When it rains....

It rained. Not the polite domesticated rain that we are used to, or the so called "flash floods" of Mebourne or Sydney, but real wild jungle rain that started late one day and did not stop. We had already bought our tickets to see the water falls, so figured that once we were wet through, we were wet through. Now Mexicans try to sell you everything. You can be walking on a jungle track and a little girl will appear from nowhere with a broken plastic colander containing some bananas and biscuits, but just you try to buy an raincoat or umbrella. Anyway we got soaked and stayed soaked for hours.

The photo to the side is of Misol-Ha (used as the location for the film Predator). The only problem is that the picture is from the internet. This photo was taken on a nice clear day. By the time Tony and I got there it had been teaming for almost 18 hours. The water was torrid and the sound was deafening.

We went on to Agua Clara (English translation: Clear Water) and it was far from clear. The next stop was Agua Azul (English translation: Blue Water) and it was not blue. The day before some other folk had been swimming in the pools and enjoying the water. We just stood back in awe and the water tumbled by with the occassional tree bobbing up and down. Eventually we found a place we liked and settled in for a long lunch.

When the bus dropped us back at our Cabana (4 km from town) the priorities were to get dry and have a nap. We woke a few hours later to find that the internet was down at the hostel village, some bridges were flooded and the busses has stopped running. This morning the cook at the hostel told us that this was the best time to visit Palenque because it is the dry season!

One thing to be said for hippies is that they have some idea about food. In the middle of the jungle, they have built a real Italian pizza oven, someone taught these Mexicans how to make pizza and they paid attention. Tony declared his dinner to be just as good as iCarusi in Holmes Rd Brunswick. High praise indeed!

At about three in the morning Tony realised that it had stopped raining. He got up to find the source of some very loud non-human sounding snoring. He was convinced he was going to find some kind of primate in a tree, I was convinced he was going to find a drunk backpacker. He found nothing so we will never know.

Right now I am in a laundry-internet cafe, what a good idea. I had to thow my shoes away and my leather sandals are in a poor state anyway. Further, they do not stand a chance of getting dry. So my mission will be to get something to eat and find some shoes.

Palenque

Palenque is the site of a city of 15 square kilometres, but archeologists have only uncovered part of it from the jungle. Some of the ruins are really well preserved and a lot of work has been done on them. Other sections have been partly uncovered and still have huge trees growing out of them, other sections are still covered in jungle. This is certainly the most open of the ruins, you pratically have free reign to climb and explore, so we did. We would slowly crawl up, sit for 10 minutes or so and survey the magnificence, quickly plop down the steps and onto the next edifice.

We went into sections that were only partly uncovered and there was nobody bar us. It was eerie. This part of Mexico has the highest rainfall, so the jungle grows quickly. I think if you stood still and stared you really could see it growing. We sat really quietly in one part and brilliant gold and black lizards emerged from the leaf litter. As soon as the city of Palenque was abandoned, the jungle took it back. It is humid and wild.


At night we could hear howler monkeys and wierd animals calling to each other. I did sleep pretty well, but I woke a few times and was glad that we had shut the door firmly. Indeed our hostel is called The Jaguar and you can just imagine the whole place coming to life with animals.

In fact, the whole place does come to life with animals, ferals to be exact. We don't have tattoos, piercings, dreadlocks, fisherman's pants, equipment for fire juggling or bare feet, so we are just a little bit passe. At night, in the middle of all the jungle hostels, all manner of counter cultural types gather. The food is good, the booze is cheap, the music is live and the company is friendly. Do I really have to come home?

Cabana in the jungle

This is a photograph of the cabana that Tony and I are staying in at El Panchan, near Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. The 5 hour bus trip was amazing. No more cactii and dry grey wasteland for us, just verdant jungle, wild cliff drops, soaring mountains. Out of nowhere the land is cleared, a series of shacks appear and the roadside stalls go up. For a while it was children on the speed humps selling corn and whole coconuts with a straw in the top, then it was clothes stalls selling garmets that were either sunflower yellow or white, no other colours, just yellow or white, then it was barbeque chicken, whatever.

We are staying out of the town in a wierd place that is really just a collection of hippy-feral backpacker jungle hostels. It is easy to meet people, at the bar and there are plenty of folks from all around the world who have been making their way across the planet. The exchange of stories is great fun. We even met an Aussie called Dale from Nathalia wearing a Carlton Football Club top. He is on his way to Cuba to do some boxing. Sure enough he went to Mowbray College for a while, and of course we knew some of the same people.

Tenejapa and San Juan Chamula

Tenejapa

In the morning, (after the best spinach quiche ever) Tony and I went out to the market at Tenejapa, not on the $17 per person organised tour, but on the $4 per
person round trip on a Collectivo. A Collectivo is a taxi or a car that has a set route, ie San Cristobal to Tenejapa. Everyone who wants to get from one place to the other knows where to catch a ride, but tourists don´t usually use the Collectivos. When the driver has a full load, he goes, sometimes you might wait 5 minutes, rarely more than 10 I think. It is a terrific system of public transport. The problem was that to find the departure point we had to walk to the edge of the town, enter the entrails of a market where everything was pitched at Mexican height and I kept hitting my head on the tarpaulins or clothes on display, and out the other side of the market. The trip was beautiful and the town amazing. All the main town officials (maybe 30 of them) were lined up on plastic seats in front of the town hall, all wearing their ribbon hats. They look like the sort of hat that a goat would eat in a funny story about a naughty farm animal. The minor officials sat at their side and hoped for the day when they would get promoted to ribbon hat status.

A seemingly never ending procession of identically dressed women came out of the church in single file accompanied by some important looking men with fearsome big sticks. We were told to stand still and not to take photos. The only explanation we could get is that it all had something to do with the new year.

San Juan Chamula
In the afternoon we went to the slightly scarey town of San Juan Chamula. This town keeps its distance from the world, a tradition that began with resistance to the Spanish in 1524 and continues with gusto. The indigenous people of the towns speak an ancient language, they all wear clothes that identify their family, community and village. The idea of individuality has not really caught on here. They have ancient supertitions and unique religious rituals. A group marched around the square playing some kind of drone music, stopping at crosses mounted at various points, raised the bowl of smoking herbs to the cross then proceeded to the next cross. All the while explosions are going off, because what sort of a celebration would it be without some explosions and it seems fireworks are cheap.

Many of the vendors were primary school age children, and my impression is that many of the children who live in these towns do not go to school.

These are people for whom the next town is a threat, so we were careful. Some might see these places as quaint or authentic or charming. Tony kept uttering the word "backward".

San Cristobal: hippy capital of Mexico

Wow, Indian food, jazz clubs, wholemeal bread - Tony wants to move here. It is certainly the prettiest town we have been in. It is high in the southern mountains and just so much the image of Mexico at its best.
On the other hand, it is the home of the Zapatista uprising and the killing of 45 people, mainly women and children in 1997, when the Mexican police and their friends decided that they had had enough of the indigeous people demanding their rights. (A little reading is in order if you want to know more about this.)

We went to the theatre tonight and saw a dance/play about the prehispanic history of the area. I was terrific and we tried hard to follow the story line. (A little reading is in order if we are to understand this.)

You take the high road, and I'll go to Tehuantepec

Charles and Josh have gone to Puerto Escondido and Tony and I have hit the road again. First we made it Tehuantepec, where few tourists venture. We went to the market and each stall holder called to the next "Hey look at that woman". It seems they have never seen a gaintess before. Many of the old women and some of the young wear the traditional dress of a full length huge skirt with a velvet embroidered top, they tie ribbons in their hair and look really great. Of course, they are lucky to be over 5ft, so I looked like a freak. The means of transport, which we did use, is a three wheeled motor bike with a tray on the back. You just stand on the tray and off you go. What a good idea!
It happened that our hotel was opposite the university of foreign languages. I happened upon two young Mexican women about to sit an English exam. We spent the evening together and they told us a little about their lives. It is hard to grasp. They were beautiful and confident, in no real hurry, and under to real pressure to acquire boyfriends or husbands. Quite independent in thought and behaviour in many ways. They enjoyed a joke and were sophisticated in so many ways. But, like all Mexicans who want a tertiary education, they have to pay full fees. This means that they are supported by their families and thus are obliged to their families. They both spoke with great admiration and reverence of their parents, their desire to do the right thing, their sense of a really strong tie. They also spoke of the desire to live their own lives and make something of themselves. It was a delightful evening and a little insight into the importance of the family.

Prehispanic Mexico and Primitive Mexico

Prehispanic Mexico

We wandered around Oaxoca through galleries and museums. The museum of prehispanic art was my favourite. The ceramic figures all seem just a little bit comical to me. Many Mexican artists (including Rivera and Kahlo but many others as well) made a point of collecting prehispanic art. They are the ones who really saved a great deal of it for the people of Mexico. The figures are expressive and animated. Some were made for funerial puposes, some were made with domestic function in mind, and some celebrated the natural environment.
My personal favourite was a collection of really fat dogs. These dogs were an important source of food, so the fatter the better! So far intenstines, maguey worms and fried crickets have been eaten, and we do have plans that involve armadillo, but I don´t think I will go for dog just yet.

Primitive Mexico
Oaxaca is a relatively rich town because so many tourists come here but the poverty is just woeful. Many people are homeless, whole families sit on the street begging. Yesterday Tony and I saw a woman with a girl of about three begging. Finally the girl had enough and threw a tantrum. It was just too much. A young european backpacker couple were walking by with their dinner in take-out boxes and they just handed over the food. It was heartbreaking, the only problem is that just a few metres up the street was another woman with a child, and on goes the story.

Outside every church are piles of dirty rags, inside the piles of dirty rags are even dirtier people who seem to live on the church steps. Just a few doors from our hotel a whole family live in their car. Josh and Charles had a man expose his swollen, possibly gangenous, but definately blackened leg from ankle to knee in an effort to win a couple of pesos. Some are enterprising, and play a tune or try to sell peanuts, but the vast majority are beyond even that. The really old beggars try to get a spot at the church door because it seems they can hardly move. The markets are full of tiny wisened old women who do things like shell peas, or remove the spikes from cactii or peel fruit. I feel reluctant to take photographs, because it seems like an intrusion, but I think it is something everyone should see.

But Don't Stop Reading Now
Slim Carlos is the richest man in the world and he is Mexican! His company Telmex (built with tax-payers' money) controls 90% of the Mexican landline telephone market. His wealth is equal to roughly 8% of Mexico's GDP. Even Rockefeller never got above 2.5% of America's economic output. Slim makes an average of $27 million per day.
The Twist
While I type this, this very second, right now, Slim Carlos is making money from me. Mexicans pay 270% more for broadband than do Americans, and I am sitting in an internet cafe about to press ¨Publish¨ then go up to the girl at the counter, hand over my pesos and make Slim Carlos just a little bit richer.