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Our next stop is Chiapas as you can see. It is absolutely gorgeous with forests. This is the important plus and difference of Mexico from Turkey, they have much more forests than we have, and our land is nearly deforestified by unconscious people in the early civilizations and Turkey, these views themselves are enough for us trying to rebuild the ecology we damaged in our beautiful country, those beauties don't happen by themselves again if you destroy them...
And I arrive at the famous San Cristobal Las Casas. I don't break the tradition and start with the church as usual for any other city I have gone...
Than I arrive at the mayan museum of medicine. As you can see from the picture it is not the museum with the latest technology, it is a small museum that explains about the medical techniques mayans use. There are 5 types of mayan medics
i) Mountain Healer Prayers: They pray on top of mountains for better rain and better fortune for individual people.
ii) Midwifes: They are the local ebes (nurses for birth)
iii) Bone healers: They pray, whistle and use incense around the bone area with good deeds to heal the bone faster and scare the bad sprits away.
iv) herabalists: These know the best about all the plants and how they should be used for dealing with anxiety, bad magic and other sort of problems one faces.
v) pulse readers: They read the blood of the patient via their pulses to determine what the problem is. They tell that the vessels show them where each problem is...
Finally I finish the museum and say i want to learn how to make those herbs so hang out with locals while preparing some medicine ingredients together !! As you see they couldn't care even less. Normally mayans believe that photography captures part of the human spirit so they don't like to have their photographs taken.. These guys simply don't care, I guess the wisdom of having worked on medicine for a long time =)
Then i head for one of the main attractions in Cristobal, which is Na-Bolom. This is House of the jaguar in local mayan language (lacandon). The family who lived in this house were blum family and they were mistakenly named jaguar by locals. These people dedicated their lives to protection of ecological balance and anthropological culture of lacandon mayans who live in the forests around cristobal. The first picture is their house and the second one is a model of a lacandon temple. The prayer should stay in this holy temple for whole day and night.
As you can see the streets of Cristobal are lovely, at my time they were preparing for the celebration of 12
th of december, which is the celebration for the day of virgin guadalupe. The colonial architecture there is very well preserved, and tourism is slowly growing, so these times are actually ideal times to get there before it becomes ""touristy"" and uninteresting.
Soon after the sunset around the illuminated church I meet Hannah , who is travelling 
with a group of germans around mexico, she is a teacher who is very interesting, cool, dominant and questioning. She helps me understand and go deeper into my own thoughts about religion, meaning of life, cultures and philosophy of travelling. She is also the person that fires up my crazy blood and makes me do really crazy things which I wouldn't even dare to write here otherwise my mother would immediately call me back from the trip =)...
After that one of the most interesting parts of my mexico trip arrives. Yet as usual with the other most interesting parts, i don't have much photos of it. This is Chamula a mayan village close to Cristobal. People there are very strong about their religion, which is a strange combination of their mayan religion and christianity. They are very proud and strict about their religions. The population of chamula is around 9000 and 36000 people were expelled from the village in the last 25 years just because they switched to evangelic religions. I go there early at 8 pm, and I am the only tourist there. I learn how to say hi, thank you, and bye in their language tzotzil (taotme, kolabal, tanaro). And i have my famous cowboy sombrero on. As soon as they notice all this they invite me to their religious celebration for one Apostle, apparently i am interesting enough for them, but they are definitely more interesting for me. They give me a lot of trago, which is the local alcoholic drink in their religious ceremony. Those guys are crazy, I am telling you, they have this very traditional religious ceremony that lasts from 9 to 3 pm, and I join them until 1 pm. They are very strict about their religion and they absolutely love coca cola in their rituals (Sounds like gods must be crazy I know=). The situation: I am totally drunk by trago without eating anything, I rotate 3 times around the market with other religious priests and the religious clan leader on top of the horse, pipes are playing all around, very strong smell of incense all over, drums all around, and i am talking in spanish making friends with the son of clan leader. After that we go inside the village all together, they bless me inside their traditional religious dresses, I learn more about their rituals and actually sit near them for 2 hours just as another local!!! The Result: After 4 hours together I notice that I need to see some other places too, apologize from Sebastian (son of leader), and buy all clan manzanillo (a coca cola like drink) for ~10US$... =).. Then I go and eat in one of their kitchen restaurants for 2$ and say goodbye to this extremely interesting local tribe of mayans in the modern world. Unfortunately no photography is allowed with the mayan people and especially in their rituals, they are openly hostile to people who don't respect their traditions. So you will need to trust my words in this...
Then I head for the huitepec cloudforest reserve, which is exactly the middle of the wild. I sign the guestbook, i am the only turkish for nearly more than a year (I didn't want to check much further), I am the first guy that day, and yesterday there were only two guys that visited there whole day =). I guess I understand my friends that I am a little crazy =). Poses: before, during, after=)
After my crazy day all around the tribe and wilds, I quickly take my shower and run to meet this special lady back. She has an interesting way to look at things, she doesn't judge she doesn't criticize, she only tries to understand. I left a part of my heart with her in Cristobal and Palenque. I really hope I will be able to contact her once I am back from my crazy trip. But I need my time now... Hopefully we will see each 
other again, with all my sincerity.
The day after I spend my day in Zinacantan which is another small village that is not as interesting as chamula. I guess it is funny, me spending soo much time in villages of mexico, imagine a mexican in the middle of "cakirlar koyu" =).
Then I eat some chicken their way following the traditions =)
The rest of my time I spend walking more than 5 km for Hannah and not being able to meet her after that we leave each other messages for meeting in Palenque and I head for my next destination, egzotic ancient mayan city of palenque in the middle of the forests...
