Many of our Eco-tours in Chiapas take people to the Lacandon jungle, but few visitors know the story of the biggest rainforest in the country, and of its inhabitants, the Lacandon Mayas.

We always suggest travellers to visit the Na Bolom Museum in San Cristobal before heading to the jungle, to get some information about the region they are going to visit. However, if you do not have the chance to go to the museum, you can read a brief excerpt of the jungle’s history below.

Since the end of the 18th Century, the Lacandon Maya have lived in the Lacandon rain forest. Until the 1920’s the forest was virtually impenetrable, allowing their culture, whose very heart and spiritual life is based on the rain forest and everything that exists within it, to develop in near isolation.

But today the rain forest is changing and so are the Lacandones - at times because they have to, at times because they want to.

In the 1950’s the Mexican government realized that the Lacandon rain forest offered many valuable natural resources, and in order to establish better political and social control, they began building roads into the forest. For example, the road to the ruins of Bonampak was just completed in 1997.

Roads have made the rain forest more accessible to tourists, the military, anthropologists, journalists and missionaries, who bring with them new ideas and ideologies. These views affect the traditional social, economic, and religious structures of the Lacandones.

From the 1950’s the government opened the forest to colonization as a solution to land scarcity in the highlands of Chiapas and as a result other indigenous groups (Choles, Tzeltales and Tzotziles) have settled there with more and more arriving each day.

To support their families they farm using methods which are not suited to rain forest soil and some are working the land which by government decree belongs to the Lacandones. This has created tension between the various indigenous groups.

With intensive logging, slash and burn farming and cattle ranching, over 80% of the Lacandon forest has been destroyed. In efforts to preserve what remains, the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve - in which the community of Lacanja-Chansayab is located - was established in 1978.

Today also the people of Naha are exploring the possibility of developing an ecological reserve.

For the Lacandones the repercussions of deforestation are very serious, as the basis of their existence, culture and spirituality lies in the forest. Their spiritual leader - Chan Kin Viejo from Naha - died in 1996. He was the keeper of the Lacandon ancient traditions, a vital part of which was lost upon his death. Some of his sons remember the stories told by their father, and continue practicing some of the traditions.

All these changes have led the Lacandones to think of ways to balance their ancient traditions with the influences from outside. Change is within any culture and we ourselves are a product of change. We accept and reject change on a daily basis. The same is true for the Lacandones. Where the changes will lead them is uncertain, but the richness of their culture is not lost.

Barbara and I just had a coffee and a chat with an indigenous lady here in San Cristobal de las Casas. It was quite a conversation.

We were talking about where we come from, being Scotland for me, and it was quickly apparent she had no idea Scotland existed let alone where it was.

I could understand this, it’s a small country after all and I have had similar discussions with people even in Europe, so I continued to say it was a part of the United Kingdom, just north of England. Nothing.

Ok, it is near France. Nothing. It’s in Europe (kind of). And this is when the penny dropped. This lady had no idea, absolutely no idea where and what Europe was.

It transpired not only was she unaware of Europe, she pretty much had no idea of where other countries and continents were like China or Russia or Africa.

On top of this; she thought that all of the countries out there were effectively governed by the US and George Bush. Although she may not be completely off the mark on that one, she was quite surprised, and I think pleased, to hear that we all have our own governments.

I opened up a map of the world on my laptop; showing her where Mexico was then the US, South America, across the ocean to Europe, then Africa, Asia and Australia.

It was quite something seeing someone amazed by the world in which we live in. I never expected her to have a vast knowledge of the world, but to not be aware that a land exists across an ocean was one that caught me by surprise.

It’s one of those conversations that reinforces just how far we have to come in terms of education in the world. Maybe an organisation whose purpose is to install a world map in every town would be a good idea. The ideal of everyone getting an education is far off, so something small may be a good step.

Mind you; if you read the following, which many of you will already be aware of, I probably shouldn’t be so surprised by a lack of geographical knowledge in the world. Study: Geography Greek to young Americans

The best part of the above link is the following line: “On the positive side, the study noted, seven in 10 young Americans correctly located China on a map”. Now this would have been quite amusing if it was sarcasm. Well done to those two thirds.

I heard this phrase again recently on a tour in Chiapas, Mexico, and it filled me with the usual amount of amusement and bewilderment that people seem so certain of their future that they can plan trips when they retire.

Without trying to come across too pessimistic or cynical about life; you can never be sure whether you will even make retirement age let alone be fit enough to enjoy the kind of trips you think about when you are young and able bodied. By the way; I attach no specific age to ‘young’.

The trip that was being discussed was one to the Northern Territories in Australia. Now, having been there and enjoyed it immensely, I can hardly think of a worst place to be if your health is not in good shape. It’s extremely hot and humid and the fun aspect is going trekking and exploring in the National Parks. I was shattered doing that at 25 let alone 65+.

If you have a trip in mind, do it. Don’t wait and put things off to some magical point in the future. Life is just not set up to be as certain as that. And don’t give me any nonsense about kids and responsibilities; traveling is a great education for kids, in my opinion it far surpasses what they will learn in school, and your job/career is simply not good enough to stop you doing what you want in life. Just my view, obviously.

Oh; if you are retired and want to go traveling, get stuck in.

(photo taken from the BBC Website)

Having been learning Spanish for a couple of months now I feel like I have a reasonable grasp of the basics and seem to be communicating quite well.

Yesterday however, pushed my knowledge of Spanish to the limit as I helped out a friend here in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, who organises group sessions with some local kids to help them with their English and school homework.

Firstly, I have never claimed to be an expert in the arts, language or grammar and am only now getting to grips with words like ‘preposition’ and ‘infinitive’ (damn the UK education system), so I’m not exactly well placed as a language teacher.

Secondly, my Spanish is of a level where even trying to explain simple things can be very challenging, but you have to give these things a go.

I spent most of my time with a boy called Victor, pictured above with me in mid confusing explanation, who is very bright but really quite shy, especially with the other kids in the group. We seemed to get on pretty well though and he bombarded me with questions in rapid machine gun like Spanish.

The main task was to try to help him correct mistakes in a presentation he has to give in English, in front of his class. It was a great experience!

I learned odd words such as ‘canicas’ (marbles) and a useful one in ‘juntar’ (to join), the latter being an effort to get him to connect sentences instead of saying really short ones, kind of like my Spanish.

The benefit beyond learning more Spanish and an ‘in the deep end’ lesson on how hard it is to teach, is as my friend put it; ’showing the kids that tourists are more than just people who turn up for a while, buy things and go home, but are people who care and can help the community’.

I advise anyone with even a basic grasp of another language to seek out these kinds of opportunities, either here in San Cristobal or wherever you travel to. How often will the word ‘marble’ come up in a normal class?

For information on helping here in San Cristobal check out the Chiapas Childrens Project.

I am by no means an accomplished diver, but I have done my PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water certifications in Thailand in 2004, and enjoyed some great diving in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in 2005. Possibly my two favourite dives over that time were night dives as they seemed to add an extra air of excitement and mystery.

Today however, I have found a different type of diving that I don’t think any of my ocean dives can parallel. Now, I haven’t been diving for over a year, so the buzz that was felt at the time has well and truly gone, but the Cenote Diving I did today in Tulum, Mexico was simply magical.

Cenotes are an underground river system containing fresh water (and saline deeper down, read on for more) that has been filtered threw limestone and so provides amazing visibility well beyond that found in the ocean. The formations, formed over millions of years, provide the possibility of cavern and cave diving that gives you a feeling of being in outer space or on another world with only the air bubbles being there to remind you that you are in water. Magic or no magic, breathing is a must.

As cave diving can only be done by experts, I stuck with the cavern diving, the main difference being that cavern diving has the entrance to the Cenote relatively close by whereas cave diving can mean the entrance/exit being much farther away and so more dangerous should anything go wrong. Overall I did two dives, one at the Grand Cenote and the other at La Calavera (The Skull), or more ominously named, The Temple of Doom!

The Grand Cenote; well, this was described to me as like being in an underwater cathedral, and my instructor wasn’t lying. The beautiful white limestone walls along with the formations gives the feeling of flooding a duomo in Italy, jumping in through the dome and having a good swim about. It is quite the opposite to what you may think would be a claustrophobic experience.

There are a couple of more technical parts however where you do have the cavern walls all round you with little space to get through so does require good buoyancy control to not hit your tank on the formations. The dive went down to 10 meters at it’s deepest point and lasted 38 minutes.

The Temple of Doom; the initial jump in to the water, which is from 3/4 meters, with the full scuba gear on may be a little daunting, but it’s great fun. Getting out is a little harder. This Cenote is much darker and more mysterious than the Grand Cenote and really makes you feel like an explorer.

The guys in the dive shop also refer to this place as LSD due to the halocline or mixing zone, which is the layer where the fresh and saline waters meet which makes your vision go totally blurred. It is a very weird experience! The dive went down to 19 meters at its deepest point and lasted 33 minutes.

With both dives, the visibility is truly astounding. Throughout the dives your interest switches from what is close by, the formations, stalagmites and stalactites back to the glow of the entrance to the Cenote, which when viewed from a distance in the darker areas of the cavern provides an amazing contrast and you just can’t help to stop and stare.

It is also quite amusing to see the snorklers, fools don’t know what they are missing, swimming around on the surface. Although you do feel like a bit of a pervert hiding under the water watching girls in bikinis swimming around. Not that I was looking, of course.

On a more serious note, I do have concerns with Cenote diving. They are nothing to do with fear for myself or anyone diving there, more concerns for the formations that if destroyed have no way to be regenerated. There are points in either dive where you could easily damage the formations and having been diving with others who wave their arms around like they are trying to hail a taxi I would be quite concerned as to the damage they could cause to these wonderful places.

I feel more should be done to control who dives here, with recent dives being a must and preferably Advanced Open Water certified. Unfortunately, the dives are open to anyone who has done their Open Water, I wasn’t even asked to prove I was certified, and no one seems to care when you did your last dive.

Despite my concerns, this was a fantastic experience and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who loves to dive and would like to try something different. As with a reef, just be careful and respect your surroundings. And remember, don’t put on any sun block or mosquito repellent before getting in to the water! Do that when you get out, you’ll need it at La Calavera, the mosquitoes are rampant! Happy diving.

Having researched a bit further, we have put together an Ocean and Cenote diving package with a diving centre in Tulum that seems to be concerned about environmental conservation and safety… try it yourself!