It's a clear, moonless night when we assemble for our pilgrimage to the beach. I can't understand how we are going to see anything in the blackness, but the guide's eyes seem to penetrate even the darkest shadows. We begin walking, our vision adjusting slowly.
We've come to Tortuguero National Park, in northeast Costa Rica, to witness sea turtles nesting. Once the domain of only biologists and locals, turtle-watching is now one of the more popular activities in ecotourism friendly Costa Rica. As the most important nesting site in the western Caribbean, Tortuguero sees more than its fair share of visitors. In fact since 1980, the annual number of observers has gone from 240 to 50,000.
The guide stops, points out two deep furrows in the sand - the sign of a turtle's presence - and places a finger to his lips, making the "shhh" gesture. The nesting females can be spooked by the slightest noise or light. He gathers us around a crater in the beach; inside it is an enormous creature. We hear her rasp and sigh as she brushes aside sand for her nest.
In whispers, we comment on her plight and the solitude of her task, the low survival rate of her hatchlings because only one of every 5000 will make it past the birds, crabs, sharks, seaweed and human pollution to adulthood.
We are all mesmerized by the turtle's bulk. Though we are not allowed to get too close, we can catch the glint of her eyes. She doesn't seem to register our presence at all. The whirring sound of discharged sand continues. After a bit the guide moves us away. My eyes have adapted to the darkness now, and I can make out other gigantic oblong forms labouring slowly up the beach in a silent, purposeful armada.
Secondly we go to Mexico and touring the Zapatista heartland
As the chanting reached a crescendo and the incense thickened to a fog, the chicken's neck snapped like a pencil. The seemingly ageless executioner sat on a carpet of pine needles, surrounded by hundreds of candles, his eyes fixed upon a brightly painted saintly icon, The man took a swig from a Coca-Cola bottle, a sign not of globalization, but of the expurgating power of soda because the Tzotzil people believe that evil spirits can be expulsed through a robust burp. Here, inside the church of San Juan de Chamula, such faith doesn't seern all that far-fetched.
This is the Zapatista heartland of Chiapas, a lost world of dense jungle and indigenous villages where descendants of the Maya cling to the rituals of their ancestors. Throughout the region, the iconography of Subcomandante Marcos, guerrilla leader and poster child of the struggle for indigenous rights, reveals a continuing undercurrent of rebellion. San Cristobal : de las Casas, one of Mexico's most alluring towns, was the site of an armed Zapatista revolt in 1994.
Outside San Cristobal, the village of San Juan de Chamula is literally a law unto itself, with its own judges, jail and council. Timeless rituals are revealed here, where women sell brightly coloured, hand-woven garments in the main square, returning home at midday to prepare a meal for their husbands, many of whom are shared. Men can have up to three wives at a time, and I’m not certain to be envious or not!! Every year during the pre Lenten festival, perhaps the most exciting time to visit, the village's men run barefoot through blazing wheat.
Four kilometres from Chamula, San Lorenzo Zinacantan is equally fascinating. Here, the men, in red-and-white ponchos and flat hats strewn with ribbons, which are tied if they are married, loose if not, launch rockets skyward to stir the gods into sending rain. The women pummel tortillas and weave textiles, always with a watchful eye on the sky because many houses have gone up in smoke as a result of rogue fireworks.
