packages for singles indigenous rights, reveals a continuing undercurrent of rebellion. San Cristobal : de las Casas, a single of Mexico's most alluring towns, was the internet site of an armed Zapatista revolt in 1994.
Outside San Cristobal, the village of San Juan de Chamula is virtually a law unto itself, with its own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are revealed right here, exactly where ladies promote brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the principal square, returning residence at midday to prepare a meal for their husbands, numerous of whom are shared. Guys can have up to 3 wives at a time, and I'm not specific to be envious or not!! Every year in the course of the pre Lenten festival, maybe the most exciting time to check out, the village's men run barefoot through 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 females pummel tortillas and weave textiles, usually with a watchful eye on the sky simply because numerous homes have gone up in smoke as a consequence of rogue fireworks.