Meandering in the Jungle

After Chichen Itza, Shine and I spent a couple of days in Merida, capital of the state of Yucatan. It's a great old town, and yet very modern too: lots of colonial architecture, public art, good museums, numerous cultural events, and, in typical conqueror fashion, many Catholic churches built over destroyed Mayan temples, often constructed from the very stones of the destroyed temples they replaced. It's a lively city with music and dancing all over the place, especially on weekends when they close off the town center for pedestrian traffic only and numerous bands play latin music (mainly salsa and mariachi ballads) in the parks and streets.



In an attempt to avoid going shopping with Shine, I got a haircut in a local mercado. I gave the hair stylist free rein to do as she pleased and I ended up with it buzzed pretty short on the sides with a poof of hair on top. Not bad really, but unfortunately I wasn't able to weasel my way out of shopping (Shine doesn't know Spanish) and we spent much of the next two days looking at clothes and jewelry. Ho hum.

Next we headed to the charming seaside city of Campeche, capital of the state of Campeche. This old colonial town on the Gulf of Mexico was a favorite pillaging target of pirates for hundreds of years, so the Spanish eventually secured the city by encircling it with a fortified wall and bastions. Most of the wall is now gone, but the bastions remain. It was fun to explore the old cobblestone streets lined with buildings painted in bright pastel colors.




Then we headed further south into the state of Chiapas to explore the Mayan ruins of Palenque and encounter the jungle proper. We stayed in an area called El Panchan located in a lush jungle setting not far from the ruins. The place was overrun with cute wild kittens.



And so the next day we explored the amazing ruins of Palenque. There were far fewer tourists than at Chichen Itza and we were allowed to climb on most of the pyramids, sometimes even being able to go inside some of their narrow, murky, dripping passageways. At the more obscure sites, we often had the place to ourselves and even managed a furtive dip in the Arroyo Otulum stream. I especially enjoyed exploring the dark catacombs within various structures by flashlight.








The most discernable difference between Chichen Itza and Palenque is the scope of the surrounding jungle. The jungles of the Yucatan are lower and sparser than the dense, sprawling jungles of Chiapas. The hills, trees, vines, and wildlife all merge into a huge profusion of surging Life. The plants climb all over one another, stretching for the high jungle canopy and the precious sunlight above.

The first structures we visited were a line of towering pyramids, and yet the hills and jungle still loomed over them, endeavoring to swallow them back up and reclaim their territory. At one area, I saw workers using machetes to cut the branches and vines back in an endless effort to keep the encroaching jungle at bay. I am still reading Kerouac's On the Road, and appropriately enough, he also headed into Mexico and appreciated the jungle's penchant to blur boundaries.




We spent a lot of time at El Palacio ("The Palace"), a fun labyrinthine complex of corridors and courtyards. Shine feverishly sketched even more complicated color patterns that she "saw" on the walls and other structures. And while she's still unsure what any of this has to do with her system of healing, she has learned to be patient and wait for answers to become clearer in the future.






We explored the structures in the Templo de la Cruz ("Temple of the Cross") area, climbing more pyramids and enjoying the vast views out over the ruins and the jungle. After investigating a couple of the more remote sites, we finally came to Los Banos de la Reina ("The Queen's Baths"), a picturesque waterfall pouring into perfect limestone pools. Unfortunately, no bathing was allowed, so I had to settle for scheming to sneak back in after hours.






That night Shine felt called to Agua Azul ("Blue Water") to perform her moonlight rituals. Agua Azul is a river area with a long series of gorgeous stepped limestone pools. Normally, the waters are a beautiful shade of turquoise, but during the rainy season they are a murky greenish brown. They were also about an hour's drive away on winding roads in the pouring rain through a notorious robbery zone (at night) at a cost of about $100 US for the roundtrip taxi fare. And of course the park would be closed to the public at night so we would have to sneak in again. We considered The Queen's Baths at Palenque as an alternative, but with the pouring rain and the fact that we were feeling pretty tired, Shine decided to hold off on any nighttime rituals.

A curious coincidence: Being back in the jungle and seeing a large spider, I was reminded of an incident I witnessed back in the jungle/forest of my monastery in Thailand. I described to Shine how I saw a large spider and what I thought was a fly rolling around on the ground. They separated and I thought that the "fly" had escaped the clutches of the spider as they both moved quickly in opposite directions. And then they came together again, rolling around a second time. And again they separated. And came together again.

Extremely curious, I went closer to try to figure out what was going on. The "fly" turned out to be a wasp that was continually stinging the hapless spider, which had finally succumbed to the onslaught. The wasp then methodically ripped off all of the spider's eight legs with its powerful mandibles. And then, to my wonderment, the wasp somehow pulled out the spider's own silk thread, wrapping it around both of them to strap the spider carcass to the underside of the wasp's body. Even with its legs removed, the spider's body was still bigger than it, so the wasp set off on foot through the forest. I followed it until it reached the base of a tree, whereupon it calmly climbed up and went into a hole about ten feet up the trunk. I imagined that it was probably going to lay eggs in the carcass so that the hatching larvae would have something to eat. (I was reminded of the movie "Alien".) In the jungle, the roles of hunter and hunted are often interchangeable.

Then, a little while after I relayed this story to Shine, we came across a bright blue wasp dragging a large spider across the jungle path. I grabbed Shine's camera, but only got one blurry picture before some people coming from the other direction scared the wasp away.



The next day we went to Agua Azul in a collectivo van that the locals use. The pools and falls were indeed beautiful, though a bit murky from all of the rainy-season run-off. We walked way up the river and swam near a small village and picnicked on the shore. On the way back, a generous woman gave Shine a beaded necklace and matching earrings.




The ruins of Palenque reminded me a lot of magnificent Tikal, located in the remote jungles of Guatemala. I went there almost twenty years ago with a girlfriend, a Brit named Carol. Like Palenque, the ruins at Tikal are set amongst a lush jungle setting. But being so remote, there were very few tourists and the wildlife was correspondingly quite abundant. Numerous monkeys scampered in the trees, including loud howler monkeys bellowing away. We also saw a gray fox walk straight up one of the ancient walls in the ruins. Colorful birds of all shapes and sizes squawked and chattered away in the foliage. (Toucans, quetzals, parrakeets, etc. There was even one strange bird that made a musically metallic sound as it repeatedly swung on its perch to hang upside-down!) It wasn't hard to imagine jaguars lurking in the shadows.

And of course the pyramids and other structures were awe-inspiring in their jungle milieu. We excitedly explored all the amazing complexes by day, and when night came it was easy to sneak off and enjoy the ruins after closing hours. From the top of a pyramid, we watched the moon rise and illuminate the ancient city in its magical light.

But when we headed back to our lodge, we got lost in the jungle. We were still on paths, so I wasn't too worried, but the jungle definitely shows its more menacing side at night. The thick foliage conspired to make all of the paths look the same and the shadows threatened at every turn. But despite the jungle's best efforts to swallow us up before daylight, we somehow managed to stumble back to our lodge.

For me, jungles are equal parts enticing and intimidating. So primal and visceral, they inspire both fascination and fear with all that sprawling nature humming, throbbing, chittering, twisting, breathing, consuming. All of this seething Life feeds on itself, and everything else too. Boundaries blur between plants, animals, the elements.....and me. If I listen too closely to the jungle writhing around me, I begin to understand its soft susurrations, murmuring that it is coming for me, whispering of my end, and dreaming of our inevitable reunion.

It's an interesting contrast, these "dead" ruins amidst this thriving jungle scheming to reclaim its ancient baubles. Will the jungle succeed some day? Will our cities be reclaimed by the wilderness in a thousand years too? A hundred thousand years? A hundred million? Will we have moved on to other planets or solar systems leaving a lonely (relieved?) Mother Earth behind? Will we have evolved into a new species? Will anyone even remember names like Confucius, Caesar, Cleopatra, Christ, Muhammad, Genghis, Shakespeare, Einstein, Picasso, Gandhi, Hasselhoff, or Bush? Will we mature past this critical threshold where our technological power seems to have outstripped our moral development? Or will we kill ourselves off? As it stands, we are mere children juggling hand grenades. (And yet I remain pretty optimistic cuz we're pretty dextrous children.)

But perhaps the Earth itself is impassive. Maybe it doesn't really care. After all, it will survive no matter what we do. (At least, until we develop enough power to threaten the existence of the Earth itself.)

But we are bio-centric. We favor life over non-life cuz that's what we are. Maybe someday we will come to realize that the line between life and non-life doesn't really exist. (Scientists still haven't quite figured out what viruses are. And even fire satisfies many of the criteria for a definition of "life".) All life is composed of the universal matter and energy building blocks that form the foundation of our being. Our sweet Sol warms us from without and within. Our lonely Luna tugs at the tides of our inner seas. The dust of dying stars mingles in the marrow of our ancient bones. And, just maybe, supernovas explode in our brains.

Ah, I have wandered far afield again, lost in the tangled jungles of my mind. And perhaps my machete isn't quite sharp enough for me to be straying so far from home, rambling on and over-stretching metaphors. So I will slice at these discursive vines, try to scrape the moss off of my memory, and rail against the shadows of my ignorance.

And as I shake my fist, the seething jungle hushes.....and Jupiter trembles.



"...I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it.....For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. The atmosphere and I bacame the same.....I began to tingle all over and to smell of the rank, hot, and rotten jungle, all over from hair and face to feet and toes.....I didn't even know if branches or open sky were directly above me, and it made no difference. I opened my mouth to it and drew deep breaths of jungle atmosphere. It was not air, never air, but the palpable and living emanation of trees and swamp. I stayed awake. Roosters began to crow the dawn across the brakes somewhere. Still no air, no breeze, no dew, but the same Tropic of Cancer heaviness held us all pinned to earth, where we belonged and tingled."
---Jack Kerouac, from On the Road

"Maybe I'm just crazy and that's all there is to it."
---Shine, referring to the whole trip and her healing system

"Agua Lodo ('Mud Water')."
---our taxi driver, referring to Agua Azul during the rainy season

"I'm a student of life.....mainly cuz I don't know how to do anything else."
---me