San Cristobal Colon de las Casas to Las Guacamayas

We left San Cristobal on last Monday in a rather small, well-used, rented car, loaded to the gills with our stuff. Our goal for the next 8 days: tour the State of Chiapas. Our itinerary will take us from the high mountains San Cristobal to the hot humid lowlands in the south, east to spend some time on the edge of dense, virgin selva or jungle - a large protected biosphere area, visiting at the same time a number of renowned ancient Mayan cities - Bonampak, Yaxchilan, and Palenque. This area is populated, but only lightly.

Day 1: We drive a few hours south to El Chiflon - a park that is home to the state's largest waterfall. The falls and river divides two communities who have had a hard time coordinating management of this shared resource. So there are two separate entrances and two separate trails to the falls (!!). The trail was in great shape; this is a slow part of the year, so we had the park virtually to ourselves. The park also has a zipline that shoots you twice across the gaping ravine cut deep by this surging river.

We spent the night in a horrible hotel in La Trinitaria. Safe but gross. Dogs and roosters were out carousing all night. A poor dog on the roadside, who had been hit by a car, howled mournfully all through the night as well. Noisy and unsettling.

Day 2: We visited Los Lagos de Montebello en route to Las Guacamayas, a little tourist destination on the edge of the jungle biosphere. In the rain, we hiked into the Cenote de Bartholomew on the edge of the park of Los Lagos. A cenote is deep hole in the ground filled with groundwater. They usually have steep walls all the way around. No visible water flowing in or out. They were once (perhaps still?) revered by the Maya as sacred places; they would pilgrimage to them to pray and offer valuable items as supplication to the gods. This particular cenote was called Bartholomew after the man who apparently fell into it several hundred years ago and drown.

Photos below.

Cocal Cola has amazing access to the pockeybooks of Mexicans - virtually all the drinks in Mexico are brought to you, courtesy of the Coca Cola Company: soft drinks and bottled water. Their advertising is everywhere.

Fields of miaze are everywhere. One cannot understate how important this crop is to the diet and history and economy of Mexico. Prehispanic "mexicans" domesticated it (along with peppers, tomatoes, cacao, various fruits). Much of their religious supplications were devoted to appealing to their gods of corn.

Cattle pasture is carved out of a lot of virgin rain forest.

Arriving at the Falls.

The Bogaards at the Falls - 120 meters high.

Liesl on the zipline.

Jeremiah comes flying in.

We are now in a new park - the Lagos de Montebello. Lots of lakes and water. This one is kind of green.

This one is more of a turquoise.

Lots of wetness, lots of mushrooms.

This is looking down into the cenote. It was raining. We spent a good bit of time talking with the vigilante (guard) and the guia (guide) in the area. These are remote areas, lots of poverty. And everyone has stories of America - they've been there, they have family there...The people that we met have always been gracious and welcoming.

This tree is full of bromeliads - plants that grow on top of the branches and trunks of other plants.

Bromeliad close-up.

oxen and mules and burros and horses still do lots of work in Mexico.

We have left the wet (we are in the rainy season), warm lowlands and are heading into the mountains of rainforest en route to Las Guacamayas, our destination for a few days. The communities in the mountains became quite sparse and quite rare. Tropical trees and water were everywhere.

A river surging below in the valley.

This river is surging, full of silt.

We encountered this black vulture eating on roadkill - which turned out to be a howler monkey.  Other roadkill we encountered: skunks, armadillos, a vulture, iguanas, turtles, and of course dogs, lots of dogs.

This is apparently a newly planted bio-fuel plantation, carved out of rain forest. Some kind of nut or palm from which they press oil.

The nut grows in huge clusters.