Winter Solstice at the Ruins

December 15 - 21, 2000 -- Still buzzing from my great time at Zipolite, I turn southward to San Cristobal de las Casas and the ruins at Palenque, and try come to grips with my nervousness about leaving Mexico.

San Cristobal de las Casas

Woke up Friday and Ro and I agreed that this was the day we would head out. The only problem was we didn't have reservations for the one night bus that left each day, and when she called the bus company for information, we found out all the tickets were sold out for that night, and there were only a couple of tickets available for the bus the next night. We decided to catch local buses and hopscotch our way there instead. The last combi ride away from the beach was lovely. Combis are VW buses or in this case a truck, where you pay a third the price of a taxi for quite a memorable ride. Often you are packed in so tight that you can smell the type of deodorant the guy next to you wears (or doesn�t wear if that's the case). This ride was lovely though, it's fun to hang off the back of the truck as long as the driver will let you. The scents changed from salt to sweet to pine to earth, the breeze cool on my face, then warm, then cool again. Very lovely. In Pochutla, we caught another tiny bus for a dollar to Bahia de Huatulco. All the way there, we saw little roads going off to the right, suggesting that tantalizing abandoned beaches were accessible all along this stretch of road. Having a big group of friends down here and a bunch of camping equipment would be amazing!

We only spent a few minutes in Bahia de Huatulco, but it looked clean and friendly and is supposed to have waters that are bluer than Zipolite. I noted this for future reference, and we jumped right on the next bus to Salina Cruz as the sun was going down. The only memorable thing about this Medium Bladder ride was that we got stopped in the dark by some scary looking army types, one of whom walked slowly through the bus examining the luggage racks with what looked like a pistol in his hand, but I couldn't tell because it was dark. I pretended to be asleep and tried my best melt into the seat so as not to look like a conspicuous, bald, overly tall gringo. In Salina Cruz, we checked into a nice place with very hot showers. We spent a nice evening strolling around this fairly run down looking town, ate a little bit. We had a brief discussion with a guy in a wheel chair who allowed you to jump on a trampoline for a fee. He kind of giggled at us and told us he wouldn't let us jump on it because he had taken the protective pads down already. OK, no problem, so we kept wandering along.

The next day, we wandered off to the bus station, and bought tickets for another leg of the journey to Tuxtla Gutierrez. We have both become addicted to horchata since we've been in Mexico, and she wandered off to buy us some. It is rice milk with sugar and cinnamon, sometimes a little vanilla, usually sold for 2 or 3 pesos in a sandwich baggie that is tied in a knot at the top with a straw in it....holy smokes, is this stuff heaven. I also bought some fresh carnitas, piggy boiled in oil, and it was served with one of my favorite salads I've had in Mexico so far, very thinly sliced radishes, red onions, cilantro, and lime juice...I'm definitely going to be making this one at home.

The bus ride from Salina Cruz to Tuxtla Gutierrez gets very interesting. You go across a table flat plain for an hour or two, then you go straight up into these motherload mountains, at this point crossing from Oaxaca into Chiapas, one of Mexico's most troubled states. There have been guerrillas here fighting for indigenous rights under the eloquent Subcommander Marcos. It seems that the indigenous people of Chiapas are second class citizens in Mexico. The land here is simply magnificent, we went from sea level up to 8000 feet in a hurry, and the vistas were spectacular. In Tuxtla Gutierrez, we decided to forge ahead, even though it was 8 PM already, and take the two hour ride on to San Cristobal de las Casas. It was dark, so all I can really say about the ride was that it was windy and we were still climbing. Once we arrived, we checked into the first place we could find. We had a nice meal at a vegetarian restaurant called Naturalissimo. They have a lovely salad bar, hooray, and really good sandwiches, one which features soy-based chorizo sausage called chorisoya, ha ha. All I'm saying is that if you haven't seen fresh salads for as long as I have, you too would be running to this place. The night finished with a cup of tea listening to a crappy band in a bar covering such timeless Chiapan numbers such as Oye Como Va and Hotel California. The morning revealed to us a magical little town, much of it with stone streets and colonial architecture, churches everywhere. The weather and hills looked perfectly like Portland, drizzly, gray, about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, with heavily wooded hills surrounding the town. Lots and lots of handicrafts, people in traditional clothing, great restaurants. On day two, Roshini randomly walked into a posada and started talking to the owner, Rosita. Rosita is a healer, and when she saw how Roshini looked uncomfortable and was scratching, she asked why (through her son who was translating) and Roshini told her about her often very painful, irritated skin, something that doctors and alternative medicine specialists hadn't been able to help her with thus far. Rosita told her she could help her, and even though Roshini couldn't speak Spanish, she could see the love and goodness in this rather remarkable woman. The next day, I got to translate for 3 hours as Roshini got a lesson that covered all sorts of topics, including indigenous people and how they live, keeping your physical, mental, and physical bodies balanced...I really can't do Rosita's words justice, but they were beautiful, wise, and caring. She also had Roshini on a very strict diet of oats, fenugreek powder and other stuff, fresh fruits and vegetables, and no oils at all, coupled with baths in a fenugreek solution. We checked into the Posada Rosita, which is not in the Lonely Planet but is lovely and cozy and was more convenient for Roshini to do her treatments under the guidance of Rosita.

As for me, I was in a weird place in my head in San Cristobal. It was raining, and it was making me feel a little bit introverted, and I was also next to a blank spot on the map that had somehow become a bit scary to me...Guatemala. Roshini needed to stay in San Cristobal for a week for her treatment, so I would be heading out alone, and I was faced two possible routes: a seemingly sketchy river crossing into the middle of nowhere down by the ruins of Palenque or a straight shot down to Lago de Atitlan by highway. I had been having such a good time at the beach for over a week, had gotten close to some cool people, and here I was going off on my own again. I was used to the rhythms of Mexico, the money, I knew how to get the food I wanted and things I needed to make life comfortable. Also, I was looking at a Christmas by myself, and I felt like now I really had to hurry to get down to Costa Rica, bypassing a lot of cool stuff along the way. All this stuff combined kind of gave me some anxiety about crossing over. I finally decided to take a risk and cross by river down by the ruins at Palenque. This was the best route to take to the ruins of Tikal as well, and I'd heard from my surfing teacher in Sayulita that Tikal wasn't to be missed. I spent a couple more lovely days in San Cristobal, eating the killer menu of the day at the vegetarian restaurant Maya Pakal, sucking down brews, and getting well into my new book Shogun that I traded Tom Clancy away for at a bookstore. On one of my last nights there, Roshini gave me a massage, and found some knots in my neck that I didn't know I had. Knots are so weird, she would find one, and think she had gotten it out, then she would say nope, they are slippery and hide, and that one was just trying to get away so it could continue to cause you problems. Then she'd go back to work on it with increased vigor. She is a good friend, helped me in lots of ways, pushed me to grow, showed me some yoga and breathing exercises, called me on things....I will miss her.

Palenque

I got up on Wednesday, the 20th of December and headed for the bus station. The next bus for Palenque was sold out, so I paid my seven bucks for the next one in a few hours, hung out, had some lunch, played my guitar in the sun to the amused stares of some of the indigenous people selling wares out front. The bus ride was another spectacular affair, this time winding down from high, pine covered mountains of San Cristobal to the tropical heat surrounding Palenque. There were spectacular waterfalls that you would miss if you weren't looking closely, and cliffs that looked a lot like those in the Columbia River gorge near Portland. After a Full Bladder ride, I was in the town of Palenque, and caught a cab out to El Panchan campground where I heard there was an Indian food restaurant. When I arrived, there were no more hammocks or cabanas to rent. Everything was sold out, because unbeknownst to me, Palenque was built in alignment with the winter solstice, and lots of people showed up to witness it. I didn't quite get the whole story, but I believe the sun descended perfectly into one of the temples on the shortest day of the year. Needless to say, there were lots of bongo beating, interesting folks hanging around. The Indian food restaurant was a bit of a disappointment. The grounds were lovely, but what was served as the meal of the day was more like poorly seasoned stir fry served up by a bunch of piercing covered folks from the states. Also, there was an annoying manager who kept coming around trying to get everyone to settle up their tab. The highlight for me was talking to this actress from Canada about reiki, a laying-on of hands healing technique that is thousands of years old. She was a second level reiki practitioner, and it sounded pretty cool. They were also hosting a sweat lodge ceremony that night, but it was full, so "no sweat" for me that night.

That night was a very cold one because I didn't have a blanket or anything like a hammock to keep me off the ground. I was sleeping on this wood upper deck of this place, and the jungle noises in the night were amazing. I put on all my clothes, put my feet in a big plastic bag, and covered myself with my little wall hanging that I had bought in Santa Ana de Valle. I slept fitfully, but it wasn't all that bad. Surprising how cold the jungle can get in the winter though. I walked out to the road and caught a combi for the ruins. It is a rather long walk from the front gate of Palenque to the ruins, but what a dramatic view it is as you enter the plaza and see the seven story ruins in front of you. You are absolutely in awe...the gray stone is intricately covered with tiny lichens, made especially impressive by the backdrop of the Lacondan rain forest and the hills behind. I just stumbled around with my jaw hitting the floor, amazed at the minds and spirit of the people who could create this kind of beauty over the course of several hundred years of effort. I had talked to some of the other guys staying at the campground, and they had been there for several days to explore the ruins. They would go way off the beaten path to check out ruins that had been unexcavated in the jungle. They had flashlights and would walk down inside some of them, snakes and bats be damned, feeling like a latter day Indiana Jones out there. One particularly brave (I might argue insane) guy was walking around when a little indigenous man jumped out of the jungle and sold him a bag of magic mushrooms, which he ate unquestioningly and then stumbled around the ruins for the rest of the day, perhaps humming the Kermit the Frog tune Rainbow Connection and really finding out what it means man. All the pretty colors, wowza :)

My walk at Palenque meandered along, past several lovely waterfalls and various other minor ruins. Some trees four feet wide had grown up on top of some of the ruins from seeds that must have been scattered there after the place was abandoned. That really put the age of the place in perspective for me. The museum was really nice too, and had culminated with a look at the crypt from the tomb of Pakal, one of Palenque's great rulers. Artwork on the crypt has created quite a stir, because it appears as if Pakal is seated in some sort of surrealistic space ship or something and is about to blast off. I'll let you look at the picture above and decide for yourself whether you want to blast off with that theory or not :)

After seeing the museum, I decided I wanted to get going to Guatemala that day. Another night under the stars sounded a bit cold, and I finally had put my doubts behind me about leaving Mexico. Getting down here to Palenque had calmed me down and spending the night outside listening to all the critters helped me see that the jungle wasn't overwhelmingly big and scary after all. I was excited to see what the river crossing by small boat into Guatemala was going to be like, and the ruins at Tikal seemed like they would be great. I headed back to the campground to pay up, grab my stuff, and hit the road.

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