sooooooo last monday seems like years ago!!! We went on a boat tour to the cañon del sumidero which is this amazing canyon near San Cristobal with steep rock sides that are 1000m tall at their highest. There are also caves at some points and just forest at others. We saw some awesome crocodiles and even some monkeys in the places where there was forest and not just rock! Unfortunately as it´s the rainy season and as so many rivers feed into it there was so so mujch rubbish floating in the water, even though volunteers remove tons of it every day. At the end of the canyon there´s an electricity plant. Chiapas provides more than half of mexico´s electrical power and yet it´s still the poorest state, where electricity is very expensive, and many communities live without any electricity at all.
Monday afternoon we went into town and booked onto a tour on kayaks through the jungle to start thursday.
Tuesday we got a colectivo (local transport which consists of cramming as many people (and their children and their boxes of vegetables etc) as possible into a little van which is usually falling to pieces) out to a little vilage called San Juan Chamula. There are lots of craft markets around the center, and an extraordinary church. The church has no seats, but there is an alter at the front and cases with statues of saints along the walls. In front of each saint is a table where people can light candles for the saints, and each saint carries a mirror over its heart to reflect away bad spirits. The floor is covered with pine needles so the whole building smells amazing, and all over the floor people make little clearings in the pine needles to light candles on the floor and pray. Different colours of candle mean different things, and some people bring cans of fizzy drink like coke in as they believe that burping expels bad spirits. Others bring in chickens and kill them as a sacrifice.
wednesday we went shopping for things that we might need for the kayaking, nothing much else!
Thurs we set off at 7am from the hostel. Turns out we were with 2 middle aged german couples - not ideal as we don´t speak a word of german! But 3 out of the 4 spoke english and 2 of them had lived in mexico 10 years and owned their own ecotourism business so it turned out to be like having 2 extra guides. Our official guide was a guy called Elias who was good fun, knew lots about all the indigenous groups in chiapas and the forest and the archaeological sites, but was a little... over flirty with me and ro at times! (hola bueritas tan liiindas donde esta la fiesta?). We went to some ruins in the morning which was great, not because they were the most amazing that we´d seen but because there were no tourists and there was someone to tell us what it all meant! There was a ball park at the ruins. Archaeologists still don´t know whether the losers were beheaded (because they lost) or the winners (because only the blood of the winners was good enough to be sacrificed to the gods) but either way it´s all nice and gruesome! From there we went to some beautiful lakes, but then it started to rain so we missed the rest and had lunch! After lunch we got into our kayaks, met our other guide Asias (probably not right spelling) and headed down stream towards where we would camp on the first night. On the way we saw some little spider monkeys which was cool. The camp site was relatively civilised - the camping area was covered so the stom that followed wasn´t too disasterous! The toilet left a lot to be desired though and there was no shower (apart from the tropical rain).
The next morning after a breakfast of fresh fruit and yoghurt we set off again down the river. The beach where we had left the kayaks was completely underwater because of the rain over night and the river was noticable faster. We had quite a lot of far too close encounters with the branches at the edge of the river and one of the german couples tipped their boat and they both lost their glasses! But we managed to make it to a place where we would walk in the jungle to some other ruins. We donated rather more blood than we would have liked to the mosquitos of the Lacandón rain forest, but it's a really beautiful place. The ruins haven't been restaured at all so it's all totally overgrown, and slowly being destroyed by the vegitation because the government won't put any money into saving it.
After we head back to shore in the kayaks we go to the next stop which is much better than our previous camping spot, and there are howler monkeys playing in the trees over the cabins!! We have a much needed shower and an early night
Too lazy to contintue just now, will finish off whenever i'm next online!
liam - can't believe you're the other side of the world!!!!!!!!!!!!! hope you're having fun. Wish I could have brought a hogwarts size case :( :(
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