Cartegena

27th Aug to 1st Sept

It's a bit sad to leave Ludwig, Rolli and the rest of the Stahlratte crew behind as we take a short dinghy ride to shore with our bikes and kit. Riding into the old town of Cartegena, the very first Colombian to talk to us is a guy who jumps out in the road offering us drugs! Welcome to Colombia - good to see all the old stereotypes alive!

The town centre is carnage with narrow streets thronging with hoards, all weaving in and out of hand carts and yellow taxis that blare horns incessantly. We ride the wrong way up a couple of streets to a hotel where some of the others from the boat are staying; but it is full.

I'm sure I didn't buy any drugs off that guy, but I must be hallucinating when we see a guy dressed as a horse throwing high-kicks at a group of passing school children. They scream and squeal in delight running out into the traffic choked street.

We hole up just outside the old city walls in "Getsemeni" and head out to explore this mad place - our first sight together of South America. Cartegena is an old, colonial walled town that prospered as a major Spanish port in the 16th Century. Old silver money just drips off the beautiful building facades. Nowadays, some are showing signs of disrepair as the money dried up and left; this block is the thriving red light district where painted ladies stretch latex to bursting point as they pout and whisper enticements to the crumbling, hourly-rate rooms upstairs....

Heading on inside the walls that South American vibrancy hits you immediately. Plaza de los Coches is alive with dancers writhing to maniacal drumbeats. They dance the traditional steps of the "Kalimari" tribe who inhabited this coast before Spain came. They worshiped a serpent god and the dance is seductive, sexy and sinuous reflecting the demon spirit of the snake. It's too fast to capture....

The streets are similarly alive with vendors of all kinds pushing carts of fruit, deep fried foods or coffee and cakes. 'Minutos' are everywhere - guys sitting behind trestles with mobile phones for hire. For 100 Pesos ($0.05) you can buy minutes and they will place the call for you. In between calls they gamble on dice or the flip of a coin. The excitement is too much for one onlooker....

We meet up with all 20 fellow passengers from Stahlratte in their hostel's roof top bar and enjoy a couple of cold ones in sight of Fort San Filipe that once protected the city from English pirates....

Later we hit a reggae bar for some live music. We leave at around 1:30am but some of the others see the dawn in... Cartegena is a party town.

There are some excellent museums in town and we head to the Naval Museum next day which has a history of the Spanish conquest displacing the local tribes in this area. The main room has some fantastic models of the ongoing struggle to defend the city during the 16th to 18th centuries. The treasure hoards of Peruvian silver attracted increasingly more determined fleets from Britain and France (including Sir Francis Drake) who often carried out pirate raids rather than risk outright war closer to home. There are descriptions of the battles and a timeline for the building of ever more elaborate defensive walls and forts around Cartegena.

Inside the walls, Cartegena is definitely less seedy than Getsemeni and there are tons of upmarket eateries and boutique hotels around the open plazas....

They obviously cater to a different budget than ours so we head back to the cheap seats and find a bar doing an excellent curry. Oh I do miss a good curry! After that we head on to a Salsa bar and meet up with the crew and our Stahlratte ship mates again.

On the last Sunday of the month, most city attractions are free so we head en-masse up to San Filipe Fort to see the canons and imagine battling scurvy sea dogs come-a-plundering!

It's all a little hard to imagine with all that modern skyline in the background though. The Fort itself is impressive with tunnels running like an underground warren, but as a museum it is not. There is no information of any kind and it definitely pays to visit the Naval Museum first.

As it a free day we head to the gold museum next and learn how rare metals like iron and steel were here but that gold was commonplace. Rumour has it that pure nuggets could be found just lying in rivers waiting to be picked up! Consequently it was used for everything from beautiful jewelery and ornamental dress; right down to commonplace objects like weights and fish hooks....

You can imagine how the Spanish must have felt when they washed up on shore amongst all this wealth!

There is a film about the "Zenu" - an inland tribe that built vast canal networks over a 2000 square mile area to control river flooding around 2000 years ago. They slowed the advancing water and used the river and it's silt to irrigate and fertilise vast tracts of land. It is a feat that is beyond modern engineers and parts of Colombia's central valley suffer from uncontrolled flooding today!

Plaza Trinidad is a local's hangout and the boat crew head down for Sunday nights. There is a 5 piece band just jamming and they are really, really good. A stilt walking dancer joins them followed by a juggler with flaming torches. There are street carts laden with food and the local shop sells cold beer which you can carry out - it's a really chilled atmosphere.

A typical Sunday night out with friends....

50 kilometers outside Cartegena is "Volcan de Lodo el Totumo" so we take a tour bus with our group. The volcano doesn't look that impressive - just a 15 metre cone, but it is made from mud spewed up to the surface under pressure. The lukewarm mud is supposed to have therapeutic properties and it's a weird feeling slipping and sliding into this thick, oily bath....

You feel a bit like a cork bobbing uncontrollably high in the water and you just can't move. There are 'helpers' who push you into place where, if you are still, you hardly feel the mud at all and you get this weird sensation of floating in space. If you do try and move, you get a strange feeling of overbalancing as your body flails about and you start to roll forward.

Mud does not taste good!

Your skin does feel amazing afterwards though and you can get a massage for about $1.50. Next it's off to the lake to wash off and there are washer women who are more than happy to help. You have to be quick to stop them whipping off your shorts underwater and giving you a good rub down!

We return via a golden sandy beach where a fish lunch awaits us.

Cartegena is alleged to be the most beautiful of all Colombia's cities and I can well believe it. It's not just the buildings either, the people are warm and friendly as well. True, in some parts of Getsemeni after dark it can get a little edgy and there are whispering spivs on many of the street corners, all 'trust-me' smiles and shifty eyes. Mobile phone attached to ear, they promise they can get you anything..... ANYthink (nod, wink....).

But alongside the more 'adventurous' side of life, it's also a place where you could spend a couple of hundred dollars a night in a boutique hotel and dine in fine style in an expensive gourmet restaurant then stroll amongst the walls looking at the ocean and admiring the incredible architecture. It's a real mix!

You could spend days just wandering here. There are numerous old plazas, churches and municipal buildings, plus the street scenes are vibrant and chaotic and ever changing.

A couple of images around town...

A scene straight out of the 16th century....

Cafe culture....

With ever present street vendors and music....

Ancient defenses - modern hangout....

Classic lighting....

Modern art....

The question is.... does life imitate art or does art imitate life....

Copan

February 19th to 24th

Glowing beacon of the Mayan civilisation. The numbers are impressive. In it's heyday at the end of the late classical period around 850AD it was alleged to have been home to over 25000 people all supported by the lush farmland of the Rio Amarillo (Yellow River) valley. Then came disaster and collapse, the people fled and these great buildings were quickly abandoned.

Times tide washed over them. Dust blew in and caught between the cracks. With it came tiny seedlings - micro agents of destruction. Dust turned to soil and finally a seedling took root. Tiny at first, then burrowing inexorably through gaps in the close fitting stone. Time passed and the years turned to decades, the decades to centuries. Those tiny seedlings became the trunks of fully grown trees and finally, tortured stone came crashing down. The great temples and stairways crumbled....

Few people were left to bear witness and Copan passed out of common knowledge. When it was first rediscovered by the Spanish in 1576, it's population was reduced to just 5 families living simply amongst the ruins of former splendour. They could shed no light on Copan's history, Spain's king took no notice and the story was forgotten once more.

It was not until 1841 when 'Travels in Central America', a book by 2 American explorers was first published did the world turn it's attention back to the Yellow River valley.

After the site was uncovered, Copan was not spectacular temples like Tikal and it was not an imposing fortress like Monte Alban. Those places are the expressions of religious and military might. Copan is more a display of the mind, of beautiful sculptures and intricately carved hieroglyphics, an early style of writing depicting tales and dates of the great events of the day. It is a place of ancient artistry....

This is what has attracted armies of archeologists to the site over the last 150 years – the lure of unravelling the code of hidden meaning behind the glyphs and deciphering these ancient writings.

They tell of a dynasty of kings stretching back to 426AD when a great leader 'Quetzal Macaw' came to the area with a host of men and subdued the current king and took over the valley. Despite there having been a settlement here since around 1200BC, he is credited with founding the city and was revered as semi divine with direct affinity with the gods. Great banquets and sacrifices were held in his name.

Tradition dictated that the early kings of Copan built on the foundations of previous kings and their monuments and achievements were largely covered up and lost to history. However their fame was immortalized when the 16th and final king Yax Pac created an alter depicting carvings of previous rulers. This showed his ancestry stretching all the way back to Quetzal Macaw, probably to strengthen his legitimacy as king whilst Copan's power began to wane....

Central America's 2nd largest ball court is built on the foundations of 2 previous ones and there are other smaller 'training' ball courts outside the main site where players would practice and dream of the centre stage. The ruined stairway leads up to the 'Temple of Inscriptions'....

Stone carvings of Macaws at the top of the sloping walls were probably significant and placed in honour of the cities founder Quetzal Macaw who may have been named for the birds that inhabit the surrounding jungle....

The most famous surviving monument is the 'Hieroglyphic Stairway' – 63 steps made up of thousands of stone blocks each carved with glyphs describing the glorious history of the Royal House. The story is still unfolding as more glyphs are translated, a task not helped by the fact that many blocks had fallen from their original place and lay in a jumbled heap. A rather difficult jigsaw puzzle made from delicate and priceless pieces, in 3D and with no diagram on the box....

There is the magnificence of the carved 'stelae' or statues depicting individual kings after a big event but everywhere you look there are smaller carvings on the blocks that make up the walls and when you consider it would all have been colourfully painted it must have been an incredible sight.....

In total, about 3500 structures have been discovered around the principal site which is what archeologists base their estimates of population on. Ironically it was only as recently as the 1980's that the modern day Copan could boast over 25,000 people and you have to question whether that number could ever have been achieved without the enduring mystery of the ancient city drawing people back to the Yellow River Valley.

Today Copan is an attractive cobble stoned streeted town that nicely balances normal day to day life with it's influx of tourists. There's a museum about the site with many of the original carvings and interesting explanations of the Mayan culture. We spend a couple of days around the central plaza with it's collection of bars and restaurants.

Taking time out from all that history, we visit a butterfly reserve just outside of town and while away a couple of hours in beautiful tranquility watching colour flutter by....

Tikal - Capital of the Mayan World

Tikal

August 26th and 27th

The first thing you notice on entering Tikal is that the jungle is back.

Outside this protected area, much of the vegetation has been cleared to make way for cattle grazing or for firewood, whereas here it’s a much older more natural environment. The road is a claustrophobic strip of grey in the green and the air is filled with insects noises and the deep throated roars of unseen howler monkeys.

Beware of..… I don’t really know what??



There are more familiar warnings though - snakes, puma, deer and…. turkey? They have killer turkey here?

Debating whether to set a watch to counter the turkey peril, we pitch our tents for $5 and buy our entrance tickets. These can be used to enter the site after 4pm and again for the whole of the following day.

Do Not Feed The Croc - oooowwww and I brought cheese sandwiches for him as well....

Late afternoon we head for temple 4 which is the highest spot in Tikal at over 60m (200 feet). It's a good place to get our bearings and to watch the sunset. The jungle is hot and sweaty and a constant haze rises above the tree canopy in front of the imaginatively named temples 1, 2 and 5….



It a huge site that covered some 30 sq km at the height of it’s power around 400AD and was home to an estimated 100,000 people. However Tikal’s history stretches back way further than that to around 700BC when this area became settled due to it’s slightly elevated position above the surrounding swamp land, and the abundance of flint which was of military importance. Tikal enjoyed a position of supremacy due to the use of flint tipped spears which could be thrown in battle whilst surrounding tribes could only fight at close quarters using hand held weapons.

The site waned around 900AD for reasons still shrouded in mystery and these great buildings slowly faded back into the jungle until they were rediscovered in 1848.

Can you imagine machete-ing through miles of dense jungle and coming across these majestic old ruins….



We are offered the chance to ‘sneak’ in 2 hours before the official opening time the next morning to see the dawn for ‘just’ $30 each. We discover it’s hardly ‘sneaking in’ after every single park ranger offers us the same deal, in prices ranging all the way down to $20 dollars, then 100 Quetzales and finally 50Q - about $6.

We return at 6am when the park opens and the site is just about empty.

Tikal is obviously about the Mayans and the ancient buildings, but it’s also unique in it’s jungle setting which means the wildlife is incredible - especially early in the morning when the tree canopy awakes with a million hungry mouths all looking for a hearty breakfast.

The hubbub of squawks and screeches fills the air and we see Toucans with their brightly coloured bills….



Bizarre peacocks, their face and head covered in bright orange swellings like tic-tacs….



And a trio of parrots….



In ‘The Lost World’ section of the site, a troupe of spider monkeys sets off on an aerial roadway across the tree canopy high above the jungle floor. Apparently they always follow set, tried and tested routes where they know branches will support their weight. In one place, the gap between 2 trees is just too great and they can be see shinnying down a tree trunk before cautiously crossing the ground in between - a rare sight….



Sue is transfixed for nearly an hour, all thoughts of the temple ruins behind her forgotten as a family of about 10 monkeys cavort, play and strip the fruit from a tree above….



Breakfast over, they retrace their steps, and that gap that was too wide is re-crossed in more spectacular style. Using their weight to set the branches of one tree swaying, they time their jumps to bridge the huge gap 40 feet above us in a single great leap….



The temples are stunning in the morning sunlight. This is Temple 1 ‘The Temple of the Grand Jaguar’ in the Gran Plaza.….



At one time you were allowed to climb it‘s great stair, that is until a couple of people fell to their deaths. Now there is are steep and rickety wooden staircase at the sides of a couple of the other temples that can be climbed for incredible views.

The central section of the site has been totally cleared and the buildings partly restored. A huge grassy area sits between this great temple and it’s mirror image - temple 2 as they face off against each other.

This ‘Northern Acropolis’ is believed to contain the oldest buildings in Tikal. Anna gazes in awe back across 2500 years of history towards the Gran Plaza and Temple 2….



In the Southern Acropolis stands the 58m high Temple 5 which can again be climbed up this near vertical wooden ladder….



The view north from the top shows the natural setting that makes Tikal so special….



Ali considers the fastest way of getting back down to ground level…..



Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh.....

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh TARANTULA……



Sometimes you’ve wanted to go somewhere for so long, and you have so many images of what that place will be like when you finally get there that it can only be a disappointment. Surely it can’t live up to expectations.

Tikal is not that place!

Tikal made an impression on me in a way that Palenque and even Monte Alban did not. Don’t get me wrong, Palenque is incredible and the sheer scale of Monte Alban and it’s impenetrable hilltop location are really special, but they are both quiet places to visit. At Tikal there is a cacophony of noise from countless parrots, monkeys, frogs and insects and the air is alive. It has a completely different atmosphere that cannot be conveyed in words and pictures, and to spend a night here under canvas is a special experience.

There’s nothing to compare with hiking down a jungle trail and coming out into a clearing and seeing ruined stone walls submitting to the unyielding vegetable intent of a giant tree root. It just has that unique tingle of excitement from discovering a truly lost world coupled with the ever present sense of immense time….



No, Tikal does not disappoint….

It just tantalises - for it is but a glimpse.

Sue always laments the non-invention of a time machine at places such as these. Tikal tantalises as there is just so much that is unknown about this place. How did the people really live? What were the buildings used for? Were there really human sacrifices? And the biggest question of all - the enduring mystery of the city‘s abandonment.

The time has now come for me to return to the lab and invent that time machine…..

Palenque

23rd June

Biting the bullet, we become tourists and take a tour bus from San Christobal to the ruined Mayan site of Palenque. We were going to ride, but we have already overstayed our Mexican visas by a month and another 6 days for the round trip starts to look like taking the Michael. As it's a side trip we feel OK at not riding, but that's a point of view that is set to change. Especially when we need to leave at 6am in the morning. I hate mornings!

A few miles into the journey, Sue also changes her mind. The road is a lurching, rolling series of hairpins that goes on for 220kms as the road descends the mountainside down to the sticky jungle plains 2000 metres below. She does not travel well on buses and spends the 6 hour journey turning various shades of green.

For those of thus that can look out of the windows, it's just a fantastic series of views as we descend in the early morning light through cloud filled valleys. Later the clouds lift and and are shredded by the hot sun to reveal stunning vistas. It would have been a great ride.

On route we stop at 'Cataratas de Agua Azul' (blue waterfalls) - a beautiful series of cascades with inviting sapphire pools of cool crystal water where you can swim....

Fine smelling restaurants within earshot of the babbling waters invite us to linger, but the bus is leaving soon so we take the lovely walkway at the side of the river instead....

Next stop is the 35m cataract of 'Mizol-Ha'....

Where you can walk behind the falls and up a winding stair to a dark grotto....

Palenque is one of the most extensive and best known of the Mayan ruins. Fifteen square kilometers of jungle hid over 1400 buildings for nearly a millenia until a Spanish priest discovered the site in 1773. Now over 500 buildings have been unearthed from beneath tropical leaf and vine....

Palenque was first settled around 100BC and saw the height of it's power with approximately 8000 people living here around the 7th Century when 'K'inich Hanab Pakal' ruled over all. He and his son 'Snake Jaguar' built many of the most inposing temples and plazas. This is The Temple of the Inscriptions where Pakal's tomb was discovered. With 8 levels and rising 25m, the stair is the tallest here and is hugely impressive. You can almost imagine the firelit ceremonies carried out by masked high priests on the high altar, below a thousand heads thrown back to gaze upwards in awe. If Mel Gibson in Apocalyto is to be believed, these were ritualistic human sacrifices - a blood offering to the gods, with the bodies cast down the stair, bloodied and beheaded....

Scholars debate the meaning of Mayan art carved into stone tablets, and of the glyphs found in many of the building and on the sarcophagus of Pakal's tomb....

Amazingly (I think), you are free to climb the stairways and wander inside some of the ancient temples, though not all take the opportunity in the 100 plus degrees of mind melting heat. This is the view from atop the 'Templo de la Cruz' (Temple of the Cross) towards the Palace complex with it's observatory tower and gives some idea of the scale of this massive site....

'Templo de la Sol' (Temple of the Sun) set against the ever encroaching jungle backdrop has Palenque's best preserved roof comb.

We have just two and a half hours at the site - including time for lunch, and this is the main reason I hate coach tours. You could easily spend an entire day here and jogging through the site taking snaps on the move so you can catch a bus seems at odds with the gravitas and history of this civilisation defining setting. There is no time at all to visit the on site museum for an insight into the culture, and maybe some explanation for the mysterious abandonment of the site around 900AD.

It's a bit tragic really and the fact you can camp here increases our regret at not having the extra days to cycle here and spend enough time to do it justice. Still they have some nice flowers to rush past in the botanical gardens....