My favorite blog posting from my backpacking trip through Central American with La Ruta Inka.

           In the past few days La Ruta Inka facebook page has been reposting some of my images.  I thought it would be cool to pick out my favorite blog postings and re share them with everyone.  So here they are; in order by date:

1. "First meeting with a tribe"

2. "The art of extracting balsamo"

3. "Age old festival in El Salvador"

4. "The Maya juego de la pelota or ballgame"

5. "Assimilation of Christianity and Mayan religion"

6. "Finally Tikal, Guatemala"

Diego Correal Imagery

(401)-855-3800

www.diegocorrealimagery.com

www.facebook.com/pages/diego-correal-imagery/186381808069931

twitter.com/dcorreal

instagram.com/dcimagery

Travel Photograph Wednesday - El Salvador

La Peña Rajada, El Salvador.

Back in 2010 I camped on the highest point in El Salvador and this was the view at sunrise. 

The Maya juego de la pelota or ballgame

      The Mayas had a ball game consisting of two teams where the team members had to get a very hard ball that was about 8 pounds threw a ring to score.  The trick was that the only way the players could touch the ball was with their forearm, chest, thigh, and they could not let the ball hit the ground.  But that wasn't the crazy part about the game, at the end of the game one of the teams was sacrificed.  Archaeologist don't know if it was the winning team or the loosing team that had to die. 

      Below is a field located in the ruins of Copan in El Salvador where the game was played .  If you look on the left just where the slanted wall meets the straight wall, there's a circle, that was the goal and if you look right across to the other side you can see the other goal. 

     When I was in Guatemala with La Ruta Inka we had the chance to watch a reenactment of the ceremony before the game and watch the game being played.  I found this cool site where you too can watch the game being played and find out more information about the game(click here).  In the video they show the ball rolling on the ground but every where I was told about the game I was told the ball couldn't hit the ground.  

     The image below is a painting by T. Rutledge the defeat of the Lords of the Underworld by the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque.  The scene is one of Creation: The head of the Hero Twins' father, the Sun God, must pass through the Goal Ring, which represents the Dart Rift in the Milk Way.  Once this occurs, the world comes into being.  The Maya saw Creation as an ongoing event that depends upon the interaction between men and Gods.  For the Maya, Creation was not a singular "event" that occurred in the past, and they held the belief that if men and Gods fail to keep the game going, the ball will stop rolling and this ongoing Creation will halt.

Age old festival in El Salvador

    
      When I was in El Salvador with La Ruta Inka I had the chance to witness a magnificent festival.  This festival has been going on between two towns since El Salvador was a colony of Spain.  All the people of one town get the statue of thier saint, San Christobal and hike up a montant to a cave where they camp over night.  The next day the mayor or town leader  puts San Christobal on their back and the whole group hikes back down to the other town.

    At the other town the town's people are lined up waiting with a statue of their saint, San Lucas, for San Christobal to arrive with his people.  Once the two saints get closer a group of people from both towns are dressed up in costumes that represent their Indian and Spanish ancestors start to dance with machetea in the middle of the main street as San Christobal comes into town. 

      The saints are carried buy town leaders and are brought little by little toward each other.  This represents when both the saints met for the very first time to unite both towns.  As they are carried toward each other they stop three times and are tilted forward signifying the three times they greeted each other on their first meeting.

  

      At the last tilt or greeting the crowd that is made up of people from both towns cheer and trow confetti.  After all the cheering, all the people line up in two lines and greet each other, one at a time like two high school teams would do after a game here in the states.  This greet consists of both participants holding each others right hands like a hand shake and raising them up to their foreheads.

     Once every one has greeted each other they walk together to the center of the town and dance traditional dances, celebrate their union, and eat typical foods.

The art of extracting balsamo

                   While I was in El Salvador with La Ruta Inka the department of tourisum took us to a town that is one of the major exporterters of balsamo in the world.  Balsamo is the sap/oil that comes form a tree, that is used for medicine, chap stick, hair products, and has many other functions.
                  The balsamo farm that we were tooken to was a farm that used very old tecenics to extra the sap and keeps the tree heathy for futrure use.  The way they collect the sap is by climbing up the tree, by wrapping a rope around their hands and the tree to pulling them selfs up it.  When they are up in the tree they burn the top layer of the bark to make the tree extract a sap that it uses to heal its self.  By waving their hat they control what parts of the tree the fire burns.  After they have the area brunt and it's extracting the sap the place rags in that area.  After a few days of the rags soking in the sap they collect them all up and take them to the next process.

                   The reason they use this process is because by burning the bark they are able to let the tree heel its self up and then after a year or so they can do the process again unlike the other way of just cutting the trees down for the sap.

           The next step is to collect all the rags with the sap and place them into a cloth bag that they put into a pulley/lever system.  They pour boiling hot water over the bag and use the pulley/lever system to drain all the water and oil out of the rags.  Once it is all collected the separate the balsamo oil from the water and bottle it up for sale.

Day full of knowledge in El Salvador

                       After having to sleep in the highest point of El Salvador Ministerio de Turismo de El Salvador or the department of tourism took us to La Palma where we went to a museum to seen the history of the Salvadoran currency, from the coffee bean  to the US dollar.  After the museum they had a a huge dinner set up for us that included fireworks.  Once we were done with the awesome dinner they took us to a military base where we were going to camp for the night.  The next day we were woken up by the base's military band, they played while we ate breakfast and pack our things to get ready for a long day.

             The first place the department of tourism took us was to a small town that is one of the largest exporters of balsamo.  As soon as we got off the buses we were greeted by the children of the town and another band playing for us.   Next they had a demandstrtion on how the get the balsamo oil.  Balsamo is the main ingredient in conditioner and is also used for medicines, I will post the whole proses in a later posting(Click here to read about balsamo).  After the demonstration we went to a balsamo farm and showed us how they extract the oils from the trees and some of us had a chance to try it for our selfs.

     

             We had learned a ton about balsamo and we were on the rode again.  The next stop was a small town where we had the honer to be a part and witness a great festival that the locals they have had since when the Spaniards had colonized El Salvador.  To read about this festival click here.