A weekend with the monkeys

Last weekend we took an excursion to a town a couple hours away called Catemaco. The town's claim to fame is they have a lot of monkeys and shamans. Needless to say, I heard this and got excited. We stayed overnight in cabins in the jungle. There were trees and birds everywhere, and as we found out a little later, monkeys too! When we first got there we ate lunch then took a tour of the jungle area around the cabins.

^path leading to our cabin^

^the inside of our cabin^

^view from the dock where we stayed^

^giant tree in the jungle around our cabins^

^jungle bridge^

We drank mineral water from a well with cups made out of leaves and got mud masks on our tour. We also met a shaman and got cleansed. He was a cute old man but he was wearing a polo. I was hoping for some more authentic shaman gear, whatever that may be. For all I know, it could be polos. I couldn't exactly follow everything he was saying during the blessing/cleansing but I caught a lot of good things about happiness, love, health, and money for God's child. There were pictures & statues of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadelupe, and prehispanic gods so he had all his bases covered.^mineral water well^

^makeshift cup out of a leaf^

^Amy getting a mud mask^

That night we were awoken multiple times in the night by loud birds and other loud animals that turned out to be monkeys right outside our cabin. In the morning we canoed out to an island that was populated by monkeys and got to float right by the banks where there were four or five monkeys sitting on a branch grooming each other. Then we got massages with eggs. The eggs were supposed to absorb all our negative energy and afterwards we had to throw them into the ocean. Later on in the afternoon, we got mud baths where we were completely covered in mud and had to sit in the sun for 20 minutes while it dried. Then we washed it off, scrubbed really, in the mineral water lagoon. It was cloudy & a little rainy that day so the whole process was very chilly but it was fun and I definitely felt clean afterwards, inside & out!^Amy seemed to sleep fine^

^monkeys^

^canoes we used to get to the monkey island^

Then we started our long journey back to Xalapa. One of the vans always gets pulled over at the military checkpoints. The first time it happened I was in it and we all had to pile out and stand next to a bunch of army guys in full gear with huge guns who just stood there silently looking angry while one of them checked our van. One of my friends was very adament about the random searches and not a fan of all the military police. It is very un-American to just be able to pull over whoever you want and search through all their things without any rhyme or reason, but with all the drug trafficking through their country it seems like desperate times might call for desperate measures.^our sketchy kidnapper van stopped at yet another checkpoint^^military policeman, prepared for anything^