Toniná Pyramids

We saw more signs saying 'this is Zapatist Country' and more Mexican soldiers watching with loaded guns.



Naomi has a 'good kids club' that pays kids who ride along without any disruption, being paid according to the time of travel, or miles which are essentially the same. So we decided to also have a 'smart kids club' to reward kids who become aware of what they have seen and not just look and forget. So we initiated a payment schedule for the kids who could remember the states we have passed through and the sights we have seen there. We pay cash, pesos, for remembering the states we have passed through. Gusty did exactly as expected, nothing. His attention span will be measured as soon as they perfect the femta second measuring device. Yesterday he got a peso and had it less than a minute before he was asking what he could buy with a peso. Elena was a surprise, she took to it quickly. Of course Angela did it all, and eventually Virginia came through. Caleb dilly-dallied around a long time before doing anything.



We spent the night in Ococingo. Supper was huaraches, it used to mean the flip flop sort of foot wear but they used it to mean a shoe shaped tortilla with lots of good toppings, an open face device. For desert they had 'pay', their rendition of pie. I do not know why they did not use the English spelling, which in Spanish means 'foot'. If we can eat our shoes, why not our feet as well? It was the first pie I've seen in Mexico but I was to see it in other places once I looked.
The night was three blankets cold.
- Grandpa

I liked the Toniná ruin area; we’re out of the jungle now, and the land was reminiscent (to me) of Texas hill country – beautiful, yet comfortable, not stimulating. The hills were higher than Texas. The ruins were the most vertical that we’ve seen. Layer upon layer to be climbed. I think they were probably the highest from base to top, but we didn’t make it in time to go to the museum, so we didn’t get a perspective on what we were seeing.



The kids liked them a lot because of all the intricate passageways, and even a short, narrow tunnel that led nowhere. I declined their eager invitation for me to enter, but Edwin went down. He came back walking sideways, and quipping, “Now I know why Egyptians walk like this!”





We all climbed to the top, and saw the incredible view of the whole surrounding countryside, and the mountains dwarfed by our vantage point. Edwin and I took a picture in front of a rare grafitti that said “Noemi te amo.”



We were delighted with our hotel in Ocosingo. The new owner, who’s been there 2 weeks, enthusiastically shared his plans for the future: double the rooms from s15 to 30, parking in back and a restaurant. In the meantime we had to move taxis out of the very limited street parking, and walk to a taquería for dinner. We got 2 rooms of 2 and 3 beds, to the delight of the boys, who usually sleep on the floor. Each room had a balcony – one overlooking the main highway through town, which narrowed to one uncontrolled lane with a huge, gaping cavity on the side, and taxis darting in and out of parking on both sides. The back was more tranquil – just a new construction site for the church/disco across a side street.
However, I had my most miserable night of the whole vacation. The mattress seemed to be merely a box spring – hard and lumpy. Little creepy crawlies chewed on me, and when I got up the next morning I was spotted. One of my roommates went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and, forgetting that there was no handle on the inside of the door, closed it rather snugly. When I heard the frustrated fingernails scraping at the door, I got up and pushed it open. But the worst of it was a faint but pervasive musty odor of mold. I sucked on a few cough drops to mitigate it, and was glad to vacate the next morning.
- Naomi

Agua Azul Cascades

Agua Azul was a tourist attraction, three bus loads came and went while we were there. It is a cascade down the mountain side, lots of water, lots of tourist things to buy. Very high prices.



Environmentalism is the key word here now. One vendor had some mandarin oranges to sell (at 5X the normal price). Thinking that anything having to do with technology was anti-environmental he said they came from trees native to the jungle, had not been grafted.
Agua Azul is more kin to Guatemala than Mexico. Here, for the first time we saw girls carrying baskets on their heads, hands free. It is standard in Guatemala, I have never seen a guy doing it. Some of them had little pads to help, others just put the basket directly on the head. It surprised even Angela, who has seen the practice often but always with a hand stabilizing the basket.
To get into Agua Azul we had to pay at two different pay stations. Edwin asked about it at the second and I never completely understood, except that we had to pay twice.
The area around is steep mountain, maybe 45 or even 60 degrees. They practice slash and burn agriculture. The tourist trade probably provides a lot of income for them, even if the goods they offer are of limited variety and are not the type that generates repeat customers. I think that they could make more money by harnessing the falling water to provide hydroelectricity like Niagara does during the period of non-use.
Most of the people here, tourists and natives alike, speak Spanish as the second language. The cars we saw all had Quintero Roo or Mexico City plates on them, probably rented cars. The goods are typical Chiapas goods but there are hundreds of places with identical goods and nobody makes a good living.
- Grandpa



I really liked Agua Azul. It was astounding – layer after layer of falls over travertine rock. The agua wasn’t really azul, as I can say, now that I’ve seen a real sapphire blue jungle pool. It was more a standard green.



The well-paved trail up the course of the water way was lined with more tourist booths than one could imagine, mostly selling the same things. I think the area is an ejido, meaning the people live there and work it for all it’s worth, and it’s the only income for that group. The fresh orange juice was exquisite, though the buñuelos that I was so excited to see were cooked in slightly rancid oil. We ate them anyway.




I walked up and up, and finally came to the end of the tourist booths, where the trail became packed dirt. I could see the village off to the side, and a girl washing dishes at the edge of the stream. Something compelled me to keep walking. After I passed the village, I came to a junction of two streams. The one nearest me was that same surprising blue as the jungle pool. But this water, clear as it was, had an old tire in it, and the native people consider it just an arroyo, not the money-making cascades that it becomes further downstream. Where it met the other water the blue disappeared.
- Naomi

Misol Ha Falls - Day 13

We went to blue waterfalls. There were sophomore kids there. They took Augustus picture and Elena’s. They did not take my picture. Everyone else got their picture.
- Caleb



Some school kids came and interviewed all of us except for Caleb. Later they wanted us to take pictures with them. The waterfall was very pretty. We went behind the waterfall. Ginger got soaked.
- Elena



We went to a waterfall. We got soaked. People took my picture. Three of them said that I am cute.
- Augustus

Leaving Palenque we passed mountains that made Mogollon look like a playground sand hill. Huge with endless switch backs, narrow roads. The real hazard was that in several places the hill had slumped away due to recent rains taking part of the blacktop with it. One place took half the road but that had been repaired, other six inch losses were waiting their turn for repair, most had warnings in the form of white paint on the road surface.



The Misol Ha falls we saw were better than the Agua Azul. They fell about 150 or 200 feet, a generous river. As they fell they created a wind that soaked everyone with the mist from them. Of course the kids got wet. You could go along a trail that lead back under the falls between them and the mountain, but you got soaked. Several places in the hill there were small issues of water that shot out making their own minifalls. It was a delightfully pleasant moist place with a wind from the falling water. Curiously, there were only three or four ferns and no mosquitoes, none, nada, zip.



We were the tourist attraction at the tourist attraction place! There was a sophomore class from Ocosingo visiting the falls. Their teacher had them interview us, probably to expand their experience, so they asked a few questions. Then they had their pictures taken with a few of us. But Elena and Gusty were the favorites, the female types flocked to the little blondies, took lots of pictures of them and played with them, running their fingers through their hair. It must have been an advanced class because the kids were interested and participated eagerly with no prodding once the teacher broke the ice.
- Grandpa

Yaxchilán Pyramids

Building 33 - by far the topmost structure, a good climb

Detail of Building 33

Looking down from Building 33 with telephoto


View down from Building 33


Yaxchilan – Usumacinta River.
These ruins have no car roads to them, so we went on a boat.

Boarding the boat


We had a guide, Juan, with us, who is from the Chol tribe.

Our guide Juan the Chol

Our captain at the tiller

There were houses on the riverbank, in Mexico and Guatemala. They travel on boats or on their foot/donkey/bike trails through the jungle. The river Usumasinta was about 50 meters deep in the middle. That’s 25 meters deeper than how it normally is, but in these few months it’s pretty deep. And there has been flooding the past couple weeks all over this area, so the river rose a couple meters. And the cocodriles that live in it are about 35 meters long – good thing they don’t eat people!
It took us about an hour to get there, and when we did, first thing we saw were the monkeys.

Monkeys in the trees

Monkeys on the vines



There were howler and spider monkeys. The howlers sound like a monster barking. The spiders have white chests, kind of like black widows. We went in a tunnel, and there were bats! Lots of wildlife. In the tunnels were beds – stone, of course, used for resting and meditating in the temple. Next to the temple was another one of those temescales like in Xochicalco – the sauna. The elite folks used it for purification before going to ceremonies. And next to that was the ball court, a small court. There were a few stellas, showing the ambitious governors. One guy, Bird Jaguar IV, was 30, and facing his dad, Shield Jaguar II, who was 90, and giving him the governorship. Shield Jaguar II had 32 wives, but the second couldn’t have kids, so she approved a 3rd one, who bore Bird Jaguar IV. And there in the Gran Plaza were three houses for his 3 wives. This town was not a warrior town – maybe that’s why it was able to flourish so much. It was mostly into religion and commerce. There is Tikal up the river and Piedras Negras down the river, and Palenque not too far north, and they did a lot of trading.
- Angela

We left the Lacanja village, going over roads even poorer to Yaxtchilan, a name created by someone that means 'green rock' in the Chol language. It is not the name the people who built it called it, they know that name, somehow. It is one of several names the finders/archeologists/governmental officials have given it and the one which they agree upon. That seems to be the case of the names for all of these ruins, the original name may not be the one we use now.



Yaxchilan has the same history as the rest, beginning about 200 B.C. developing with pyramid building over the years having smaller pyramids periodically covered over to make them larger at different times and ending with a huge and impressive building project memorializing some person and the prisoners of war he took followed by a period of decline and less elegant buildings that lasted about 100 years culminating in complete abandonment about 900 A.D. One of the stele looked like a log. Normally the steles are large rectangular slabs of limestone but this one was cylindrical and it had a pattern that looked a little like growth rings of long, well weathered and carved. I thought it was a petrified log used and asked the guard about it. It was a stalagmite (or stalactite) from a nearby cave. There are lots more, some even bigger, according to the guard. This one was 20 inches in diameter and 15 feet high.
We got to Yaxchilan via a 30 minute boat ride on the Usumacinta River. It was in full flood stage. At times we were over what previously was dry land in Guatemala. We could see the tops of trees and it looked as if it might be as much as 10 feet above the ground where the trees grew. I asked two people how much higher the river was, one said 45 meters and the other said 25 meters. Neither of them spoke Spanish well, nor did I, so I think they may not have known the answer or understood the question. The 25 meter answer probably was 25 meters along the slope of the bank making the rise around 10 meters, 30 feet, a reasonable amount to me. No matter, the river was wider, deeper and swifter than the Mississippi at Memphis and I'd guess it has several times the volume.
We passed two military checkpoints. The military presence appeared mild but obvious. We also saw some signs erected by the Zapatists, the group who oppose the Mexicans.
We went back to Palenque for the night and spent it in a typical tourist hotel. Gusty said there was an airport near, he saw so many suitcases just like you see at airports. There were several buses around. The area was well landscaped with picturesque streets and vegetation. About 10 acres were occupied by several hotels and other tourist attractive places, an oasis in the usual Mexican city, isolated from the mercado by a few streets.
- Grandpa

Yaxchilan was perhaps the most remote of all the ruins we have visited, being accessed only by a boat ride down the swollen river. Our guide, Juan, is a Chol Indian. Chol are Maya, also, as are the Lacondon we just left. I proudly said the greeting to him that I had learned from the Lacandones, but it ends up each tribe has a different language. Although many Maya have converted to Christianity, generally not Catholic, Juan is not a Christian. He follows the traditional worship of his fathers, which emphasizes a worship of beasts, and sacrificing chickens.
Yaxchilan means “green rock,” but the original name meant “Place where the sky opened.” I wonder if that is why our friend who is a student of Book of Mormon archaeology believes it to be Zarahemla. Yaxchilan is encircled by the Usumacinta river, being built on a peninsula that looks more like a protruding puzzle piece than a finger. That would explain the ubiquitousness of the River Sidon in the Book of Mormon.
-Naomi

Big jungle tree

Lacandon Jungle - Day 12

Grandpa watches kids in the jungle pool and guards their shell treasures

Mayan/Lacandon arts – seed beads. The Lacandon man and woman showed us the seed bead jewelry. The woman made it all. She would go out and gather all the different seeds from the trees, so many kinds. Then she put one in a little hole in a piece of wood and with an awl-like tool, drilled a hole into it, by rubbing it back and forth with her hands. She did one hole on each side so they met in the middle.





Lacandon Indian - a modern Maya

She had little bags full of the different seeds. The brightest one was orange and black. She said that was the male tree. We didn’t understand how males had seeds. The female seeds had only orange/red. There was another one, round and black, called jaboncillo. They had thick husks around them, and the Lacandon used to take the husks off and use them to clean their clothes. They had a soapy fluid in them, a little reddish. Their parents even used them, but now nobody does because of advancing communication. And one white seed was called “lagrima.” And there were big seeds called “ojo de venado,” they were brown with a dark brown stripe around them.
- Angela




At daybreak the kids went swimming. It took a while to find a good place, the river was swift and we could not see through the water to see what lay below but on a walk through the jungle they came upon a spring of clear water with a blue sheen, not from the sky because we never saw the sky. Not from bottom rocks because they brought up bottom material and it was the normal color of rocks and dirt. There was a blue color to the water itself as it emerged in a cold spring there in the tropical jungle. The water was easily 5 feet deep and we saw the bottom perfectly.

Angela in the jungle pool

Elena gathers shells in the shallows of the jungle pool


There were jungle trails through areas previously cropped but now allowed to return to its natural vegetation. It took a lot of work to keep those trails open.



The Lacadone people appear to be using it in a manner consistent with their heritage and with conservation. The Mexican government appears to be trying to get along with them. The vendor has two wives, the first did not have any children so he got another, the two wives are said to get along well, although this was vignette related to me via a third person.
They had a trinket place with jewelry, mostly of vegetable origin. They used various seeds or seed parts for bracelets or necklaces. Perhaps because stone were not common and jewelry stone was probably non existent and that is what they had. They also had various carved objects, perhaps those objects were of interest to them in their culture, perhaps they were for us to take home but nothing was really artistic to take home unless you gush over the primitive. I got a couple of wooden spoons, one with stripes in the wood, one without. The man told us the stripes in the wood indicated whether the tree was male or female, can't remember which was which. I had never heard the concept before. Curious. Also curious they had no food for sale, probably no cold soda pop.
- Grandpa

The picture of the jungle pool water is not colored accurately: It appears turquise-colored in the photographs, but in real life it was pure and deep saphire.
- Naomi

Bonampak Pyramids - Lacanja Village - Day 11

October 27

11 a.m. We got up to a wonderful sound of rain. But everything was damp. After packing and breakfast (Virginia skipped it), and money exchange (12.43), and water, we went deep into the jungle. The area is reserved for Lacandon people, a poverty-stricken people who have been at war with the Mexican empire since its creation. We ate along the road, coconut at one stop, pineapple at a second stop. Lots of speed bumps. When we got to the ruins the entire area is primitive, few cars, little economy. Bonampak.
- Grandpa



We’ve arrived at the Lancanjá village, and are dazzled by the green variety we can see at a glance. Such shapes and sizes and forms!
- Naomi

We packed in heavy rain. Virginia was a little queasy in the stomach, we are not sure what it was from, the rest of us ate well. Then we drove deep into the jungle of Bonampak and the ruins there. The road was paved fairly well, most of the way with a generous number of topes that reduced us to 5mph.. At one speed bump we were going slowly enough to buy cups of fresh coconut with or without chile, we got both. We also got a bag of castaño, or, as we thought earlier, estano, a baked or boiled fruit from a palm tree. Edwin first identified it as a date but since dates grow only in low relative humidity I rejected that guess. Later we found it does grow on palm trees exactly as dates grow. At another speed bump we bought cups of pineapple w or w/o pepper. It was ripe and sweet and we didn't get enough. There were vendors at each tope. At some topes they pulled a rope up across the road to stop the traffic completely.
The Bonampak ruins were like all the rest; they had fallen into disuse about 800 to 900 AD after a brief flourish of extensive building. Most of the buildings featured some individual and his family and success in taking prisoners.



In the evening the kids ate native food in the restaurant, I ate avocados. The Lacadone are tiny people, less than 4 feet high and about 80 to 120 lbs, in general. They speak Spanish as a second language only to accommodate tourists and income.

We spent the night in shacks made of walls with gaps half to an inch wide between each vertical round pole an inch or two in diameter. A lizard or small snake could easily have passed through the walls but we didn't worry. The door was covered by a draping cloth that came to within six inches of the floor so the pumas or larger carnivores could easily have come through the door to eat them. The bunk beds were standard and in good shape considering the humidity, the roof was excellent, the floor was standard wooden floor of unknown species of wood as the jungle supplied a variety. The vendor said that when a tree falls or dies they bring in a mobile saw and cut it into useable pieces. The best thing of the shacks were the mosquito nets. They were heavy duty and very good, falling generously to the floor with enough weight to not move around. Funny thing, we had no mosquitoes, maybe just the time of year.
The shacks were along a nice river, lots of water and sound. The bath room was as modern as a roofless house can be but they had plenty of hot water. It was a communal house and when we were there some tourists on a bus shared it with us. The night was the darkest I have ever seen, absolutely black, as dark as possible, I would have gotten lost if it were not for ambient lights from other shacks and the bath house since I seldom use a flashlight. Edwin took a shower later than the rest and saw a 'black on yaller' snake in the bathhouse so Naomi came by to tell us all to not go for walks, a lot of good it did, it was too dark to go anywhere and all the kids were asleep and didn't hear.
It was cold that night, they supplied a blanket and I used it.
- Grandpa



Landing strip at Bonampak

The Bonampak ruins were unusual in that we could not take our private vehicle to the ruin site, deep in the jungle; we had to pay passage in a hired van, which would drive us about half an hour on a good dirt road, and then return us. Imagine our surprise when we saw that the van we rode in was a twin to our own car! This 15-passenger Ford super van was a 1998, while ours is a ’97. It was red, while ours is white. But other than that, it was a very familiar place to be. Edwin noticed that the clock was wrong, so he taught the owner/operator how to set it. We learned that he recently bought the car, with over 300,000 miles on it, for $10,000. We paid less than that, with less than 100,000 miles on it. It’s a wonder they can make a living, with that kind of expense up front.
The Bonampak ruins featured the most colorful murals extant in any ruin. However, the literature said that the murals have faded substantially since first discovered several decades ago. We were prohibited from photographing the ruins, as flashes accelerate the fading. The Internet said the ruins were discovered by a pilot flying over. But our guide gave a more colorful account, involving a canoe trip through the river, and someone falling overboard and drowning.
We spent a delightful night in the jungle. Unfortunately, we were enjoying it so much we didn’t write about it, and even worse, we didn’t photograph it. In fact, I just spent a lot of time googling Lacanja village trying to find pictures of the very rustic huts in which we stayed, to no avail. You’ll just have to go and experience it yourself. There is a picture of the outskirts of the camp. At least I think it’s the same Lacondon village. (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://image61.webshots.com/61/0/59/54/393205954hApwMy_fs.jpg&imgrefurl=http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1393205954049221485hApwMy&usg=__rYI1NAg5PoNwcVcFKsxp8wHvFV4=&h=1704&w=2272&sz=778&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=SDbpjpsGzz70kM:&tbnh=112&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlacanja%2Bvillage%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG) but nothing of the huts in the real jungle.
- Naomi

Palenque Pyramids - Day 10

October 26

We went to the jungle. We heard the howler monkeys in the trees. We found a monkey swing. It was fun. We went into tunnels.
I talked to the parrot. The parrot is cute. He is sad and I am sad because we left. Elena is saying the states of Mexico.
- Augustus




We went in to church but nobody was there. Asking the guard we found it was brand new and not in use yet so we asked about where church was and got an address. After some time we found the address and discovered they had discontinued using that place. Probably they had planned to use the new place and gave up the old place but could not move in on schedule so they were meeting in some member’s house for a short while. Addresses are hard to find, we asked several places along the main commercial street and nobody knew what number their place was. Only a few knew that numbers even existed for houses.



The kids, mainly Gusty, were entertained by the parrot. They also had peacock, goats, dogs, cats, turtles. It was a pleasant place with a swimming pool, a large gazebo, about 30 feet across with a thatched roof supported by steel pipe and an excellent concrete floor. Yesterday we did laundry but it was not very dry so we tried to air dry it and failed. The air is so humid nothing dries. The houses are painted bright colors, Edwin says they are tropical, Naomi says they are beautiful, Edwin says they will not go in Aragon, Naomi settled for a single closet. Deep blue floor, yellow, almost chartreuse/pink/orange walls deep orange and yellow orange walls with white tile radiating from the center in 4 rows; plants of all kinds, mostly unknown and mostly ornamental.




Virginia was queasy early in the morning but she perked up and we visited the Palenque ruin in the afternoon. It was the highlight of the ruin tour, impressive for its size and diversity and setting in the dense jungle. They have a great museum and visitors center with lots of literature to buy and artifacts to see. It seems to be pretty well interpreted, to the point of knowing the name of the last major ruler, Pakal. He lived 83 years, built with essentially slave labor frozen in a caste system, built huge pyramids to memorialize himself and his family, covering previous pyramids. The pyramids are huge; it took millions of hours of labor without beasts of burden or iron tools. The aristocracy and peasants were hereditary without social mobility. I suspect the cost of building and maintaining the structures to memorialize a person who did nothing, by the people he oppressed and who got nothing for their hard work was the straw that broke the back of the government. A few small, insignificant buildings were erected after Pakal, but society dissolved within a hundred years of his reign. It left great ruins and great proof that, indeed, “Pride goes before the fall’.
Supper was what we could find. The place is as lovely to look at as Costa Rica.
- Grandpa




Palenque had a beautiful nature walk through the jungle, down the side of a rushing mountain stream such as I have never known, with incredible waterfalls.
- Naomi