Monday, April 27, 2009

Oxaca, Chiapas and Yucatan peninsula






Mexico has been open hug to us.

We just arrived three days ago in Belize, this small country in Central America, with lot of soul.

So much beauty to discover in the South of Mexico, that’s why we were moving like snails in the past few weeks.

I won’t be able to count about everything that happened lately, it would take more time than what my hands can deal with, typing on a computer.

We got to the state of Oaxaca, by the beginning of March, heat began to get strong, and the deserty landscape of northern Oaxaca heated us up even more.
Cactuses are here giant hands bagging to the sky to cry a bit.

Traveling is a wonderful experience, and the way we do it enhance our comprehension that world really is a beautiful place, and that human being have so much beauty in him.
Of course we wanna share that with everybody who wants to.

On the squared central square of the city of Oaxaca, we met a sister, she wanted to speak, and finally decided to go hitch-hiking with two wanderers.

Her name is Karin, she’s 50, lives in South Africa, had a company, and decided to leave it to go discover the world, and go listen to her heart.
We offered her to go travel with us, we usually do, as I said, it’s so great to share, but most of the people don’t actually come and do it.
She did.

We left hitch-hiking, it was tough sometimes to carry the big black airport design suitcase.
But with the will she had, she could have carried the bag to Panama.
We hitch-hiked during two hot days, went from the dry desert, to the wet jungle pf café trees, to the Pacific coast, by the village of Puerto Escondido, where we slept on the beach one night.
The huge wave crashing on the shore, seemed like they had done a long travel.

It makes so grateful when you receive such a trust, and when you see that there’s no age to live our dreams.
Thanks Karin.

From Puerto Escondido, we went to Mazunte, a small village by the Pacific coast, with a nice type of tourism, lots of young people, no big hotel, mainly hamacs on the beach.
Exchange between the people of the village and the tourist.

In Mazunte, we join with Cécile, another daughter of the red wine country, but who has been living in Colorado for now five years. I met her in Durango, CO, past November, we saw each other one day, without knowing that we would be traveling for a month together.

Cecile was a school teacher in Durango, but she decided that it was time to jump into something new, she left her job, and decided to go living in San Cristobal de las Casas, in the southern region of Mexico called Chiapas.
When we met up with her, Cécile decided to come try the experience of traveling with the two wanderers.

After Oxaca, we arrived in the state of Chiapas, getting into the land of the Mayas, into a land of amazing nature, where ancient have developed a precise sense of comprehension of the world.

After 6000 ft mountains we go down into the dense forest, birds turn into rainbows, leaves get bigger than my head, animals turn into kings, human beings love their mother nature.

We visit the ruins of Palenque, then Aubin needs to go back to San Cristobal de las Casas, so with Cécile and 4 other persons that we met on the way, we go to the village of Lacanja.
Lacanja is a Lacandon Mayan village, Lacandon have their own Mayan language, and remain quite close to the ancient traditions.
A friend from Mexico city gave us the direction of her friend Adelita in the village, she let us put our tent by her house.
Adelita her husband, and their children live in a bamboo, wood house, with a palm leaves roof. The house has two rooms, one where everybody sleeps, with hamacs, two beds and the TV, and the Kitchen, in which the roof is black cause of the smoke of the fire she lights up to cook on the wood and dirt table.
We share lots of smile, lots of laughs.
We bath and clean our clothes in the spring that runs by the house.
Adela makes bracelet and neckless with seeds that she exchanges with the turquoise art of Cécile.
Nice peaceful life, makes you never wanna leave.

We did leave, with lot of emotion in the heart, thanks to them, they were wonderful.

We leave Chiapas, see the hills flattening, trees shortening, and go from humid forest to the dry flat land of the Yucatan peninsula

We stay one night in the beautiful city of Campeche, full of color and nice architecture, and stay with a couchsurfing.com host.

The next day we go to Merida, and stay a few night with Daniel, our couchsurfing.com host.

Then we get into Cancun, excepted the water that is of an incredible azur blue, nothing to see in this city that has been created exclusively for tourism 39 years ago.
This is the kind of place that has no soul, cause local people haven’t been growing all together they came here to earn the money they need to live.
It doesn’t feel at all like a Mexican city, feels like a made-up life, created to reach the expectations of people who wanna travel to chill-out under a sun shining sky, have all the material things they have in their country and get away from their every day life.

Well, we couldn’t stand to stay long, even if our coushsurfing.com host was incredibly nice and generous.

We then went down to Playa del Carmen, another touristic place, but in a nicer way.

From there we went to Tulum, a wonderful place where the Mayan ruins are right by the blue caribean water, we stayed there two night, sleeping on the beach.

Then we left for Chetumal, right by the border with Belize, got hosted by a member of couchsurfing.com

And on the 22nd of April, we passed the border and got into Belize.

Cécile is still traveling with us, she's incredibly courageous, she stands with her super thumb on the side of the road, and even the extreme heat can't knock her out.


We spent a bit more than 4 months in Mexico, 4 months full of discoveries, of people opening their door, opening their heart, of wonderful nature.
Walking in the street in Mexico, you can be sure that if you smile at somebody, he’s gonna smile back at you, if you say hello, he’ll say hello back.
Just simple things, but that are coming from the heart.

Just wanna say thank you to Mexican people.

We are all brother.

Sébastien