Our original plan for Chiapas had been to visit the cañón del sumidero, a huge canyon through which you can make a tour by boat. Yesterday, however, Esmeraldas friend Diego had told us that there was lots of waste floating on the water towards the end of the canyon, as the rubbish goes into the river and the river ends in the canyon and nobody ever cleans it up. This little fact made us change our opinion and lowered our interest for the canyon significantly. Instead, he had recommended the pyramids/ruins of Tanino and said that in his opinion they were the most beautiful pyramids in the most beautiful setting he knew. This coming from a Mexican pyramid fan was convincing enough for us to get up at 8 this morning and try to organize transportation to Tonina. We succeeded at 8:30 and had to be ready by 9:15. We had breakfast in the hostel and set off in a van just for us, the driver, his wife and little son.
To optimize the trade-off between hours in the car and hours of activity, we first drove 1,5 hours to the waterfalls of El Coralito. The van dropped us off on a higher point and we walked along the river with waterfalls through a forest downwards. At a point with a bigger pool between waterfalls, we hopped into the water for a refreshing bath.
Our next stop was one more hour of driving from the falls. Tonina means “stone house” in the local language Tzental and is one of the less known Mayan temples that is still very little visited by tourists. We decided to go with a guide who would give us some context and explanations and as we entered the enormous complex, we were actually completely alone. Even though the temples we had seen before were impressive as well, the energy and peace you feel when you’re not disturbed by tourists, is entirely different. The truth is that I didn’t want to go to more than 2 or 3 pyramids but I must admit that all the archeological sites we have visited yet, were entirely different from each other and each and every one spectacular in it’s own way.
This one was only recently (like 50 years ago) discovered and there are still big parts hidden under the earth and vegetation. Our guide had been working in the excavations right from the beginning and knew to tell many interesting things about this culture. Tonina is the only pyramid with access to the “infraworld” and the only one with public access to the internal labyrinths. The Mayas of this area loved bloody rituals and acts sacrifice for their gods. Like always in these type of ancient cultures and even like nowaday’s Mexico, death was one of the most important topics. We experimented a weird shadow-light-point inside the labyrinth, that made your shadow look like a sceletton. There were thrones, graves with sarcophaguses and houses for the elites.
In the heat of a midday in the jungle, we climbed the whole thing up to the 75 meter high top, the stairs getting steeper the closer we got to the tip. One can only hope that this stays as unknown and little frequented as it is now, because otherwise the access would be probably closed because of safety reasons. This way we enjoyed incredible views over the mountains and little villages and pyramids. Our guide even started to sing a little for us on the top and told us about his lovelife and how shamanes have saved him more than once. Juan was nice and authentic and even gave us his number to connect us with his favorite shaman when we come back to Chiapas one day.
Instead of spending one or two hours as foreseen, we had suddenly spent 3,5 hours in the ruins and it was getting pretty late so we drove back to San Cristóbal without any D-tours. Also, it started raining right in time for us to be in the car. Even though the city wasn’t that far in kilometers, it took us 2,5 hours to get back thanks to an infinite number of speedbumps ad usual. It was after 7 when we arrived and we were extremely hungry.
We went to a restaurant in the center and had dinner until Esmeralda’s friend Diego came to visit us again. Afterwards, I was pretty tired and wanted to go to bed, but couldn’t miss our last stop in this city: a Mezcal bar. They had a selection of over 500 Mezcales and the waiter explained the differences between them, the tastes and how to drink it. I learned how to taste a Mezcal correctly, how to “kill” the taste with orange if it’s too strong and tasted different types coming from different states of Mexico. The strongest one was from Puebla and got it’s taste from wild boar meat that is added before distillation. It was very strong. Mine was from San Juan de Potosí and instead of heated up with fire, cooked in vapor and therefore much less smokey but intense in taste.
We finally got home at 1, more than ready for bed after a long day with intense experiences and temperature changes.
