San Cristóbal de las Casas is one of Mexico's most beautiful and popular cities. Nestled in the mountains of Chiapas and replete with fantastic colonial architecture, San Cristóbal is a focal point for surrounding Mayan communities. Learn more in this guide.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Mayan village of San Juan Chamula is a bastion of archaic philosophy and pre-Hispanic lore. Here the old gods are alive and well, merely clothed in the robes of saints. The Maya are a cunning bunch, I realised, to have avoided assimilation for so many centuries.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Dense, exuberant rainforest shrouds this immense metropolis, abandoned for unknown reasons over a millennia ago. A sense of the lost, grandiose world of the ancient Mayans lingers in this city’s ruined plazas. Palenque is a testament to Mesoamerican civilisation at its height.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
A collection of images gathered in the early morning light of Palenque ruins, southern Mexico. This quintessential site features both heavily restored monumental architecture - pyramids, temples and observatories - and far less coherent structures barely recovered from the rainforest environs.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The lowlands of Chiapas, southern Mexico, are home to some of the most entrancing forests in the country. Dense vegetation, streams, waterfalls and exuberant plant life occupy the region, also home to haunting ancient ruins. This was clip was shot in the famous Mayan site of Palenque.
Interamericana is an intrepid new travel blog about the people and places surrounding the Carretera Interamericana - a 6000 kilometre stretch of highway that links Mexico and the seven nations of Central America. Created by guidebook writer and journalist Richard Arghiris, Interamericana combines photography, video and the best in alternative travel writing.
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Granada’s international poetry festival kicked off yesterday, 14th February 2010, with a belting set from Katia Cardenal. Performing at the Plaza Independencia, Katia sang a mixture of rousing folk songs and revolutionary ballads, including a superb homage to the Miskito people of the Atlantic coast (2nd song featured, actually in the Miskito language). Turn up the volume, pour yourself a rum, kick back and enjoy…
The land is scorched and broken. Piles of dark volcanic rubble litter the scene, yet to be properly eroded by sun, wind and rain. Years from now, these rocks will be transformed into fine, fertile silt. But for today, dead, black lava fields cling to the slopes like some monstrous reptilian hide – coarse, inscrutable, alien…
New Year’s Eve in Nicaragua is celebrated with all the incendiary zeal befitting one of the world’s most volcanic and tempestuous nations. Fire-crackers are ignited en-masse. A frenzy of explosions ricochets across the city. A grotesque effigy symbolizing the passing year is paraded through the streets and burned. These are some of the scenes depicted in this short video.
Las Isletas (The Little Islands) are one of Granada’s principal attractions. An archipelago of some 354 jewel-like islets scattered over the surface of Lake Nicaragua, they lure scores of visitors daily. This video was shot on the northern side of the island chain, where we saw a mixture of upscale holiday homes and other more natural settings strewn with lilies and vegetation…
Catholic sentiments reach a fervent peak in Nicaragua during the Purísima, a festival entirely devoted to the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Lasting from late November to 8th December, the Purísima is a protracted celebration involving various family and church gatherings, as well as spirited street parties. Such is the scene depicted in this short film…
From late September to early December, the otherwise sleepy town of Masaya – Nicaragua’s bastion of folklore and indigenous traditions – comes alive with countless animated events, including the shambolic procession of El Torovenado, filmed here. This anarchic spectacle is the very embodiment of Nicaraguan character…
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Monday, October 5, 2009
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