Bonampak.
	We’d been looking forward to visiting the Lacandon jungle for a while. From what we’d read at Na-Bolom in San Cristobal, we realized that the Lacandon we were likely to meet at Lacanja Chansayab would be pretty much entirely Westernised – that even at the less touristed Naha, only a handful still practice the traditions that until fairly recently made them a unique people. The Lacandon avoided permanent contact with the West until the 1950s. Before then they’d lived an ecologically harmonious life deep in the jungle, hunting with bows and arrows and practicing a style of agriculture whereby the same small patch of land can be farmed continually through crop-rotation. These techniques contrast with the mahogany logging & devastating slash & burn agriculture that have lost the Lacandon jungle over two thirds of its total area since the 1950s. The Lacandon also respected & remembered their forebears, leaving offerings and burning incense in the area’s Maya ruins. These days they have been almost entirely converted by American evangelicals, and many have TV satellite dishes in their gardens, propped up on stacks of bricks.      We set out on a long bus journey past traditional thatched Maya huts and army checkpoints. We were dropped off at a place called San Javier – nothing but a few wooden structures and another checkpoint. The soldiers asked us if we were Italian, for some reason, and then pointed us in the direction of Lacanja Chansayab. It was a wide tarmac road, with the beginnings of thick jungle on either side, and only a very occasional passing vehicle. We trudged on through the midday sun for 4km or so, passing the odd lone cyclist and, once, a child in the traditional white Lacandon smock playing at the roadside with a child in Western dress. Eventually we came to two men sitting by a stack of logs – one introduced himself as Alfonso the carpinter. He was friendly and helpful, and recommended a particular campsite run by his friend Martin. After crossing a bridge over a wide river with a waterfall, and passing several Lacandon houses with kids mainly dressed traditionally and adults dressed ‘Western’, we came to the campsite. The setting was lovely, and being tired we opted for a cabin rather than hammocks for the night. The woman there was sympathetic when she saw our red & sweaty faces – ‘walking?’ she asked. The people who run these campsites are very informal when it comes to restaurant services – they only agree to cook for you if it is convenient. Our dinner ended up being tuna and tortillas that we’d brought with us. We took a stroll around the area – there was no ‘center’ to speak of, but just behind our campsite there was a dirt airstrip that we didn’t notice until a tiny 2- or 4-seater plane came thundering down through the trees. There were a couple of small grocery shops, a basketball court, and a little ambulance parked near the airstrip… everything was very dispersed and the jungle meant that you couldn’t see very far in any direction. Outside one shop a young child in a white smock with a huge mop of black hair beamed up at us, looking very much like some kind of cheeky pixie. Back at the campsite an elderly couple pressed some seed necklaces on us – they were very nice, but they were asking outrageous prices. We bought the cheapest and they left us alone. The next morning we had more luck with the food – eggs, beans, tortillas and coffee. The Lacandon have traditionally been very interested in dreams, and I can report that while I stayed there I had exceptionally vivid dreams that I remembered easily in the morning.     So we set out for our monumental hike to the ruins of Bonampak, 12km there and 12 back. By this point we’d realized that our funds were running low, and that if we wanted to see Yaxchilan the next day, we’d have to be very careful with money. So we headed off down the Bonampak road determined not to use any guides, buses or taxis. We were soon deep in the jungle… the road was wide and made of white stones, and for the best part of three hours we saw only 4 or 5 passing vehicles. The vegetation loomed all around, unbelievably dense, verdant and dripping. Each huge tree had so many other plants growing on it that everything melted together into one solid, interwoven mass. Here and there were little trickling streams, that were virtually impossible to see through the undergrowth. After a long period of steady hiking we spied a sign in the distance, and I joked that it probably said we still had 5km to go. Although I was feeling good and strong, I felt that we must surely be getting close to the ruins. Unfortunately the sign said that we still had 4km to go – a bit of a kick in the teeth after my flippant comment. Still, we were enjoying ourselves so we marched on undeterred. Eventually signs saying ‘welcome to Bonampak’ started to appear, although the first of these was probably still about 2km from the site, so I suspect they were put there just to encourage despairing hikers.      We reached the site utterly worn out, and paid our entrance fee. As soon as we emerged into the ruins themselves, we sat on some of the steps and shared a packet of biscuits and water. The ruins were mainly on one side of the central plaza, arranged on a hill opposite where we sat. There were several stelae (flat stone monuments), and everything was coloured black, green and bright orange by damp and lichen. After our rest we began to explore – the most immediately striking thing was the enormous central stela, one of the tallest Maya stelae they’ve found. It was in good condition and had a carving on it of one of Bonampak’s greatest kings. Further up the main bank of stairs was the site’s most famous feature – 3 rooms containing some of the best Mayan murals ever found. The odds of these 3 rooms and their contents having survived intact for so long are incredibly slim, but in spite of restoration work the murals are quite hard to make out in places. Having read about them I was able to pick out various features -  a group of women piercing their tongues in a blood-letting ceremony, and a war-scene with captives who’d been tortured by having their finger-nails pulled out. But what struck me the most was the usual Maya genius in the treatment of human figures. In Mayan art people’s hands are often depicted in beautiful positions, like in Indian dancing. Here very figure’s hands were held in distinctly different, expressive positions… the written commentary outside even going so far as to speculate whether these positions might have been part of some kind of symbolic sign-language. In some parts of the rooms you could really get an idea of hoe stunning the murals would’ve been – patches of bright colour showing through like luminous watercolours, and hieroglyphics painted in stylish calligraphy.      After exploring for a while we began our 12km hike back to the campsite. Needless to say by the time we reached the taxi rank at the entrance gate (3km from home) we were completely exhausted. We sat there for a while, glugging water and exchanging a few words with the Lacandon taxi drivers. Then we continued on towards Lacanja, so tired we were seeing stars. The pain in our legs and feet was enormous – just putting one foot down in front of the other hurt like hell. One of the guys from the taxi area shot past us on his bike, long hair flying in the wind, and shouted ‘adios!’ In spite of the pain we were really chuffed to have done it all on foot, and we collapsed in our cabin feeling a real masochistic sense of achievement.
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