Chiapas de Mexico

This seems like eons ago, but my time in the San Christobal Colon de Chiapas is well worth reliving. Here I visited a Mayan village where life has changed little in a few hundred years. San Juan Chamula is the home of the infamous Zapatistas, and is a quaint town with one beautiful church, flocks of Mayan peeps in traditional cladding whose lives revolve around Sharman ceremonies and the local market. They try to steer clear of the evangelist who try to recruit souls like they are apples in a market. Inside this church, thousands of candles burned in the name of the saints, which are stored in huge glass boxes. There is so much smoke the walls need to be painted every year. The floor of the church is covered in new pine needles each week, and stings and strings of wild flowers hang everywhere. Mayan people come here to pray and perform rituals to cleanse the soul, lead by the spiritual leaders and Sharman’s. These rituals involve herbs, chickens, eggs, and the local drop ´posh´. I was lucky enough to witness such an event, the chicken didn’t make it. Explosions are heard every few minutes, a way of capturing the attention of the spirits, and they certainly caught my attention. Boom! The smell of this place is magic, pine needles, chicken feathers, wild flowers, cotton, smoke and gun powder fill the lungs. I wanted to learn more about Mayan natural medicine, but on my way to the Museo de Mayan Medicinas I encountered two lifeless bodies, and decided to come back the next day instead. 14hours overnight I landed in Polenque, Las Runias Central. Mind blowing civilization. Between the 600-800 8000 people lived here. One of the places that sticks in my mind is the playing field. The ball court was used as an entrance to the underworld, a place of death and resurrection. The movement of the ball represented celestial bodies, life and death. Defeated players were beheaded and displayed to warn off any challengers. Loser, Mayan style, they didn’t take any prisoners! Maybe we could toss a few of those Australian idols to the field.