December 30th, 2007

Every time we reach this stage, an end to yet another chapter of the trip, I have mixed feelings. They are so mixed; I don’t know what they are. I don’t want to leave, but it’s time to move on.

On our last day with Byron and Rachel, we took canoes through the Crooked Tree reserve and hunted, cameras in hand, for herons and orange iguanas. It was our last excursion together. Later that afternoon, we dropped them off at a bus stop and drove out of Belize, into Mexico. The usual border formalities headache finally helped me find the answer to my doubts when I had to use my “feminine charms” to avoid potential complications. The mean woman in customs was about to close and we didn’t have copies of all the necessary documents. So I’ve ran to the all-male staff of the immigration office, my shirt strategically unbuttoned, and “Me no know what do! Señor help, por favor,” did the trick. Is it bad I’ve even enjoyed it a little?

Having found out by now that shipping GreenGo by sea and then flying to Miami for my citizenship exam is going to cost twice as much as driving all the way back (all 3,000 miles) we headed once again to our favorite Mexican town – San Cristobal de las Casas – for New Year. From there, we would start our backtrack. We spruced up the long trip with a visit to Tonina – yes, yet another ruin. The Maya must have been in some sort of originality contest between the cities, because in an area where coming by ruins is a thing of the everyday, it was still like nothing we have seen before.

Tonina is an intricate stone city maze terraced into the side of a tall hill. An impressive array of structures rising like one giant pyramid – a limestone playground even the oldest of visitors couldn’t resist scaling. The Tonina Maya were obsessed with the underworld, and built a complex network of halls and tunnels beneath the surface to symbolize it. It is the ultimate hide-n’-seek site, though there is a very good chance you’ll loose your footing on the steep steps and break your neck tumbling all the way down popping, eventually, out one of the passages to the green of the meadow below. We went missing and lost each other more then once in the elaborate halls and tunnels. Having visited Tonina in the daytime, we didn’t even think about taking a torch or a headlamp with us, so we often lit the way with bursts of flash from the SLR. Some of the spaces were so narrow, a five year old could barely pass, but after Shurik managed to squeeze himself through the tightest of passages, I couldn’t just pass up the fun and tried to wring through as well, in spite of my treacherous curves.

Tags: ruins
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