So I arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas Mexico and it took me about an hour to fall in love with this place. The ambience, the climate, the culture, everything about it is just awesome. I could seriously live there. It is just a really neat place. I love the culture in Mexico. I love how everyone heads down to the Zocalo each night and just hangs out there. We just don’t have that back in Utah. I spent a few days in San Cristobal.
The first day I just pretty much just chilled and spent a little bit of time in the zocalo. One of the days I went by horseback to a little village called Chamula. Chamula is an interesting place. A lot of tourists go there because they have a church there that they sacrifice chickens in. You have to pay 20 pesos at the city hall to go to the church. As I entered the church and took a look around it was very interesting. The floor is tile and covered with pine needles. Around the outer walls of the church were your typical statues of catholic saints and stuff with candles burning in front of them. There was probably at least 2000 candles burning inside of the church. While I was there I was lucky enough to witness ceremony. So a man came into the church with a family and they were carrying two chickens with them. They walked up towards the front of the church and cleared some of the pine needles away from the floor and then the man proceeded to place candles on the floor. They placed bottles of soda next to the candles then he proceeded to say a few prayers. He prayed for quite awhile. The reason for this was that one of the little boys from the family was sick. The man performing the ceremony was a medicine man or healer. After he said the prayers he took out some tequila and drank it then passed it around to the people observing. They believe that the tequila helps rid the evil spirits from the body. After this he took one of the chickens out, said a prayer, waved it over the burning candles and then rubbed the chicken over the little boy’s body. Then he broke the neck of the chicken and continued to wave it over the candles until it stopped moving then laid it down on the floor. I am not sure what the significance of the soda was. Anyway, I found this incredibly interesting to observe. I like seeing how other people practice their religions. It seems strange, but honestly, most religions have their rituals that look strange from the outside. I was not able to take any pictures of the people of Chumula or inside their church because they believe it robs their spirits to have their photo taken but I did get a picture of the outside of the church.
The next day I went to Cañon del Sumidero down by Tuxtla. It is called by some as the Grand Canyon of Mexico. It was gorgeous and I got to see a couple of crocodiles which was cool because I had never seen them out in the wild. Unfortunately I only had my 300mm lens on my camera instead of my 450mm otherwise I would have REALLY been able to zoom in on their teeth. Anyway, hope you are enjoying the blog and remember you can always see more pictures at www.dustinbess.com
The Church in Chamula where they
sacrifice chickens.
Croc in Cañon del Sumidero
Another croc.
the Jesus to the right of the ladder.
and he was missing a couple of fingers.
A church in San Cristóbal.
The Cathedral in San Cristóbal.
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