San Cristobal & Day of the Dead

I stepped off the bus in San Cristobal and had this odd feeling. After a while I realised I was cold. I thought back to the last time this had happened and realised it was when I climbed Volcan Chimborazo in Ecuador, all the way back in May!

I have to say, it was quite refreshing to be somewhere with a cool climate after sweating my way through Central America, and San Cristobal is a truly beautiful colonial city. In fact, I'd say it's the nicest colonial city I've seen on the whole trip, not an easy title to claim.

I'd just happened to arrive in for the last two days of cultural week, when the town showcases local art, music and crafts. Every evening in the main square there was local music, everything from indigenous woodwind to an 86 piece orchestra, and during the day the main square was covered in paintings.

There is also a cool cafe/music culture. There are lots of tiny cafe/restaurants (I ate in one that only had two tables) which host buskers that roam around the town popping in for a song or two. They also make great enchiladas (the restaurants, not the buskers). I love a good enchilada. I also love insects trapped in fossilised tree sap (that might be a lie), so I checked out the amber museum - it was surprisingly good!

Next up was the town of Oaxaca (pronounced wah-ak-ah, yes, I'm not lying). I'd found myself in Mexico for Day of the Dead, and Oaxaca is reportedly one of the best places to experience it. The holiday is all about remembering loved ones who have passed away, through celebration rather than grieving. Oh, and everyone dresses up and paints their faces.

The holiday lasts for three days, from 31st October, to 2nd November. The family gathers together and goes to clean the graves of loved ones. They then decorate the grave with offerings, including sugar skulls, flores de muerto (flowers of the dead, orange marigolds) and pan de muerto (bread of the dead, a sugary white bread). They also leave possessions of the deceased and food/drinks that the person in question liked to eat/drink during their lifetime.

Relatives and friends will camp out at the graves all night reminiscing about good times with the deceased, sometimes in the form of poems or songs. There is also a lot of drinking involved, the local Mezcal being the beverage of choice. The great thing about it is the everyone is happy.

As usual I'd not made any plans so I ended up in the only hostel with rooms available. This was a proper backpackers hostel. Negatives - two bathrooms for 30 people, terrible beds, run down and dirty. Positives - cheap, good location, great people. It also had a borderline alcoholic owner who passed around lots of bottles of hard liquor every night. Facepaint was also provided.

Some outfits were scarier than others...

The owner and his friends were really good to us. Not only did they supply copious amounts of free alcohol but they showed us what the holiday was really about. On the 31st we went to the main Oaxacan cemetery to walk around the graves and meet the families. Getting there was a challenge - there were 28 of us and one pickup truck. Everyone knew each other a lot better after that journey... I felt a bit strange walking around a graveyard to sightsee, but everyone we met was really happy that we'd come to visit, and spent ages telling us stories about the people they were there to remember.

The next day I discovered that there are some great cliffs around Oaxaca, what a result! Hangover-climbing was in order. No one covered themselves in glory. Good times though.

The other nights we joined the locals in the bars of Oaxaca and did some serious partying. I have to say, the Mexican people I've met so far have been some of the friendliest of this trip. They also have more swear-words than any other Latin American nation and it seems to be a national pastime to pass this important knowledge onto as many gringos as possible. I'm at least 78% ruder (in Spanish) than I was before I crossed over into this country. Seriously though, I'm going to have to come and travel Mexico properly some day soon.

Right, after all this partying I'm off for some serious downtime in the mountains. Hasta luego!

I ate a cricket in Oaxaca. I can't recommend it.

San Cristobal had some seriously impressive churches.

Another thing they do for day of the dead is create these huge coloured-sand pictures.

Here is a work in progress.

Mayan temple week!

The last week has been dedicated to all things Mayan.

I didn't really intend it to work out that way, but I just so happen to have visited three places in a row with awesome Mayan temples. I am now completely Maya-ed out, but have made the following important observations about the Mayan people:
1 - These guys really knew how to build temples (much earlier than the other great pre-Colombian civilisation of the Incas).
2 - Their kings had some ridiculous names. My personal favourites include King Moon Double Comb, Turtle Macaw Lake III, 18 Rabbit and 6 Death Sun Shield.
3 - They could possibly be credited with inventing pinball. There was a game where players kicked/punched a ball up a stone slope with the aim of hitting rings/statues placed on the slope, thereby gaining points. This sounds exactly like pinball with human flippers to me. I think I am the first person to discover this. The only slight difference is that the losing team was put to death. I'm yet to see that rule implemented on a pinball machine.

First up was Tikal, probably the most powerful of the Mayan cities back in the day (200-900AD in case you were wondering). Annoyingly, this meant getting up at 4:30am to catch the bus from the town of Flores to the archaeological site. I thought I was still dreaming when we arrived to find hundreds of Mapaches with their tails up, sniffing around for food.

We set off into the ruins. Archaeologists must be too busy digging up stuff to think of interesting names for their discoveries because we started at Temple I and worked our way to Temple V. The largest of the main temples is Temple IV, from which you can see right out over the jungle canopy.

As we observed the peaks of the other four temples poking up through the jungle, I had an inspired thought - connect them with zip-lines for a Mayan zip-line tour! For some reason this suggestion was met with disdain from the officials. I think they are going to steal my idea and claim it as their own.

Worth a mention is Temple V. Still half-covered with vegetation, you're not supposed to climb it. There was a guy cutting the grass with a machete (standard in Guatemala), so I asked if we could climb a few steps. He surpassed all expectations when he ran up the steps, chucked a huge rope down, and invited us to all scramble up holding onto the rope, which he'd tied to a stone.

The view was jaw-dropping. Unfortunately, we could be seen from a long way off and caught the attention of the park officials. Apparently, the guy cutting the grass did not have the authority to allow a load of gringos to scramble up the slippery, wet steps of a national monument over 1,500 years old. Whoops.

After a rapid telling-off in Spanish, which no one really understood, we headed off to finish the circuit. Hopefully the grass cutter is still employed.

After that it was back to Flores. For some reason I had the urge to buy a kite, so I did. People fly them during the Day of the Dead celebrations, so I thought I'd get some practice in. 

The next day myself and Neal visited the Mayan city of Yaxha. This site is less well-known but probably more beautiful than Tikal, being set next to two clear lakes.

The site is not as big as Tikal but it has some really well-restored impressive temples, especially the twin temples below.

 

These temples are unique in their non-uniform pattern, indicating that they were special ceremonial temples used for the most important occasions.

There is also the remains of a big ball court/human pinball machine. There would have been big stone slabs at the site below where the ball was hit up towards the scoring rings. The players stood in the grass verge in the middle.

Adding to the atmosphere of Yaxha were toucans, eagles, and the odd howler monkey! Not surprising as we were in the middle of the rain forest.

The next day myself, Zack and Neal went our separate ways after an awesome four weeks on the road together - I will miss those guys. I was heading across the border to Mexico, and the first town I came across was Palenque. This just so happens to be right next to, you guessed it, some important Mayan ruins!

After two full days traipsing around the jungle getting devoured by mosquitoes, my interest in Mayan ruins was waning slightly, but I decided that I'd give it my full enthusiasm as it would be the last Mayan site I'd be visiting on this trip. And boy was I glad! Those ruins were really great.

The Palenque style was a bit different to that of the other Mayan tribes - they tended to build squarer and more complex structures than other tribes. One highlight is the temple of the inscriptions (below). In 1952 archaeologists removed a stone slab to reveal a passageway. This passageway led to a huge stone tomb, covered in hieroglyphs, containing Palenque's most important king, Pakal.

This building was likened to a hobbit home by my Israeli travelling companion. It contains a carving of God L (another imaginative archeology term) smoking a pipe.

This is the view from the highest tower, out over the site. The square tower was a ceremonial tower used to crown the kings when power passed from one to another. This kind of square tower is also unique in Mayan architecture.

So, that was my week of being an amateur archaeologist. I have 106 mosquito bites and have lost half my body weight through sweating in the humid climates. I may also have Malaria. But I have seen some breathtaking feats of human engineering, created when the 'latest sculpting technology' consisted of a lump of rock that was harder than the one you were trying to carve.

Next I'm heading into the Mexican mountains. Oh, I've had a slight haircut - a parting present from Zack and Neal.

Flying over Atitlan and Semuc Champey

If you could fly, or be invisible, which would you choose?

When I was younger, I always said I'd be invisible (cos then I could sneak onto any plane and fly wherever I wanted), but all of my adult life I've wished I could fly. Probably Superman-style as it would be hard to buy clothes if I had wings...but I digress.

Lago Atitlan - a beautiful lake ringed by hills and volcanoes. We all decided that we'd all place it in our top-5 lake-volcano combinations, not an easy list to enter.

We'd arrived at Santiago de Atitlan 22 minutes after the last boat to San Pedro, so spent a night there and wandered around the indigenous markets. The Mayan women wear some beautiful clothes, so colourful and intricate. The men wear jeans and t-shirts.

My main reason for visiting involved a crazy Guatemalan. I've never been paragliding before and this beautiful setting was the perfect place to take the plunge. We headed up a volcano in the back of a bouncy pickup truck and marveled at the view from the launching point...

Everyone wanted to go first so we drew straws. I cursed my luck as I pulled out the shortest one! It was agony watching Zack take off first and head out into the blue sky.

However, it turned out to be the luckiest straw-pick ever. Zack and Neal both went before me which meant that they took off and landed back on top of the mountain. It turns out that landing where you took off is quite tricky, the wind can push you up too high so you have to come back round for another try. During the landing, the air is quite turbulent, so it is not something people who suffer with motion sickness will enjoy. Zack touched down after 15 minutes of aborted landings. He was so yellow he could have appeared in an episode of The Simpsons. He had also thrown up over the town (sorry citizens of San Pedro). I was even more worried when Neal landed and ran into the trees to empty his guts. He doesn't normally suffer from motion sickness. I do, a lot. I was pretty nervous when we were about to take off.

Luckily for me, being the last to go, we landed in the town! This spared me failed landings and a lot of turbulence, and my stomach behaved - even when we did this:

Wowwww, this is one of the best things I've done in my life! I had a massive grin on my face for the rest of the week!

Next up was Semuc Champey. Not an easy place to reach! Boat to Panajachel, buses to Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz, Sacapulas, Uspantan, Coban and then Lanquin. The route took us along a beautiful mountain pass, which has only just been declared passable, after the side of the mountain sheared off during a rainstorm, killing 58 people in 2008.

It still didn't look that safe...

Semuc Champey is another natural formation that shouldn't be real. The Rio Cahabon gushes through the mountains and, in this particular 500 meter stretch, has forced it's way under a huge lump of rock.

Some of the water bubbles to the top and has created shallow cascading pools of emerald water that is warmed by the sun. A truly beautiful sight!

The day also involved shooting down the river in a inner tube, crawling through a cave, jumping off a bridge into the river and hiking through the jungle. I'd foolishly forgotten my swimming shorts, so this was another thing to add to the list of stuff I've had to do in my underwear.

Last thing on the list was to visit the caves at Lanquin - the caves are average, but as the sun goes down millions of bats shoot out the cave mouth to head into the night sky and feed. If you stand in the right place, they wooshhh past your head. Or crash into you if you disorient them with a camera flash. Not one for those that are afraid of the dark.

That night we celebrated by sampling a local drink called Caña Rey. It looks like paint stripper and tastes like it too. The next day was therefore hangover day. We spent it flowing down the ice-cold river in an inner tube with a beer - the perfect hangover cure!

Ready to take off.

Run, run, run!

At this point we run out of ground and I expect to fall to my death...

...but we make it...

...and head off into the clouds!

Out the other side, the weather is beautiful!

Fishermen plying their trade on the lake.

Lago Atitlan, beautiful!

I took this picture from the sky - I was probably screaming at the time.

This piece of material is the only thing keeping me from falling to a painful death.

Me and the boys. Underwear optional.

The group at Semuc Champey.