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"

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YO SOY DEL BUS DOS, DEL BUS DOS, DEL BUS DOS!!!

     Threw out the whole trip with La Ruta Inka we spent about 80% of the time one a bus.  There was always 3 buses and the same people would always go on their same bus; bus uno, bus dos, bus tres.  So after some time a rivalry came about which bus was the best and that was bus dos(obviously the bus I was on).

Welcome to beautiful Guatemala

     A lot of my friends are from Guatemala and have been asking me "when are you going to post about Guatmala?"  Well here it is, beautiful Guatemala.
     La Ruta Inka was ahead of schedule and got to Guatemala a day early so the tourisum department INGUAT(Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo) wasn't ready for us and we had to stay in the community hall in a small town near Los Esclavos.  The next day INGUAT picked us up and took us streaght to the captale, Guatemale City, where we were to attend a ceremony for us in El Palacio Naciona.

     At the ceremony a musical group made of artist from different parts of Guatemala played la marimba for use.  La marimba is the national instrument and has been played by Guatemalans threw out their history.

     In the next part of the ceremony they demonstrated el jugo de la pelota. An ancient game played by the Mayans that is kind of a mix of basketball and soccer.  Read more about the game here.

    The last part of the ceremony was the changing of La Rosa de la Pas(the rose of peace).  The changing of  the rose is a ceremony that beening going on every day since 1996.  The ceremony consists of a white rose that is changed every 24 hours to symbloze the renewal of peace every day.  The rose is normaly change by an every day Guatemalan that has the honer to do it but this day they had honered La Ruta Inka by chouising one of the members of our group to change the rose.

     After the whole ceremony was over we had a chance to get a tour of El Palacio Naciona.  They had some much beautful art there, but here was a huge mural that caught my attention the most.  The mural is about 10 feet high and 30 feet wide and it symbolizes when the Spaniards came to the Americas and concered the Mayans.  It had to be one of the must beauitful things I have ever seen, I wanted it for my house.

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.