mercredi 1 septembre 2010

No Hoch 2

No Hoch, Xel Ha, Coba village and even Chichen Itza (as administrators for the government) are all part of "Alltournative Imagenative" born in February 2001 from the fusion of the communities, as an ecological, creative and sustainable project that favored an economic development and created both educational opportunities and employment for the people in the communities, using clean and alternative sources.
The people we met there were happy and proud of their accomplishments.

This is the Unimog, a monster of a truck. It bounces on that rocky road for maybe 5 or 6 minutes that feel like an eternity. You sit on narrow unpadded lateral seats holding on to a center railing in the box. My neighbour told me do as if you are riding a horse? That I never did so I did what I could







The cenote was a refreshing experience. We spent the better part of one hour swimming through a maze of caverns amongst bats and other creatures and watching not to hit stalagtites nor stalagmites. Here I am with my grandson and my daughter Nadia. We had floating vests so we only had to propel ourselves without worrying about floating, much less exhausting.








In another cenote we gathered in a circle around a Mayan "priest" for a small prayer ceremony in honor of the Rain and Sun gods. It was very simple and even moving as we were given some copa and later invited to participate through putting our copa pinch in the copa burner and then blessed with it. Everybody, even the three adolescents in the group were very respectful. Here we could not swim but had to walk barefoot along the path partly water, wood and rocks. Those about 100 feet almost killed me, I have fragile feet.




We rode bicycles to the tyroleans. The bike path was a bit rough with some small hills along the way. Took about thirty minutes round trip. A teen age girl stopped at the top of a hill and almost caused a pile up...but we all braked on time without spill.





That was the No Hoch experience. Not easy but not as extreme as it may look. I would do it again...but with beach shoes this time and pad my behind for the Unimog ride.
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