This write-up is about two distinctly distinct trips. The 1st to Costa Rica, and the second to Mexico.
It truly is a clear, moonless night when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the beach. I can not comprehend how we are going to see something in the blackness, but the guide's eyes look to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We start walking, our vision adjusting gradually.
We have come to Tortuguero Nationwide Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. Once the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-viewing is now world wide travel one particular of the far more popular pursuits in ecotourism pleasant Costa Rica. As the most critical nesting web site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees far more than its honest share of guests. In fact considering that 1980, the annual 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 locations a finger to his lips, generating the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us close to a crater in the seaside 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 job, the lower survival fee of her hatchlings simply because only 1 of each 5000 will make it previous the birds, crabs, sharks, seaweed and human pollution to adulthood.
We are all mesmerized by the turtle's bulk. Even though we are not allowed to get also close, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She does not appear to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. After a bit the guide moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong forms 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 indicator not of globalization, but of the expurgating electrical power of soda simply because the Tzotzil men and women believe that evil spirits can be expulsed by means of a robust burp. Here, within the church of San Juan de Chamula, this kind of faith doesn't seern all that far-fetched.
This is the Zapatista heartland of Chiapas, a lost planet of dense jungle and indigenous villages in which descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. During 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, 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 actually a law unto itself, with its very own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are unveiled right here, where girls promote brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the main square, returning residence at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, many of whom are shared. Guys can have up to 3 wives at a time, and I'm not particular to be envious or not!! Every yr during the pre Lenten festival, perhaps the most thrilling time to go to, the village's males run barefoot via 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, always with a watchful eye on the sky because many homes have gone up in smoke as a result of rogue fireworks.