Riding to Patagonia

[1.21GW]

Yeah, I'm in El Salvador now, so have a bit of story line to catch up on.

Next stop was San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas.  Much like Oaxaca, it was a vibrant city with lots of chic bars, eateries, and artisan shops.  And much like Oaxaca, I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy enjoying myself.  As it were, San Cristobal attracts quite a lot of devotees to the Virgin, whose holiday is celebrated on Dec 12.  Groups of Catholics, many of them teenagers, run hundreds of miles in a sort of relay race where the bulk of the group rides in the back of a pickup and each participant runs a short section, perhaps a quarter mile, with a torch that they pass to the next runner.  When all have run the cycle repeats.  In keeping with the theme of suffering as an expression of devotion, many run barefoot.  These torch runners may spend the whole month of December running day and night around Mexico, ;iving out of the back of a van.  Riding from the beach in Oaxaca to the mountain town of San Critobal (2200m) I passed dozens of such groups.  Some of them I saw again in the city a day or two after I arrived, climbing the stairs to their final destination at the appropriately named Iglesia de Guadalupe.  As it was the weekend of the Virgin holiday, there was a lot of fanfare, including live music and fireworks.








Not all was suffering, though.  I came across a group of kids performing regional dances.  I never tire of watching Mexicans perform folk dances.






About an hour west of San Cristobal, is the Cañon de Sumidero national park, a deep canyon that was formed about the same time as the Grand Canyon and is equally sublime.  Tours are given by boat and offer breathtaking views of enormous walls, some reaching heights of 1000m at one point.  You also encounter a panoply of wildlife, including Brown Pelicans, Little Blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, Black Vultures, and American Crocodiles.  Once again, my lack of telephoto lens limits the amount of nature shots worth sharing.  Here is what made the cut:












Keeping with the theme for the area, there was a Lupe shrine in a grotto deep in the park.  Someone took the time to light the candles.

[1.21GW]

In San Cristobal I met a Dutch-Canadian rider.  We decided to partner up for the next leg to Palenque, a town 200km away that is the site of one of the most remarkable pre-Colombian cities in all of the Americas.  But first we had to navigate some pretty hairy roads where we saw: a dead body in the middle of the road (cause unknown), what may have been a staged accident in which we ignored, and about a half dozen "extortion wires"---basically locals who hold a rope across the road and demand a donation to lower it.  We paused to stop at Agua Azul, a series of waterfalls and pools, to cool off with an afternoon swim.








The next day we wandered through Palenque, an ancient Mayan city cut out of the Chiapas jungle.  Its central palace is a labyrinth of halls, chambers, and towers that weave in and out each other.  Various temples populate the surrounding jungle, the most prominent of which is the Temple of Inscriptions.  Inside, a hidden passage discovered in 1948 leads to a chamber wherein former ruler Pakal (603-683CE) is buried in a elaborate tomb decorated with all manner of opulence.  Though the sarcophagus remains in situ, a detailed replica is on display in the museum near the entrance of the park.

[DarkMonster620]

Nice to know you are OK . . .

Happy New Year

[Speeddog]

Glad to hear you're safe and doing well, plus delivering top-shelf photos and commentary as usual!

Palenque is spectacular, I was there in the mid-70's, saw the actual sarcophagus down inside the temple.
I remember seeing several 'hills' amongst the temples that were obviously un-excavated structures.

[1.21GW]

Glad to hear you're safe and doing well, plus delivering top-shelf photos and commentary as usual!

Palenque is spectacular, I was there in the mid-70's, saw the actual sarcophagus down inside the temple.
I remember seeing several 'hills' amongst the temples that were obviously un-excavated structures.

Original is off limits now, so you are lucky!  And I bet some of those mounds have been excavated by now.

[1.21GW]

NOTE: A little wordy, so if you don't like reading, wait for the next post. 











Somewhere between Oaxaca City and the costal town of Puerta Angel sits a small mountain pueblo stolen from the Northern California coast, complete with hippies and organic produce and evening fog.  Strategically placed across town are hand painted signs that advertise "Navarro 4 Elementos Temazcal” with crudely drawn directional arrows.   These announcements are largely superfluous, however, as everyone knows Navarro.  You simply need ask around.

Navarro is a local shaman that provides temazcal rituals, a form of pre-Colombian sweat lodge.   With his long mane tied up in a thick black bun, the few gray hairs in his beard betraying his fifty-some years, he looks more like a floor manager at an acoustic guitar shop than some indigenous priest.  His dark eyes radiate crows feet that curl up in a manner that could only come from a lifetime of smiling.  Rocco, his canine friend, is more peer than pet: when asked after returning from an errand where Rocco is, Navarro replies, ”I dunno, he’s probably hanging out in town.  He goes where he wants."  Such is the pace of San Jose del Pacifico.  It is a town that drifts.

Navarro learned all he knows about medicinal plants from his grandmother, with whom he spent fifteen of his adult years learning the craft.   He is also an expert scuba diver and trained chiropractor but those are mere accouterment gathered from a drifter’s life.  His true talent is for the temazcal, a ancient steam bath used by Mayans for body cleansing, battle recovery, and childbirth.

The temazcal begins when you enter a small damp concrete igloo barely larger than a dog house.  Smoldering rocks are shoveled into a central pit, a bucket of boiling tea is placed inside, and the entrance is covered.  In near darkness you dip a bushel of herbs into the bucket and drip the hot liquid onto the stones, a process that spawns a thick, sweet steam that fills the enclosure.  It is, in effect, a tea sauna and each breath has the trace odor and subtle taste of a cup of herbal tea.  After twenty minutes of such brewing, when you feel completely relaxed in the void, Navarro exchanges the first bucket for one of a different mixture meant to induce fever.  Then comes a period of increasing tension and vertigo, when darkness and claustrophobia start to press in and suffocate you until you don’t think you can take any more.  Just then the door opens and you’re led out and the fresh mountain air washes over you hard like a breaking wave.  After a shower of cool spring water and a body rinse with lukewarm tea (“it’s good for the skin”), you are as relaxed as a afternoon cat.  It is here when you are in the proper mindset for the mushrooms.





Aldous Huxley called the brain a reducing valve with for the mind, something that limits consciousness rather than generates it.  This view in fact has some medical basis: studies have shown some psychedelics to actually reduce certain brain functions, effectively turning off the filter.  After a thirty-year hiatus, research has begun again on the therapeutic uses of hallucinogens.  Here is what we know: they simulate serotonin, resulting in an elevated sense of happiness and well-being; they largely act outside of the dopamine pathways and as a result do not induce physical addiction; they seem to inhibit certain parts of the brain related to self-monitoring.  This latter feature has proven helpful to people suffering from PTSD (see here and here) and to cancer patients dealing with depression (see here and here).

But none of this technical stuff is on your mind when you finish the cup of mild tea and swallow the last bite of the strangely tasty fungus (a bit like pan-seared shiitakes, but thicker and crunchier).  Instead, you simply accept Navarro’s invitation to explore his jungle property.  “There’s an exposed boulder that offers a good view.  When you see a large maguey, turn left.”   So you wander down through the trees until you find the maguey and you make yourself comfortable on the rock, and you look out over the forest and the mountains and the distance Pacific, and you wait for something to happen.

Though magic mushrooms are an optional part of Navarro’s temazcal, they offer a final step in the regenerative ritual.  Once ingested you have about twenty minutes until they take effect, and the remainder of the day to roam Navarro’s fifteen hectares of mountain wilderness.  Usually only individuals and small groups opt for the mushrooms, but he once hosted a group of twenty-seven who elected to partake.  He rolls his eyes and chuckles when he recounts the day, “I felt like the director of a psychiatric ward.”  The property was a carnival of weirdos, people scattered across the hillside giggling at the empty air, lying in the dirt, wandering in circles gaping up at the sky.  A half dozen-or-so were standing still as statues staring at some insignificant piece of nature.  “My garden looked like an art museum”.  He vowed not to do such a large group again.  “The singular experiences are better.  You learn that you don’t need anyone.”





When the landscape begins to breathe, swelling and shrinking like the thorax of some sleeping giant, then you know the psilocybin has taken effect.  All your sense organs are turned into overdrive, elevating every minute sensation to a distorted pitch.  Flowers burn bright like fire.  Hummingbirds pass with a whomp! as loud as a jet engine.  Branches move and twist as if growing in some time-lapse video.   Eventually the intensity settles and you reach a steady state of hallucinations that, fascinating as they are, are not so much seeing things that aren’t there but rather seeing more in what is there, as if by accident the face of your wristwatch popped off revealing for the first time the intricate and beautiful machinery that underlies its simple function.  Such intense wonder at the world no doubt is the cause of infant drooling.  And so you drool, like an infant, wide eyed and drop-jawed, for the better part of the day: staring endlessly at the kaleidoscopic canopy above, repeatedly fondling the smooth waxy surface of a maguey tongue, intensely listening to the bees buzz in and out of the flaming flowers.  You have become another one of Navarro’s inmates, a garden statue, some misfit standing petrified before a jungle shrub investigating the byzantine veins of its leaf while mouthing the word “wow” over and again, the psilocybin not leading through the rabbit hole to some lofty viewpoint as you'd expected but rather sucking you back into the doltish infancy.

And yet beyond the drool there is real revelation.  Sounds that were once disturbing---the violent roar of semis on the road above---become just one more pleasant vibration in a sea of vibrations.  Nothing is discordant, nothing disturbs.  Worry and self-doubt are abandoned.  Anything with origins in the past or future simply evaporates.  What's left is the eternal happiness of a well-fed dog.  Perhaps it’s the effect of the temazcal preface, perhaps it’s Navarro’s local variety of mushrooms which grow by a nearby spring (“The soil is good and healthy.  The ones from Chiapas?  They grow in fields fertilized by cow shit.”).  Whatever the cause, the trip provides a peace and self-assurance that is rarely found outside of monastic temples.

At some point you realize that this beatific state will end and you don't want it to so you start devising ways to take a piece back with you, like a stealing a shell from a deserted beach to which you’ll never return. But it is a futile ambition and you know you must learn to let go.  So you just sit there on that rock with your maguey friend and you watch the night fog drifting in from the Pacific.  And you wonder where the hummingbirds went and when the flowers burned out.  And you hear the distant chirps of unseen birds in the fading light and you notice that the wind has died down and everything is slowing.  And so you take a deep breath and let it out and you accept that it is all slipping away as you stare in the gathering darkness at the ebbing wonder of the world.

[koko64]

Ah, The Quickening.

[DarkMonster620]

Well, I read it but, I WILL HEAR IT, in person soon . . .

[Howie]

Oh my.  Can't wait for the book!

[koko64]

Then the movie.

[ducpainter]

Oh my.  Can't wait for the book!

I want a signed copy.

[1.21GW]

Ah, The Quickening.

A fellow traveler I see.   

[1.21GW]

Ok, back on the road...

After Palenque I crossed over into Guatemala and landed in Flores, a small island town in Lake Peten Itza.  With no mountains or forest canopy to block the horizon, the sunsets were spectacular.














Flores is one of the popular launching points for Tikal, an enormous Mayan city built deep in the Guatemalan jungle and covering an area of sixteen square kilometers.  Long jungle paths separate the structures, many of which remain completely covered by earth, appearing as unnatural mounds in the forest.  The dense canopy offers encounters with wildlife, including spider and howler monkeys, blue morpho butterflies (google them), ocellated turkeys, and white-nose coati.  Approximately five hundred jaguars live in the surrounding Tikal National Park, too, about one per square kilometer.  Among the various structures are temples, residences, alters, ball fields, and even what is believed to have been a jail.





























After Tikal I headed south to Semuc Champey, a series of stepped azure pools formed atop an underground river.  Semuc is in a very remote area and what appeared on various maps as a major highway cutting through the mountains proved more aspirational than actual.  Fifty kilometers of the nastiest rock and mud mountain roads separate you from a mild 11km pass that leads to the Lanquin, the main village before Semuc.

[koko64]

A fellow traveler I see.   

Na, just recently watched Highlander.

[GK]

There can be only one!

Holy Ground Highlander, remember what Ramirez taught you!

😉😉