July 05, 2004
Guatemala was probably one of the most intriguing country of which I was looking forward to go to very very much but as it happened my stay in there was indeed extremely short (2 hours at the airport and another 2 at the boarder town of Tziscao next to the Mexican Chiapas state). The reason for this was that I was running low on funds and I wanted to avoid the dangers of being robbed, killed or raped. (You may remember that I met two fellow travellers whose friends had been shot there by bandits. So, for the first time I checked the website of the US government warning, which, I think now, I shouldn't have done…) So, I changed my ticket and flew right away to Mexico (my last country to be visited before heading home). Only to find out from the warnings of Lonely Planet that the same hostile situations apply to the cabs of Mexico City... :)
My adventures in Mexico City started out eating meals with lots of chili but surprisingly little taste and drinking an infinite amount of fresh juices in the middle of the biggest demonstration I ever saw. Looking at the never ending rows of mass it felt like the entire country had come together to get a chance to flow through the famous Cathedral square. There were so many of them that it seems almost like the national sport in a way... (Everyone talked to me in Spanish so I figured I must have blended in the crowd with my look.)
On the very same day I tried to catch up with my blog, so I went to find a place to write. The noise was unbearable at the internet tacos bar which also served as a pirate CD promoter doing it so in such a fashion that the long-time listeners head began to spin after the first 10 minutes guaranteed. I just don't believe that taking in 30 different samples in that time does not make you aggressive... It does. Especially after the 4th hour when your Word has been frozen twice and it is your third time to start your piece in this relative peace. Maybe this explains something about why the Mexicans who are used to this amount of noise are such hardy people?
Just before I finished writing about Tahiti I got a message from my new Australian friend, Carmen, whom I met for 3 minutes at the hall of my hotel, that she is in Oaxaca and if I want to join her travelling I could catch up with her until 6 am next day when she is supposed to leave the town. And so I did! I caught a night bus and found her hostel at 2 am in the morning in a city that felt deserted like a ghost town hundreds of kilometres away from the capital. (You see I was expecting the Mexicans to stay up late like the Spaniards but they don’t. They go to sleep at 10 or 12 the latest.)
Now, there are a few things you should know about Carmen. She has this very mysterious autoimmune disease that is so much more serious than mine: she has died 8 times, had her kidney removed and there was a time in her life when she could not move her limbs, so the doctors had to break her bones and yet she is one of those magical persons who love life sooooo much that even the most shy and depressed has to dance with her when she is making the party. She has been travelling all around the world for more than 9 years on and off (of course, she has to work from time to time), has lived and hunted with the local tribes in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra and has done her private biology projects from the islands of Galapagos to the desert in Syria. She has travelled or lived in more than half of the countries of our world and still keeps going, to marvel the bounties the other half has yet to offer :) So, this is my new friend, who actually very rarely travels together with someone for such a long time like we ended up doing. Perhaps because of our similarities in interpreting freedom in general.
The first day of our joined journey started out being scared of loosing that precious freedom of ours, though, :) but soon we were too busy to worry about any imaginary problems like that. We took a bus to the famous Hierve el Agua which is a pleasant natural pool in the high Mexican mountains. The weather was a bit chilli but nevertheless we took a cooling bath before which one of our fellow local bathers found a scorpion – fortunately not alive. Then we took hitched to Mitla, the bloodiest ruins ever in pre-Hispanic times, where we got a chance to taste all of the 15 different tastes of the local Tequila drink, the Mezcal. I also had Chapulines (fried grasshoppers with chili) and Moles (a kind of corn pastry with meat, bean and whole chilies wrapped in corn leaves) on the same day at the Tlacolula market where the nearby indigenous tribes took there goods to sell.
I made my first unpleasant discovery at this market: the Indians do not like to have their photo taken. So much that they hide their faces so desperately at every attempt of getting my camera out of its bag that you soon begin to feel like a criminal. (It may be due to their belief that their soul can be robbed this way…?) This very first journey also showed me a glimpse of Mexicans to which even later on I could never really took to. One thing was the business with the entry fee: not only its relative expensiveness but the way that they charged it 2 times within 1 minute next to each other on the road to the pools, just because both tiny villages formed an ownership over the touristy place out of their yearning for money. In general most of the Mestizo (the biggest group of people living in Mexico, they have a mixed Spanish blood) men I met all seemed to have their brains occupied with 2 simple thing, sex and money, while their eyes were always looking to the direction of the US. This is why there was probably no space left for such thing as politeness, why they would not give their seats to women with babies and big bags and even not move away from the isle when these women needed to pass them. Finally, this is also why they had no place left for shame while openly playing with their willies on the buses (I saw it 4 times in 3 weeks). (It also crossed my mind that all these are there to keep up the pretence of false dignity in the society but in reality the women are the real bosses behind the scenes. So, all these business with the mistresses is a desperate act of saving their face. (Because most Mexican men have mistresses, to which their wives answer by adoring their sons who will grew up spoilt and once married will have mistresses, etc...) Of course, there are so many different people in Mexico (educated and simple, rich and poor and so on…) that I should not generalize.
There is a surprisingly large number of indigenous tribes (68) most of whom lives in the Chiapas state where I spent one of my best days in Mexico. After our visit to the cloud forest of Cuajimoloyas (where we had our most freezing night and where the children laughter in the school radio travels a long distance through the cold air) and the Zapotec ruin of Monte Alban we left the town of Oaxaca (where this famous Zapotec danza de las Plumas fiesta , called Guelaguetza, was due soon). Our next day in the magic mushroom town of San Jose Del Pacifico was spent in the company of a local bruja (which) and her gorgeous black cat. (Carmen had some questions to ask her.) After accidentally visiting Pochutla and Zipolite (the combi driver misunderstood us) we finally arrived to the hostel of another curandero (healer) in Mazunte. The owner, Carlos Einstein, whose hairstyle and face vaguely resembles the famous physicist, wore his magic necklace made of boar teeth and tiny skulls when he served us his welcome drinks of tequila and vodka.
The next day we could marvel as much as 7 out of the 8 species of sea turtles in an aquarium before going out to the ocean and meet a real wild one. The sea looked very different in these waters. Sometimes even scary with its mystical deep darkness where our turtle started to pull me down. Later we went back to snorkel in the waters closer to the shore not knowing beforehand that it will be my scariest one with all those rough currants among the sharp rocks. (Out of 13 people only 4 dared to try.) This small village was also the place where I made closer acquaintance with that special fireball dance. Indeed, a very close one, whose mark I might be wearing on my back forever.(I thought I had learnt enough in one hour not to burn my back with white gas but apparently I did not. :)) Sleeping in a hammock while listening to amazing bird songs and body surfing on (and sometimes for long breathless seconds swirling inside) the dangerous dumper waves also happened here.
San Cristobal de las Casas in the Chiapas state was our next destination. It is famous for the house of an archaeologist couple who first discovered the people of the Lacandón selva in the 50s still living completely closed off from our civilisations and wearing tree-bark tunics only. Their house is called Na Bolom and the Lacandón people could stay here if they wished so – but more often they did not because our famous civilisation was too alien and strange for them to like it. The Zapatista movement also started here about a decade ago when the Us government forced the Mexican to burn vast quantities of the precious rainforest, naturally only after selling all the tropical woods to them, and the local indigenous people wanted to stop them if necessary with the aid of firearms. (Today you cannot pass through this once homogenous jungle without seeing the land to be burnt every hundred meters along the road for the futile 1 year cattle grazing... :((( )
In San Juan Chamula we met Tzotzil Indians who, we strangely discovered, hardly spoke Spanish at all. (We asked a father whose son was asking for money whether his son understands Spanish or not. The answer was ’Si’ to both question which made us realize that he did not understands us either. :)) In this small town the local Christian church had some very unchristian like features: the locals believed that burping expels evil spirits, so the local coke seller was the richest family in town. Also since the curanderos need space for their healing with bones and eggs, on the floor there was nothing else except pine leaves. You can imagine how sad I was to acknowledge that no photo was allowed to be taken of the beautiful Indian faces in the church, whose loud emotional talking and wide gesticulation towards the very long and sad faces of the wooden saint sculptures sent some shivers done my spine. They seemed to believe in what was going on much more than some proper Christians I saw before… The language they spoke was also unheard of and unusual. (The Chiapas state has 1 million indigenous people out of the 3.9 million Mexican totals. They are mostly Mayan groups who speak Chol, Chuj, Lacandón, Mam, Tojolabal, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Zoque. These languages evolved to the state where they are currently mutually unintelligible!)
I saw my most beautiful orange orchid ever and some coloured lakes in Parque Nacional Lagunas de Montebello’s cloud forest, after which we slept in the boarder town of Tziscao at a pleasant hostel of a very nice Guatemalan man. We were not aware beforehand that the boarder was so close, so it was a small surprise next day to cross the lake through to Guatemala on a cork tree raft. We met some truly truly wonderful people over there in our short 2 hour visit. One difference was that they not only not hide from photos but liked it, like in Asia. One of the women was so sweet because she was ashamed of having a photo taken while sitting in a hammock but exposing her bare shoeless feet! :D Oh, yes, talking of shoes. My sandal, which was brand new at the beginning of this trip 7 month ago, just decided to fell apart, so I purchased a 6 peso superglue and with the encouraging eyes of the local community attempted to repair it in a few minutes. We also saw a lot of smiley children who wee not yet old for school but could play beautiful and complicated pieces of music on the local instruments and a man with a donkey and a gun the size of him. All lovely lovely people. I was feeling very sorry by this time not to have gone to this friendly country for a longer time…
The next night also reached us at a special magical place. Moonlight shone on the amazing river limestones while myriads of fireflies danced like living Christmas lights around the water and our cabana. When we got up it was still dark, an hour before dawn. We set out to my first real extremely humid rainforest walk, where the jungle was full of orchids, bromelias and frangipani everywhere. Squirrels and birds followed us curiously watching our only steps in this wild paradise. It was here when I discovered that it is only the daytime waterfall enjoying gene that is missing from me: the nigh one is still there. :) We saw the clouds of humidity evaporate from the jungle below in a small clearing near a river, from where we turned back and got to our cabana for lunch. Then we had to walk with our bags for 2 hours through the jungle in another direction to Loma Bonita to catch a bus. It was like a sauna, we were showering in our own sweat. In addition I had ants in my pants because I set down the wrong place. Now, these ants are no small players, when they bite they bite real big.. :) The free banana ladyfinger we got from a local family at the bus ’stop’ was a real pleasure at the end.
Then we got free beer and a free ride to the door of our next night hostel from some nice Mexican boys on a road where no tourist dare to venture, then we met a real nice Guatemalan person while eating tacos, and then we got up at 4 am to leave for Frontera Corozal, a sleeping military checkpoint near the ruins of Yaxchilán. We had to take a boat along the boarder on the river to the site of the ruins. One of the small rarely ever visited far away ruin was in the middle of the dense jungle where we saw a scared coati that on our arrival climbed a tree and tried to intimidate us, well, wit not much success I should say. :) There were some howler monkey and spider monkey families. (One of the younger howler monkey was just learning to jump and sometimes he turned back from the end of the branch just like a human coward! :)) We walked into some of the dark passages in the ruins which are still used today for offerings by the locals. It was not the many bats whose presence scared us even though they made a big noise but the huge spiders whose number was really very very scary in the dark. When I got kind of lost among the ruins I accidentally discovered an enormous tree that had 4 other small trees supporting its trunk. This part of the Mexican rainforest is famous for its wildlife for 10 percent of earth’s living species are found here in this part of Mexico: 4300 plant species, 450 types of butterflies, macaw, toucan, jaguar, ocelot, tapir, harpy eagle, orchids, mahogany trees, iguanas and so much more… On our way back to civilisation we shared a taxi with a Chol family in a Mexican way: no automobile is full until at least one person can fit in any kind of way into the space of the vehicle. We could hardly breathe but it’s true that at least we had a fascinating language to listen to! :D
Before we reached the historical town of Palenque, we had our last stop in the jungle. I still get very emotional when I think of my meeting with the ’Hach Winik’ (true people) as the Lacandón people of the Lacanjá Chansayab call themselves. Their language is related to Yucatecan Maya and as I mentioned earlier they altogether avoided permanent contact with the outside world until the 1950s. Therefore they do not understand even Spanish. They are the first hand sufferers of the burning of their cleared jungle milpas and deforestation elsewhere by the greedy government. Some of the children were not wearing their traditional tree-bark tunics but already had some western clothes on. Changajun (=small bird in their language) spoke Spanish with a strong accent while tried to introduce the local football team to us. But understanding of our concepts and our gadgets did not seem to come with these influences. Ebe, the cutest 3-year-old square-head, whom we met on our way out the village, was moving like a little monkey on the road smiling her cheeky smile, while her big brother and sister were looking at us very very intensely but quietly. It was the most strange yet most magical moment of my journey in the Mexican land. It didn’t come as a surprise that after these long days in the jungle we, the so called civilised people, also felt awkward in the town of Palenque. After our first shower in 4 days, when the storm was over we set out to relax at the fire, dance and music show of our hostel.
The next morning woke us with the sounds of many birds and the sweet fragrance of some special flowers. We needed these helps so much during our attempt to try and integrate ourselves into ’normal and civilised’ life again. Washed our clothes and let them dry until we got back to the very touristy but probably one of the best preserved ruins of the Mayas. (By the way, the Mayas had a much more precise way to calculate the time and had a perfect calendar for it, using 3 different ways to count. They also had a surprisingly advanced way to figure out the movements of many planets.) Next day we got to know the ugliest city in Mexico in spite of its name which means beautiful town (Villahermosa). Nevertheless, the huge Olmec heads in the La Ventana park museum were very impressive to say the least. The captive toucans and coatis and the talkative young staff really made our day so much that even the dumbest waiter I ever met could not change this. (On our request for a ’cafe con leche’ he had the following question to ask: ’Cafe con leche negro o con leche?’ Oh well… :D)
The night bus to Merida, then straight to Valladolid in the Yucatan peninsula was everything but comfortable. In spite of the video entertainment (usual for first class buses with LCD screens) the extra aircon had its hibernating effect on us even though my head was lost under my sleeping bag. We saw Chitzén Itzá with a bonus entry (sorry, I can’t tell you how :) where I got a photo shot of the beautiful blue Motmot bird. The pyramid at this ruin is famous for the snake that can be seen on its side made by the sun on a certain day of the year. In the garden of our hostel I had a chance to watch the tlacuache (the only American marsupial) to bring her puppies down from the bush to the ground and teach them cautions. : ) The next day we hired a bike and sang all the way to the magical limestone sinkholes. Apart from the resident bats, fish and the hanging tree roots we were the only wildlife among the giant stalagmites in the blue waters of Cenote Xkekén/Dzitnup and Samulá. This was the place to get our first Maya language tuition: ’dios botique’ means gracias, ’hacha catich’ is I love you, ’hach kich panech’ means you are beautiful and so on. (I don’t know how to mark the so many glottal stops these lovely people use.) There was a cute little girl in a white dress embroidered with colourful flowers whose mother sewed up my friend’s torn pants all the while smiling with her fashionable teeth each framed with real gold (but the middle is still white!).
In contrast, Tulum with its horrid prices, busloads of French tourist groups was a place to be left soon after arrival. (On our visit to the ruins by the turquoise ocean we noticed that the French groups missed the only carving there was to see. Oups….) Yet, we had one night to stay in the cheapest possible place: a Tipi. The cat seemed to come with the deal… :) and our new Mayan friend, with whom we practised some of our new knowledge, invited us for a drink for our last night before saying goodbye to each other with Carmen. She went on to begin her trip through all the Central American countries and I turned back towards Cancún, or more precisely to its cheaper version the Isla Mujeres, where I only stayed one night and spent the following day with snorkelling in and illegally under the huge waves among the many coloured fish. I say illegally because the organizers and the water police wanted us to wear a life jacket that somehow was not exactly designed for free diving, so for the 2nd time I dived into the water without it just like our 11 year old guide did. As I went deeper and deeper, the shouting and what sounded most probably like cursing died away and there was only me and the huge waves of currants above me. Oh yes, and a deadly puffer fish, a nurse shark, a lonely barracuda, a sting ray and all the other less harmful creatures of the Caribbean coast. ;D
On leaving the island I probably saw the most beautiful Mayan woman with her baby (they look Asian sometimes and even have Chinese sounding names) before I got on my 22 hour night bus to the state of Veracruz, home of the Totonacs, Huastecs, Toltec and Aztec people. The entertainment this time was ’The Pirates of the Caribbean’ with Johnny Depp in Spanish. Well, I wished my Spanish was a little better to understand all the jokes the bounty of Cortez… What waited me after my long trip was uncertain but when I got to the city of Veracruz I knew exactly what I had to do. Since I did not want to stay in an expensive but rather boring place, I went straight to the main plaza to dance danzones with the local gypsy king for3 hours for a music similar to the Cuban BVSC, before taking another night bus to Jalapa. I arrived there at 2 am, found the streets deserted, no hostel to sleep at because due to a church gathering everything was fully booked up. So I ended up begging a security guard that for half price of a costly room would he be so kind and give me the laundry room with the dirty mattress and its playful rat residents for 3 hours sleep. Yesss! I looove surprises…
What I did not suspect that time was that next day is going to be the 2nd most euphoric day of my Mexican trip. It began with the free internet in a school on my way to the most fascinating Museum and continued with meeting a really nice archaeologist girl after which I ended up teaching 3 different age groups in the afternoon in the same morning school for free accommodation and dinner. This day was also my lucky day to find out the phone number of an exboyfriend from the time when I lived in England many years ago.
I visited him in Poza Rica (This region is famous for its good seafood, vanilla growing, maize god, the zócalo where girls walk one way and boys another to deliberately face each other and meet while drinking the local juices made with an almost unbearable amount of chili.) and found out that he came to Hungary 2 times in the past years looking for me while staying in a hostel 50 meters away from my home! Life is strange sometimes… I was very excited and happy to see him even if he had a family, which I later found out he didn’t. He seemed a different person in Spanish than in speaking English. (Perhaps because of his upbringing in a well-to-do family.) Other aspects of his personality which were hidden from me up to now were real pleasant ones. For example he belonged to the traditional Totonacan group who are the only one people who not only smile in their lives a lot but make sure with their smiley pottery faces that they do the same in their death, too! :D (They were the creators of my favourite ceramics in the Jalapa museum.) With him we went looking for the Toninas (fresh water dolphins) in the canals nearby the sea and at the ruins of El Tajin (meaning thunder, hurricane and lightning) we saw the Juego del Pelota with some of its original plaster and painting where they played those infamous games and the flying Voladores whose performance is supposed to bring rain.
I spent the last days of my trip in MC watching a dance show with Mariachi music at the national ballet, observing today’s Aztec dancing at night and healing at daytime at the Zoacalo, visiting the home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, marvelling the murals of the latter (in which you can see how the Spanish branded the Indians on their arrival when Cortez was accidentally mistaken for an Aztec rain god) and spending 2 whole days among the many wonders of the archaeology museum. (I saw my friends from 6 years ago, the Anasazi people who lived and disappeared at the Mesa Verde in the southern states of the US) and many other indigenous groups’ daily lives and fiestas and lots and lots of animal potteries, sculptors and golden trinkets.) I also visited Teotihuachán, where you can climb the 2nd biggest pyramid in the world to look around and try to imagine what it was like to live here in the time of the Aztecs, who by the way had the wheel but only used it for toys! and who built many pyramids over the others among the lake they had here with floating gardens. These were the people who had 20 000 people sacrificed on the completion of their biggest pyramid in a way that their heart was torn out live, they pampered their dogs which they ate at the end and upon defeating an important king they performed a dance in the skin of the king’s daughter to intimidate their enemy. And yes, they were the ones whose legend is integrated into the present Mexican flag and crest: the eagle who finds a snake on a cactus marking out the land of its Aztec people.
Dear reader, it is my duty to inform you that although this time my journey has ended, there will be one more piece on this website concerning my flight home and some things I want to share about travel in general. There will also be a date soon which should inform you about the date and time of my picture showing night.
Until then hasta la vista!
Tiglis