The jungle . . . the tropics . . . the ruins . . . the steps!

For those of you who have never seen me in extreme heat and humidity, here I am! Notice the smile, and the elephant ear plants in their native environment.

If the places we were over the weekend showed us a side of Mexico we hadn't known existed, the past two days have come closer to our expectations . . . and yet there's nothing that can really prepare you for a boat ride down the river with Guatemala on one side and Mexico on the other. And then when you hear monkeys hollering (almost more like roaring) and then catch a glimpse of a two-thousand-year-old structure through the vines . . . well, it's going to be hard to capture in words what we have seen!

The place at the end of the boat ride is called Yaxchilan, and until about 15 years ago, the only way to get to it without a private plane was to trek through the jungle for two or three days, faster if your mule was speedy. Then an economic/political agreement called NAFTA took effect, and that was the last straw for some people in this part of Mexico. They founded a political party (or terrorist group, depending who you ask) called the Zapatistas, started leading protests and antagonizing the federal authorities, and the Mexican army decided they needed a better road if they were going to reign in these rebels. It's a long story, which Nichole can explain better than I (wait until you see her Zapatista gear), but basically it meant that we could hop in the Nissan with Luis and Daniel and have a relatively uneventful drive through the jungle to the boat launch.

After Yaxchilan, we went to Bonampak, where the local indigenous group called the Lacondones control the last stretch of road to the site, thus finding a way to make a profit off of tourist traffic and create a steady income for their community. And today we were at Palenque, which had at its peak 1200 stone buildings, so you can guess at its population.

So here we are, in the jungle, looking past kapok trees strung with broad-leafed vines, listening to a drone of insects punctuated by the call of toucans, climbing up steps to temples and royal home and crypts built and inhabited by the Maya about 250 B.C. and 800 A.D., mas o menos a few decades. Each site has crumbled buildings, and reinforced buildings, and buildings still covered under dense tangles of vegetation. In many places, there are carvings--elaborate carvings on eight-foot limestone slabs--that show rulers and prisoners, gods and animals, celebrations of birth or of the spoils of war. Even more remarkably, at a few sites frescoes painted with minerals and vegetable dyes have been preserved over all these years. From these images, and the pictogram writing that accompanies them, archaeologists have pieced together everything that is known about this complex civilization. They know that the people thought crooked teeth were beautiful and filed their own teeth into fangs, that they poked holes in their fingers to collect blood for burnt offerings, and that generations of intermarriage led to rulers with serious physical and cognitive defects. More amazingly, perhaps, is that after four or five days immersed in this stuff, Nichole and I are starting to recognize familiar icons even before our guide points them out : )

Of course, to get to them, you have to climb a lot of steps. For me, it's not so much the going up that's the problem; it's the coming down when my legs feel rubber-y. But, for the most part, I'm channeling my inner mountain goat and getting it done. (If there were mountain goats native to this region, the Maya would definitely have thought they were a sacred animal!)

Time for me to rehydrate and rest . . . we make the transition tomorrow from Maya to Olmec, an even older meso-American civilization. I'm really hoping they didn't build pyramids : )   Buenas Noches--Kris