Sky People (22 page)

I looked at my watch. More than two hours had passed since Emiliano left me beside the road. I picked up my journal, rewound the small tape recorder, and listened to Chulin Pop’s story several times, transcribing word for word our conversation about the giants from the sky. Just as I finished writing, Emiliano emerged from the jungle. In one hand he carried the machete and in the other the remains of a dead coral snake.

“Hola, Señora Doctora,”
he said.
“Siento que me haya tomado tanto tiempo.”
He apologized for taking so long. He held the snake upward for my inspection in machismo panache, and then hurled it into the jungle. Without further explanation, he climbed behind the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition. I climbed in beside him. He hung his guide’s license from a chain on the rearview mirror with a plastic Virgin Mary figurine that already swung there. Neither of us murmured a word. We sat in silence for a few seconds and enjoyed the cool air blasting from the air-conditioner. At that moment, it did not matter that a few minutes in this part of the world could mean anything from a half hour to twenty-four. I was on the trail of Stephens and Catherwood, giants, and Sky Men. Nothing was going to dampen my spirit.

“Esta preparada?”
Emiliano asked.

I looked down at my cowboy boots and smiled.
“Sí,”
I replied. “I’m ready.”

In their zeal to reach Palenque, Stephens and Catherwood never ventured to San Cristóbal. It was Christmas Eve when Emiliano and I arrived in San Cristóbal, a city that could only be described as Maya country. Indigenous people dressed in colorful garments of purples, blues, greens, yellows, and reds, were everywhere and made up most of the population on the streets. American hippies from the ’60s drank coffee at outdoor cafes while European travelers crowded the narrow streets. The weather was cool, but, coming from Montana, it was a reprieve from the heat of Guatemala.

The city was a hodgepodge of colonial mansions converted to hotels, coffee shops, Internet cafes, indigenous handicraft stores, amber shops, and small restaurants. I stayed in a downtown hotel and was given the
“El Presidente
Suite.” It was the only room in the entire hotel with windows. At best it was a one-star hotel, but it was a good location, less than a block from the town square and the heart of the city.

Emiliano and I said our goodbyes over coffee at one of the small outdoor cafes and then he left, to begin his trip home to Guatemala. He wanted to be with his family by Christmas morning. I unpacked and after dinner in my room I fell asleep.

I spent the next four days in San Cristóbal, exploring three sites, and then headed for Oaxaca City, a nine-hour drive, passing through fourteen toll booths and twelve military checkpoints. The topography varied from extreme inclines, long curvy highways, and fertile river valleys. Hillsides peppered with Saguaro cactus and palm trees, fields of agave under cultivation on steep hillsides, and small tequila distilleries were interspersed throughout the drive. In Oaxaca City I stayed in a former convent that had been converted to a five-star hotel. I used this location to visit several ancient Zapotec sites. Everywhere I went, from the small villagers to the ancient cities, I collected stories from the local people about Sky Gods, aliens, and UFOs.

After two weeks in San Cristóbal and Oaxaca City, I retraced my steps to continue my plan to follow in Stephens and Catherwood footsteps. The highway between San Cristóbal and Palenque was a narrow, mountain road littered with 210
topes
(speed bumps) making the 125-mile trip rather miserable. The pine forests appeared as though they might have during Stephens’s day, but it was not long before the landscape changed. Houses and cornfields were interspersed throughout the region where the trees had been cut for planting. On more than one occasion children ran out as the vehicle approached and held a rope across the highway, asking for a “donation” for the Church. Stopping each time and “donating” a few pesos along with lollipops, cookies, and buffalo jerky brought glee to the faces of the Maya children but made the trip even longer.

The further my driver and I drove into the mountains of the Chiapas, the poorer the settlements became. This area was also well known for its problems with smuggling. Both drugs and illegal immigrants poured over the border from Guatemala into Mexico. For all of these reasons there was a very large Mexican military presence in the region. We were stopped at several
military checkpoints but all they wanted to know was where we were coming from and where we were going. Some searched our vehicle, opening suitcases. One copied the name on my passport. In every case, I found the young soldiers to be extremely courteous and almost apologetic for the inconvenience they were creating.

We stopped in Ocosingo briefly as we made a detour to visit the ancient city Toniná. Modern-day Ocosingo was unlike the beautiful, peaceful town described by Stephens, but was a dirty, dusty town with road construction everywhere. We stopped briefly at the plaza. Stephens described a large Ceiba tree in the center of the square, but it was gone. They visited Toniná in 1840 on their way to Palenque. We pulled off the main highway leading toward Palenque and followed the route to Toniná, which was about eight miles from town. After Toniná, we continued our journey to Palenque encountering one switchback after another, as we descended into a lush, jungle with waterfalls and streams. We arrived in Palenque town by nightfall. That night my driver and I had dinner together. He planned to return home to San Cristóbal the next day.

After twenty-eight days in Palenque, it was Stephens’s intention to continue his explorations into the Yucatan. They stopped in Merida, home to 20,000 people—a far cry from the million people who inhabited the present-day city. After a time of rest, the explorers set out for Uxmal. Catherwood and Stephens made one trip to the ancient city, but by the next morning Catherwood had another violent attack of fever and Stephens became extremely concerned for his health. He made immediate plans to leave Mexico. On July 31 they arrived in New York City, three days shy of ten months.

After the success of Stephens’s first book,
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán
, and he and Catherwood’s unquenched desire to explore the Yucatan, the two adventurers decided to return to Mexico. For their second trip, Stephens and Catherwood sailed from New York on October 9, 1841. They were joined on that voyage by Dr. Samuel Cabot, a
Boston surgeon and amateur ornithologist. On October 27, they lay anchor off the coast of Sisal, the port city of Merida. During their second expedition they visited nearly thirty ancient sites. On May 18, 1842, Stephens and Catherwood left Mexico, arriving in New York on June 17, 1842. It was to be their last trip to Mesoamerica.

From 2003 to 2010, I made multiple trips to Mesoamerica—fourteen in all—often staying a month or more. After my retirement from Montana State University I was freer to spend more time in exploration of the sites and talking with the local people. I explored all of the ancient sites visited by the explorers. The stories in this section, unlike the stories in the previous three, take place over an eight-year period. You will note that during these eight years I often employed different drivers/guides to accompany me.

During my travels in Mexico, I made multiple trips to most of the sites visited by Stephens and Catherwood, always discovering something new along the way and collecting more stories. The narratives in this section are not in chronological order, but are grouped according to location.

Although the stories collected for this book ended in 2010, I have continued my search among the Maya. What began as a teenager’s dream became a passion. It was there, among the ancient ruins of the Maya, that my life changed significantly. It was in Mexico that I heard some of the most remarkable UFO encounters of my travels. In this section, I share many of those stories.

C
asa Na Bolom, House of the Jaguar, was the home of archeologist Frans Blom, a French archeologist, and his wife, Gertrude, a documentary photographer, journalist, and environmental pioneer. The house is located in San Cristóbal and today operates as a hotel, museum, and research center operated by the Asociación Cultural Na Bolom, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of the Lacandon Maya and the Chiapas rainforest. The house was purchased in 1951 by the couple, who met by chance in 1943 on a remote airstrip in the Lacandon rainforest, which stretches along the Mexico-Guatemala border. Both were pursuing their passions. His was the ancient Maya. Hers was anthropology and the Lacandon Indians, a remote group descended directly from the ancient Maya
.

The Lacandon are the only Maya who managed to escape Spanish colonization. They lived so far into the dense jungle that the Spaniards could not penetrate the vegetation and never found them. They still live the old way, far removed from non-indigenous cultures. They wear white, gown-like, unshaped clothing that falls between their knees and ankles. Their long, flowing, black hair distinguishes them from other indigenous people in Mexico, who have adopted the Western male way of dressing. They still perform the ancient ceremonies of their people
.

Today Casa Na Bolom is packed full of the Bloms’ work, including photographs, archaeological finds, a 9,000-volume library devoted to the indigenous people, and three magical organic
gardens. Gertrude, who passed in 1993, remained an advocate for the Lacandon Maya and worked to protect them and their way of life long after her husband died in 1963
.

At Casa Na Bolom I happened to meet a Lacandon Maya and his son who told me that extraterrestrials still walk freely on their land. They call them the
Tuhohani,
the people from the stars
.

On Christmas morning, I met Benito, my new driver/guide, at the San Cristóbal Hotel restaurant for breakfast to outline our itinerary over the next two weeks. I had been in contact with Benito prior to leaving Montana. He was a self-identified Mestizo: part Mixtec, part Mexican. Benito was a university graduate and a teacher. He earned extra money during holidays and summers by escorting tourists around the region. He had sent me a photo of himself via e-mail, so I recognized him the moment he walked into the restaurant. He looked like a miniature cowboy from the top of his black cowboy hat to the tip of his snake-skin, Western boots. I estimated that he stood no more than an inch or two more than five feet tall, but his boots made him appear taller than he really was. He could have easily passed for thirty-something, although he admitted to celebrating his 50th birthday only three days earlier. His straight, black hair was parted in the middle and framed his round, brown face, which was accentuated with a perpetual smile. He wore black jeans, a starched, short-sleeved white shirt, and a large gold watch with too many dials to count. He said it was a gift from his wife and, although it no longer worked, he wore it as a symbol of their life together.

On Christmas evening, Benito, who lived with his aging parents, invited me to join his family for dinner. His daughter, Maria, and son, Jaime, were home from the university where Maria was studying to be a teacher and Jaime was studying engineering. That night, I learned that Benito was a widower. His wife died of tuberculosis shortly after Maria’s birth. She was only twenty-nine. A candle-lit mantle in the lounge displayed numerous photos of her. From the moment I met him, I knew that I had made a wise choice. Benito was a respectful family man and we shared common interests; he was a teacher and had also encountered
UFOs several times in his lifetime. We would spend the next two weeks together exploring San Cristóbal and Oaxaca before backtracking to Palenque.

The day after Christmas was a “down day” for me. I needed rest from the non-stop travel, and being alone allowed me to explore the indigenous city alone. Located at a height of almost 7,200 feet, San Cristóbal is the crown jewel of the state of Chiapas. Surrounded by forests of pine and oak, the city has a colonial atmosphere, with buildings painted in shades of pastel yellow, orange, blue, and purple. The narrow cobblestone streets with whitewashed walls and tree-filled plazas made it easy to walk around the city. The
Zocalo
, the main square, was the focal meeting place for locals and tourists. Live music, food stalls, street performances, indigenous women and children selling hand-woven bracelets, belts, and shawls, was an evening event.

Numerous indigenous villages, extending deep into the mountains surrounding the city, were central for doing business and obtaining outside supplies. Ten Mayan dialects were spoken in the highland communities surrounding San Cristóbal. The villages, with their own identity, were an anthropologist’s textbook with traditions dating back to pre-Conquest times. Each village had its own unique laws, dress codes with respect to colors, and designs, crafts, languages, and patron saints. For example, people did not marry outside their community, and if they did, they were expelled from their communities. Independent travelers, especially females, were uncommon in these villages and were looked upon with suspicion.

The day after Christmas, Benito drove me to the Maya Medicine Museum and Casa Na Bolom. The Maya Medicine Museum was created by the Council of Traditional Healers and Midwives of Chiapas to preserve their work and wisdom. It is located on the grounds of Casa Na Bolom. A lack of Western medicine in the rural highlands of southern Chiapas led to a revival of Maya herbal remedies and the knowledge of local plants and their uses for healing. In response, the museum invited local shamans to document and disseminate their knowledge and
its related healing practices. Five halls in the colonial mansion were dedicated to each of the five main areas of Mayan medicine: herbs, pulsing, bone setting, mountain praying, and midwifery. Five types of traditional healers:
herbalistas
(herbalists),
parteras
(midwives),
hueseros
(those who work with bones),
pulseros
(pulse readers), and
rezadoros
(those who pray) operated out of the museum. An on-site pharmacy of hundreds of herbal medicines, dried for use in teas as well as combined as tinctures and salves, were available for purchase.