Us Trip Spots - A Closer Appear

This post is about two distinctly various journeys. The very first 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 cannot comprehend how we are going to see anything in the blackness, but the guide's eyes seem to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We begin strolling, our vision adjusting slowly.

We've 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-watching is now one of the far more common pursuits in ecotourism pleasant Costa Rica. As the most critical nesting site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees more than its honest share of site visitors. In truth considering that 1980, the yearly number of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.

The manual stops, points out two deep furrows in the sand - the signal of a turtle's presence - and spots a finger to his lips, producing the 'shhh' gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us around a crater in the seashore within it is an enormous 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 low survival rate of her hatchlings due to the tropical family vacations (felixcouch.blog.com) fact only 1 of each and 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. Although we are not permitted 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. Right after a bit the guidebook moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong varieties 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 upon a brightly painted saintly icon, The man took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a signal not of globalization, but of the expurgating power of soda because the Tzotzil folks think that evil spirits can be expulsed via a robust burp. 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 misplaced 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 youngster 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 site of an armed Zapatista revolt in 1994.

Outdoors San Cristobal, the village of San Juan de Chamula is literally a law unto itself, with its own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are uncovered here, where girls promote brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the major square, returning home at midday to put together a meal for their husbands, many of whom are shared. Males can have up to three wives at a time, and I'm not specified to be envious or not!! Every 12 months for the duration of the pre Lenten festival, perhaps the most interesting time to go to, the village's males run barefoot by means of blazing wheat.

4 kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Right 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 females pummel tortillas and weave textiles, always with a watchful eye on the sky because numerous homes have gone up in smoke as a end result of rogue fireworks.