Category Archives: mexico

pop goes Antigua

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Pop Goes Antigua

I`ve never been one to make a big deal about holidays. Something about having to “designate” days to show people we love and appreciate them turns me off. I prefer to practice EveryDayIsAHoliday-ism. And honestly, Christmas JUST missed *makes the smallest space between her thumb and index finger* being swept up with the tinsel in the streets without my even noticing this year. BUT last night, as the clock stuck midnight, Antigua lit up and blew out as Christmas screamed at me, “I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!” Now…Guatemalans love their firecrackers. As do the weasels, POP go the holidays, POP go the birthdays, POP go the political days, and POP go the Saint days. You name it — they celebrate it with a round of the hot stuff (sometimes even, heart-startlingly, thrown at your door or heels). You don`t need an alarm clock in Antigua. You can regularly count on 5 minutes of fireworks every morning at 5 am. And oh yes. We bitch about it. BUT not yesterday at 12am. And not today at 12pm. Nope! 10 million little red fire crackers CRACKED and POPPED at the exact, same, incredible moment. It was just like going into a hail storm with a tin garbage pail over your head! Obnoxious, rambunctious, deafening and glorious NOISE! Something about EVERYONE going a little bit crazy at the exact same time made my my soul just want to jump out of my skin and POP with the crackers. Craziness…now THAT I can celebrate. And they are STILL popping, fizzing and streaking as I type. And although it`s a flip-flopping 80 degrees in the sol here, the lack of the pretty white stuff on the floor has been replaced with the pretty red and white stuff from the deceased remains of the popped, fizzed and streaked. So Christmas is here. And I hail her. With my own firecracker or two.

*POP!*

*CRACK*

Merry Christmas Everyone. :)

*****

Tomorrow I`m on a bus at 5 am *Pop! Crack!* on my way to Puerto Escondido, a hopping little town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. I know. I know. I thought I`d kicked the reckless traveler out of me for a month or two, but the approaching new year and my approaching 25th birthday got together and threw a firecracker at my heels and shouted, ala Nike, “Just Do It”.

Look for me on the beaches from the this live streaming web cam. I`ll be wearing a blue bikini with a palm tree on the front and I won`t be carrying a digital camera. :)

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a message from god in hell

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A Message From God in Hell

*head spins*

Where to EVEN start?

So after Cuba, I hopped bus and made my way to Tulum, Mexico. I “planned” (why do I even bother?) to arrive in the morning, do a quickly cave dive (cause it´s $$$) and high-tail my late ass back to Guate.

*record scratches*

Yeah right. So reason number ONE that I ended up staying FIVE days in Tulum can be found in the following picture:

Can you see it? White sand, beach front huts, hammocks, palm trees, crystal-clear-bathtub-warm water? *Ummmmm…*

Reason number TWO that I called in “well” to work and took 4 more days vacation? Any traveler will attest to this fact of on-the-road-life: Every once in while, when seen fit, the travel gods align the moon, earth, sun and travel itineraries of random glob trotting backpackers to bring them together under the same palm tree and *shizam!* — you have a group that bonds easily and separates with difficulty. The group broke out in hysterics each morning as I emerged from my hut and announced, “I´m REALLY gonna leave tomorrow…Seriously.” As one of the groupies described the aftermath, “I had that memory lump in my throat for days after I left.” Yup. Me too. *swallows*. (But I know you´re all having a wicked time ringin´in the New Year together. So cheers one for me guys!)

Now reason number three takes the cake…and the cookies, and the punch, and even that bowl of chocolate covered M&Ms.

Reason number THREE, of course, is the diving in the Cenotes.

Now, I sigh heavily at the idea of even TRYING to describe what was probably the most wicked and wonderful visuals of my dear eye-sight life. I heard about diving the Cenotes from some dive instructor friends of mine who I partied and dived those three months away with in the Bay Islands of Honduras. Now these guys are crazy in the first place, so when they went so far as to rank the experience above BOTH drugs AND sex and when one even went so far as to describe it as the “best 30 minutes of my life” I knew I was in for an adventure.

And I´m not the only one! Emerging from my first dive, I came out of the water last with wide eyes and a shit-eating grin to beat them all. I could just barely hold back my shouts of bewilderment. I tried to find my words….”That was…”, “Oh my God!”, “Did you see….” “INCREDIBLE!”. Suddenly a shout came from the platform, “AH! I see we have a future cave diver in our presence!” I turned to face a full set and camera crew. One of the divers from the set began quizzing me on my diving history and took FULL enjoyment in my bedazzlement with the new world I had just be de-virginized to. I was last out of the water and while the rest of my group climbed up for their surface interval, I nudged the guy next to me and asked, “If I´m REALLY quite and stay in the corner, may I please watch you film?” He smiled, said “of course!” and pointed me to a corner of the platform. Then he introduced himself. He´s Wes Skiles, one of the IMAX movie producers. The enormous camera *he pointed to it* just came back from Antarctica (and lookin like it´s worth a million bucks), and they are filming some follow-up on the recently released IMAX film “Journey Into Amazing Caves“. How lucky am I?!

SO…it´s really too difficult to put into the words what diving these Cenotes is like, which is why I am so grateful to Hidden Worlds for letting me borrow their own pictures of the first two dives I did with them: Dos Ojos and The Bat Cave (pictures 1 and 2):

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The pictures will have to speak for themselves, because the dive that REALLY blew me away, was sweet Angelita. (And please excuse my mid-story change of tenses….)

Angelita is a sink hole in the jungle. We tromp through to meet her in FULL gear; booties, flippers, flashlights and all. I´m first to wide step off a 15 foot ledge into her pool, and you can bet “Come on girl…what would you do if you weren´t afraid…” was turning laps in my head. Once in the water though, the heat and the mosquitos no longer nip at me and I fall back into the familiar cool as the water seeps through my wet suit. *ahhhh* NOW I feel GOOD. Let´s do it!

We descend.

I watch my depth gauge….10 ft….30 ft…..60 ft….

One of the guys has trouble equalizing his ears. The divemaster glances at me. I give him the okay sign and wave to the other diver to follow me down to the hydrogen sulfide layer where we´ll wait for them.

The hydrogen WHAT?

…60ft…80 ft….90 ft….100 ft….

The hydrogen sulfide layer… a layer of what literally is decomposition about three meters thick of which BELOW is salt water, and ABOVE is fresh water. The layers don´t mix. *Think oil and water.* Now…this is where I LOSE it.

The sulfide layer looks like earth — it´s dusty red with a thin white film swirling in, out and around it. Massive trees reach out in all directions. I immediately drop (despite what my divemaster told me) into the layer and watch my body disappear. I see the guy that I should be watching over wave a “no, no” finger at me. I laugh. I level myself out and FLY though the layer, watching it separate before my eyes. As if wearing mask-bifocals, it´s blurry on the bottom half and crystal clear on the top. I summersault and kick up the layer and giggle madly as I watch it swirl into the clear water and resettle. Now my “buddy” is watching me intensely and laughing also. Then I see it….something…something white, floating perfectly and wonderfully still. I approach it slowly, and as I do so, I think…it´s a message. It´s a message from God. I don´t know if there IS a God…but IF there is one, and if he were EVER to leave me a message – THIS is where he´d leave it. (Of course, divers begin to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis around 100 ft — so given I AM a bit high.) The message turns out to be an O-ring holder — a small while piece of plastic in the form of an “S” — that apparently has a weight that allows for it to remain suspended perfectly between the two layers. I laugh, grab it, shove it into my wet suit, and make another flying sprint through this underwater Heaven that could only be described as looking exactly like the wastelands of “Hell”. My divemaster finally catches up and he gives up the symbol to descend through the layer.

I go last and watch the other divers sink into the ground …flippers …waist ….neck …and head. *poof* They´re gone. I´m alone. And then I drop. I can´t see ANYTHING. I´m descending, but I don´t have access to my senses. I “smell” and “taste” the rusty scent of the decomposition, but my lack of sight and sound, and my weightlessness are overwhelming.

….110 ft….

I stop my decent in the middle of the layer and allow myself to freak out. I wonder what it would be like if I continued to descend and never came out of this foggy feeling. And then I get excited about what I´ll see underneath…and I drop.

…120 ft

I emerge from the layer and it´s dark.

….130ft….140ft.

The divemaster signals for us to to turn on our flash lights. I forget that I´m in water and I imagine that I´m flying….weightlessly cruising and exploring this forest from hell. In, out, under and over. I am an aquanaut. Through the trees. Touching walls. Watching my bubbles ascend. Looking down into the REAL depths, which are rumored to house Mayan artifacts around 200 ft.

And that´s it. Yes…eventually my divemaster grabbed my arm and gave me serious eyes and the “go up” symbol. And I did…reluctantly. I´m exhausted by the time I return back to my cabana…as I am now exhausted with reliving the experience.

….150ft….160ft…200ft…the visuals and memories have found their place in the depths of my mind.

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thou shal not own a ditigal camera

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P-P-P-Picture Time….

Lot to say. Little time.

First of all: My THIRD digital camera was stolen *before I even got my hands on it!*.

I´ve been in *laughter* hysterics about it all day.

*thunder rumbles*

“Shazzam!, bazzoooom!, CRACK!, Kablaaammmm!”

“SOL SHALL NOT OWN A DIGITAL CAMERA IN CENTRAL AMERICA”

The Digicam Gods Have Spoken.

(And the insurance-dudes´ noses are twitching.)

*shrugs* What can you do but laugh?

Moving on…

And WHERE was I? Let´s see…

*presses fingers against temples and digs back into her living day-dreams”

Ah yes…Campeche Mexico. Ever seen Pirates of Penzance? (It was my FAVORITE movie as a wee-Sol, and I *dusts fingers on chest and blows on them* also happen to know ever word to the entire musical.) ANYWAY, Campeche had a wee-problem with Pirates overtaking their city, stealing all their cool stuff and doing bad things to their women…so they surrounded the town with some spiffy looking fortresses (moats and all!…but no dragons…I looked) and flipped the big yellow bird to the Pirates. Little did then know then that traveling little internet geeks would be posing-pretty on their fortresses near their canons and posting the pictures on the WWW… As seen below:

(But ACK Sol! Watch out for the monster finger about to put you out like a Cuban cigar butt!)

Picture 2: Where the “Sol” in “Solbeam” comes from. *slaps forearm* My OTHER poison.

Oh SHOOT! The Internet cafe just closed on me! Gotta boot sans-spell-check! Forgive me please.

Pictures TO BE CONTINUED (manana)….

*hits the bar downstairs*

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zapatistas

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*****

In January of 1994, a group of Mayan Indians (calling itself the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) rose up against the Mexican government and took over San Cristobal (and three neighboring towns) for five days before the Mexican Army forced them to retreat to hideout in remote jungle. The goal of the EZLN was to “overturn a currupt, wealthy minority´s hold on land, resources and power in Chiapas, which had left many indigenouse peasants impoverished, marginalized and lacing in education, health care and fundamental civil rights”. The take-over (and political statement) caught the attention *and support* of the world and today the representative leader of the Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos, is respected and celebrated as a type of “cult” leader for his defence of the Mayan people and their rights.

The markets and tiendas are overflowing with Zapatista memorabilia/propaganda: full-face ski masks (like the one Marcos wears permanently to hide his identity and protect his life), t-shirts, pens, posters, key chains, stickers and even dozens of styles of figurines and dolls (picture 3). The physical fighting ended years ago (as the rebels have only peaceful intentions), but the political war continues and even today foreigners are warned not to wear/carry such propaganda or publicly make any stands supporting the Zapatistas (who still reside in the jungles and mountains in the Chiapas state of Mexico, but are protected by their world-wide popularity and support).

Pictured below: 1. The REAL Zapatistas 2. The Wanna-Be Zapatistas 3. The Mini-Zapatistas (in the Market)

If you`re interested, here is a first-hand *translated* report from the man himself; Subcomandte Marcos (who is reportedly an ex-university *and extremely intelligent* professor) . The artical, The Fourth World War discusses La Realidad (“The Reality”), Chiapas, Mexico.

*****

We`re venturing into the jungle tomorrow morning in search of some waterfalls, and in the evening we depart on a 10-hour, over-night bus to Campeche, a town on the shore of the Mexican Gulf (see map below).

Until then….

*cheers her “SOL” cerveza*

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san cristobal

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*****

Okay, San Cristobal, Chiapas Mexico is awesome! We walked the city for hours today, and around every corner found new ruins, churches or other click-worthy scenery. In addition to being clean, colorful, and full of history, the city is ALIVE with hundreds of locals, a clear and welcome contrast to the gaggle-of-gringos in Antigua.

And this city has money, *although I´m still not sure where from or with whom*. Stylish internet cafes can be found on every corner of every block and swanky bars with live salsa/merengue bands open their doors every night. The tastiest taco stands, with only the freshest of ingredients nestle in between the internet cafes and bars. There is no fear of amoebas here…and I would even venture to add a generous 5 seconds to the 10-second food-to-floor rule. Yup. It´s clean, it´s hip, it´s happening AND it´s cheap! Our hostel removes only 35 pesos ($3.30 US) from our pockets a night for beautiful rooms and the hottest shower I´ve had in the last 8 months. A meal of those tasty tacos? $1 US. An hour online? .60 US. If you´re ever lookin´ a hideout with all the comforts of home and the color and flavor of Mexico, this is it.

Took an entire role of film in one day, and got a little some-some to show…

Captions:

Picture 1: A really poorly scanned picture of me at the “Frontera” (The Mexico-Guatemala Border)

Picture 2: My two lovely travel companions from Germany and Denmark. (Who take every opportunity possible to crack at my American Origin)

Picture 3: My own beer? *heart flutters for Mexico*

We also went to the nearby Mayan village, San Juan Chamula. Cameras are STRICTLY prohibited, as many of the Mayan Indians in the town belive that a photograph can steal your soul….*don`t like to think of what kind of implications that would have for me*. We visited their “Catholic” church where families gathered themselves around dozens of candles who *according to the visitors desk* were performing healing ceremonies. Interestingly enough, a part of the ceremony involves specifically placed glass bottles of Coca Cola, which are ceremoniously opened and drunk. Lonely Planet says that they drink Coke in order to burp to expel evil spirits and illnesses. Now I have to report back that I didn`t hear ANY burping (although I AM a bit suspicious of the clear substance that was also passed around in small glasses that resulted in staggering men). But I am in no position to make conclusions or even guesses, and in general, the ceremonies seemed light hearted and fun (the children in particular were allowed to laugh and play and participate without consequence). . AND I`ve concluded that there are some custom-mysteries that should NOT be explained….but just respected (as well as kept as FAR away from the Coca Cola marketing department as possible).

Random and interesting: A nearby museum reports that the Tzfotzil Mayan Indians believe the world is a cube supported by four pillars surrounded by water… which I´ve been daydreaming about all day.

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mexico

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*****

The downfall of non-digital photography: Two week turn around time on the pictures.

Here are a few belated images from the trip to Largo Atitlan two weeks ago….

I have Salvador pictures to post too….and there will be a lot of posting early this week because I have a lot of past times yet to report on before my trip to Mexico.

*pauses*

Mexico?

Oh yes. I may have forgotten to mention that I`m jumping bus through Southern Mexico for a week or two, leaving this Thursday. But only because I made that decision yesterday.

So the general plan goes something like: Xela (Western Guatemala), San Cristobel, Chiapas, Tabasco and the Yucatan, including Isla Mujeras and and a much anticipated return to the underwater world. I miss the scuba diving SO much (….although I DID have the opportunity to put to use some of my divemaster skills when I saved my first drowning kid at a pool party we had for the children from the project this afternoon).

We´ll also be visiting a lot of small towns where the “web” exists only in the dusty corners of the barns. So after this week´s bushel-o-blogs, the site may be silenced between sightings of mice *of the non-dusty-barn type*.

Okay…I`ve got some pictures to upload and scan. Hasta pronto….

*****

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