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