Huehuetaltenengo, Todos Santos, San Christobal
I got to San Christobal de las Casas in Mexico today. I am staying in the same youth hostal I stayed when I was hitchhiking in Mexico in December 03 with Michal. It's so nice to see the old familiar places: the streets, the markets, the cafes... and reflect on what have changed in my life and in me during the time I was not here... I got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and saw my face, with a smile, partly that of a Cheshire cat, partly that of Mona Lisa... a smile of a person who has travelled many thousands of miles and has the mental picture of all she saw, touched, smelled, tasted, experienced... and the secrets of places she learned...
On Friday early morning Mike's friend Gulliano (who is from Italy) came and Mike woke me up asking if I was ready to go to Mexico and so I packed my stuff quickly and Mike, Gulliano, Todd and I set off west toward the border with Mexico, to Huehueltenango. We stayed there for the night in a rather shabby hotel but with a tv so we could watch CNN and see the latest on the hurricane in the US. The next day we went to the Mirador, a place high in the mountains above Huehue. It is above 3,000 meters above sea level so it's passible to see what looks like the entire mountain range. Very beautiful view. The road to the top gave me goose bumps and I was hissing at Todd to be careful and don't look at the view but at the road - it was extremally winding. Later we went further into the mountains, on a dirt road, to caves which Mike and Gulliano wanted to explore in search of insects which are a passion of Guilliano's. They went to the caves (and Todd accompanied them to the entrance) and I just picknicked in the car, surrounded by the beautiful view, since that type of altitude makes me weak... They didn't find any bugs but came back happy just from the fact that they got down to the caves. We then went to the village Todos Santos (All Saints). The view on the mountains and the valley was magnificient during our drive there but when we got the the village I thought it was a very depressing place... It was Saturday evening and the fiesta was going on witch basically ment that men were drinking on the streets and lying about in places in which they passed out. A village full of drunken men... it was raining, the shabby buildings looked very gloomy... the dogs were fighting over every little scrap of food they could find... It was a sad evening to me. I wonder why some villages, however poor, have this energy and life in them and others seem like a place of total degeneration and sadness... I think I mentioned this before that in some places people wake up happy, sweep the floor in front of their houses early in the morning and sing, and in other places people just aimlessly wander around in heaps of garbage around their houses... Todos Santos is the later. It is also a place infamous for the fact that some time ago a Japanese tourist and a driver of a tourist group were stoned to death by the villagers. There was a piece of news on the radio that Satanists were running around stealing kids and the Japanese tourists were taking pictures of kids and that's how the villagers thought they were ready to steal them... a very sad story. How was that possible in a village full of pious people? But that's not the first time in history where pious people, who are thought to love the other as thyself, killed... I think people are just people regardless of where they live and what their background is. I think that in every place, under any altitude and latitude, there are people who live according to their internal code of decency and are guided by compassion and people who seem to be living according to such code but will go berserk when opportunity comes and there's no one to check whether the code is exercised. Like in New Orleans... people looting other people's houses and shooting each other on the streets struck by the diseaster.
On Friday early morning Mike's friend Gulliano (who is from Italy) came and Mike woke me up asking if I was ready to go to Mexico and so I packed my stuff quickly and Mike, Gulliano, Todd and I set off west toward the border with Mexico, to Huehueltenango. We stayed there for the night in a rather shabby hotel but with a tv so we could watch CNN and see the latest on the hurricane in the US. The next day we went to the Mirador, a place high in the mountains above Huehue. It is above 3,000 meters above sea level so it's passible to see what looks like the entire mountain range. Very beautiful view. The road to the top gave me goose bumps and I was hissing at Todd to be careful and don't look at the view but at the road - it was extremally winding. Later we went further into the mountains, on a dirt road, to caves which Mike and Gulliano wanted to explore in search of insects which are a passion of Guilliano's. They went to the caves (and Todd accompanied them to the entrance) and I just picknicked in the car, surrounded by the beautiful view, since that type of altitude makes me weak... They didn't find any bugs but came back happy just from the fact that they got down to the caves. We then went to the village Todos Santos (All Saints). The view on the mountains and the valley was magnificient during our drive there but when we got the the village I thought it was a very depressing place... It was Saturday evening and the fiesta was going on witch basically ment that men were drinking on the streets and lying about in places in which they passed out. A village full of drunken men... it was raining, the shabby buildings looked very gloomy... the dogs were fighting over every little scrap of food they could find... It was a sad evening to me. I wonder why some villages, however poor, have this energy and life in them and others seem like a place of total degeneration and sadness... I think I mentioned this before that in some places people wake up happy, sweep the floor in front of their houses early in the morning and sing, and in other places people just aimlessly wander around in heaps of garbage around their houses... Todos Santos is the later. It is also a place infamous for the fact that some time ago a Japanese tourist and a driver of a tourist group were stoned to death by the villagers. There was a piece of news on the radio that Satanists were running around stealing kids and the Japanese tourists were taking pictures of kids and that's how the villagers thought they were ready to steal them... a very sad story. How was that possible in a village full of pious people? But that's not the first time in history where pious people, who are thought to love the other as thyself, killed... I think people are just people regardless of where they live and what their background is. I think that in every place, under any altitude and latitude, there are people who live according to their internal code of decency and are guided by compassion and people who seem to be living according to such code but will go berserk when opportunity comes and there's no one to check whether the code is exercised. Like in New Orleans... people looting other people's houses and shooting each other on the streets struck by the diseaster.
posted by Asia Kabat at 6:01 PM
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