After lunch, which I am pretty sure what is responsible for the "turistas" that visited me later on, we sat with a healer woman who explained the tradition of the acto de tsunel, a prayer she says for protection, births, harvests, all kinds of things.
Some people in the community have formed a committee called the "Sonadores del cuerpo del espíritu"- healers of the spiritual body. A lot of what they were saying made me think of the Christian Science movement. They are totally discriminated against by their government, if a pregnant woman doesn't go the medical route and anything goes wrong she is completely responsible and gets no national healthcare support. They don't recognize the spiritual healing methods as legitimate or worth supporting and so there is a big fear that these traditional methods will disappear. They also talked about how illnesses have spiritual causes that have to be taken care of which modern medicine ignores. The way they treat patients sounded really neat, they accept anyone and charge nothing but people will leave a little money or chicken or corn or something that they have.
That night we went out to dinner with two kids in Kurtis' group and had some great burritos and ice-cream.
The next morning, we headed out at 6:30 and caught a 5.5 hour long bus ride to Palenque. Note to all travelers-don't ever take big buses on tight windy mountain pass roads, it's a terrible idea. The first half of the trip we were feeling extremely queazy but made it to the rest stop and when we got back in the bus we knew we still had at least 3 hours to go...worst feeling ever.
To make it worse, they played Apocalypto, possibly the most offensive movie to show at the time. Keep in mind we were on our way to see Mayan ruins, a culture that was eventually overpowered by the Aztecs and then the Spanish. To sum up the introductory quote: A culture can only be colonized once it is destroyed from within. So basically, every culture that has ever been colonized, Algeria, Haïti, the U.S, has been destroyed by themselves first...so it's their fault? So the 3 hour movie continues making me more carsick with the gurgling death noises and screams coming from super loud speakers surrounding me from all sides...terrible.
I kept trying to sleep so I wouldn't have to think about being so sick but during one of my drifts into consciousness I looked up to see Kurtis asking his friends for plastic bags desperately and that was when I couldn't trick myself into believing any longer that I wasn't feeling the same way. He started puking and I followed suit into the same bag that he held for me, there were times when we were going at it at the same time and if you can believe it his friends thought it was cute. Cute. I promise you there was nothing cute about it.
An hour and a half later we were finally in Palenque, the town about 11 km away from the ruins. We decided to take a taxi to the "cabanas" which are just 2 km away from the ruins. Most. interesting. place. ever.
How do I even begin. The culture of pot and mushrooms was more common than food I can say that, and they had a lot of food there. We were welcomed by a man named Marcos, aka Old Man Stan and Mushroom Man who quickly told us in very clear english that he discovered the ruins in 1978, his grandfather had left this place to him...It took him 5 days to wander from the highway through the jungle where he found the ruins and camped out only to meet a 13 year old boy. He introduced the kid to pot and then an old man appeared everyday on a stump, watching him through the woods. Eventually the old man demanded that he come to his village: he had to know how he made fire come out of his hand (he had a lighter). He followed the old man, who turned out to be the shaman, to his village and became his apprentice. After living there for years, he left and years later his wife got a knock on their door and opened it to 40 villagers. The shaman had passed away and Marcos was the sole apprentice left to care for the village. He told them he wouldn't be able to take over as Shaman so they made him get a tattoo of a Mayan man smoking, surrounded by mushrooms. (Later, we actually found this carving on a wall in the temple at Palenque if you can believe it). Marcos taught them to eat garlic and mushrooms and smoke lots of ganja and they haven't been sick in 25 years because of that.
He went on to explain that the only way to open your subconscious is with mushrooms and that in fact, they are for everyone. There was a young girl name Zoey who was living with him, very cute and 1/2 Québecoise and also high off her mind all the time. Literally, all the time. She was very sweet but we were always a little weirded out by how she lived with Marcos, an older man, and how she always seemed a little creeped out when he came over and talked to her or touched her. It was a weird situation. They told us about a private waterfall, apparently with clear waters and so private you could go skinny dipping without any danger of people finding you. I immediately pictured him hiding in the woods but tried to through that image out of my mind since it was so hot and humid and a waterfall sounded like heaven.
We ended up getting our own little "cabana" with a porch on a little river and everything, even a fan! The next day we headed out for the ruins. It took us 30 minutes at least to walk to the museum, after which I felt completely drained considering I had barely eaten any dinner and only two little pieces of toast for breakfast. I basically laid on the floor in a cold corner of the museum for an hour or more while Kurtis looked around, gathering my strength back. We finally went to the ruins which were absolutely breath taking. Although I only climbed up into one of them, I loved the day and thoroughly enjoyed myself, very grateful that there were cool stone benches under the shade of big trees to lay under all day while being able to look at the ruins from a shaded area. I'm very glad my day didn't have to be ruined (hehe) by the "turistas", Kurtis was able to explore all day and came and checked up on me every now and then while I relaxed.
We decided (we being Kurtis and I am 4 other students from his group) to check out the private waterfall Marcos had told us about and as we entered the trail from the road a man walked out of the bushes asking for 5 pesos for each of us. After a few minutes of discussing the sketchyness of the situation we decided that 5 pesos was more than worth it and he had the right to ask for it considering it was private land. After another 15 minutes of hiking we got there and it felt so good to get in cool water. It was so refreshing after a 90 degree day in the sun. We stayed there for an hour or so and then headed back to our cabana. That night I was able to drink a whole banana chocolate shake and have three little pieces of homemade thin crust wood oven pizza. The solid food was a little harder to digest but I did it and I was so grateful for that.
This morning, Kurtis and I headed out at 6:30, this time taking a "combi" or "collectivo" little skinny vans that drive crazy and are filled with people but all the same, was a gazillion times better than the bus. I took my first shower in a few days, washed my hair twice and put on clean clothes and I can't wait to get home to Lopez so soon! It's been a great trip, we might have to move here someday for a year or so...everyone should get to travel here at some point in their life.
