Tour...and Relax

So began a week of tourism at a blistering pace, covering a large proportion of Belize from the sheltered environment of the tinted windows of a rented 4WD, exiting occasionally to engage in activities and to eat and sleep. Boat rides to offshore tiny islands, rope swinging over rivers, swimming through caves by the light of headtorches, watching thunderstorms across the bay from the shelter of a top floor bar and general abuse of our vehicle on the long and winding dirt roads ensued.

By the time that Tim (whose photos I have stolen and am displaying above; thanks very much for that) flew from belize city airport to return to the world of work in the UK (a world that now felt more or less completely alien), I was feeling decidedly anti-social and in need of some alone time; it is mildly surprising to me that I have steadly become more averse to constant contact with others over the period of weeks, and certainly accentuates the point that I would find it very difficult to travel for any great length of time with the same group of people, finding great value in personal space and solitary time.

Thus I found myself crossing the border between Belize and Guatemala feeling strangely welcomed by the prevolence of Spanish, which had been steadily rotting in the back of my mind, and the general chaos and dirtyness of what seemed to be a slightly more genuine slice of Latin America. Parting company with the Whitaker sisters after a fairly gruelling overnight bus ride to Guatemala City, I bumped the hours away on a chicken bus to Quetzaltenango (fortunately also known as Xela) with no particular plan other than to drop a book off with a fellow ex-teacher before heading on to the Promised Land of El Salvador.

After a ride from a very amiable but completely inept taxi driver to the seeming unknown location of ex-teacher Abi (despite assuring me that he knew the spot right up to the point where we drove away from the curb) and meeting a very friendly and welcoming bunch upon arrival at said mystery location, it became abundantly clear to me that for the first time in a while, I really wanted to put my feet up and stew in one place for a while, and hence became the latest victim in the spider web that is Xela, where people come to stay for a couple of
days and wake up one day to find that months have passed.

Xela
29th July 2009

Gwan Snarklin

The Belizian Cayes, and in particular Caye Caulker, did everything that they could to cultivate and sustain the Caribbean stereotype. Life never raised above a saunter, everything was haphazardly contructed of misaligned wood and one of the girls in our party was duly informed by local pedestrians that she was "wahkin like a champion".

Inadvertantly pursuing the textbook experience further, we booked onto a snorkelling trip towards the outer reef provided by Ragamuffin Tours. The twenty or so tourists that gathered at the alloted departure time, ranging in skin palette from light brown to pink were split into two groups, each of which were dispatched to a 40ft wooden sailing boat. Our bright red vessel for the day, the Ragga Queen, was helmed by Captain Raf who gave the sort of safety briefing that would start convusions in UK health and safety exectives and shortly afterwards we motored away from the jetty.

Within minutes the Captain turned on the stereo, surprisingly to reveal that the music of choice was...reggae. "Does anybody nut like de reggae?" he asked the assembled passengers. No response was elicited. "Well den," he continued, "if nuhbody like it, tell meh and I turn it up."

The whole experience turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Over the course of the day we were dropped into three different uncrowded spots, allowing us to glide among shoals of fish that seemed completely indifferent to our existence, nurse sharks that snaked over the shallow bottom hunting out unfortunate fish and scrapping unashamedly with one another for the remains some feet away from us, manta rays, a solitary manatee (much to the delight of our female contingent, and the disgust of Tim, who was looking the other way at the time) that mournfully flapped off into the distant underwater twilight, and a colourful and strange array of coral.

The abundence and variety of marine life was astounding, especially for a place where the through traffic of unskilled snorkellers must have been enormous, and the potential for destruction and exploitation of the natural resources huge. Without ever seeming uptight, the staff on the tour gently sheparded us between and around locations without relenting to the measures that seem to be repeatedly resorted to in order to sate tourist greed; there was no evidence of infrastructre around the reef, or of littering. It also never seemed that we were being herded along a well trodden route, recipients of a fairly sanitized and templated tour, the presence of our fellow boat passengers never being felt as overbearing and the quantities of dive boats at sites never exceeding a couple.

Somewhat sun fried and giggly from the strong rum punch that we'd been supplied with and steadily drowning in after the last dive, we arrived under sail to the jetty from whence we came. All drunken promises to exact a rampage upon the town in the evening rapidly disintegrated as the effects of a full day in tropical sun and the booze set in, sending us to our beds in our small, lopsided wooden shacks at a disgracefully early hour.

Caye Caulker, Belize
18th July 2009

An Executive Means of Travel

As we got further from the Mexican border, the tension in my shoulders started to ease, even though it would turn out to be some days before I would let my guard down and start trusting locals again. Via a blissfully simple entry into Belize we rattled along a baked tarmac road to the dusty bus station of Corozal. Realising simultaneously that everyone spoke English and that we had an extra hour to hand due to the time difference, everything suddenly became very possible and we realised that we could be on the tiny island of Caye Caulker to meet our friends within a day.

Quickly compromising economy, we decided to fly the fifty miles or so to the island instead of waiting for the water taxi the next day, and were shuttled in a battered car that had pretensions as a taxi to the local airstrip, where a light aircraft stood waiting by the hut that constituted a waiting lounge. "Looks like yeh plane is reddeh" the taxi driver said, as we dumped our bags by the side of the plane and paid the price or our urgency. Within minutes we were crammed behind the pilot, the only passengers on board and feeling like royalty to have our own aircraft laid on for us. These feelings quicly evaporated, however, as the aircraft bumped along the runway and shook itself into the sky causing one of the other passenger seats to worryingly crashed sideways onto the floor.


The aircraft quickly rose, and the ground dropped away behind us to reveal electric blue water thinly covering the black outline of coral reef, dark patches of cloud sliding across the surface of the water. As we watched tiny boats below us draw white trails out behind them and small islands come and go hundreds of metres below, Mexico already seemed like a long way away. We landed in nearby San Pedro after a fairly ridiculous twenty minutes to change planes, joining a mixed group of Belizians, ex-pats and tourists and, after handing in our seemingly pointless giant red laminated cards bearing only the information "BOARDING CARD", rapidly took off and passed the last leg of the journey which ended on a bumpy landing on the Caye Caulker airstrip. The only two to get off the plane, we shuffled down the sand track to the "arrivals lounge", basically standing outside a shack, until our luggage was untangled from the aircraft and trolleyed to us. It was, all in all, the closest impression of a commercial airline infrastructure that I have ever seen.

Exiting the airport by way of a white sand path, we soon encountered a huge Belizian lady proudly driving a golf cart, the local laternative to standard vehicles and taxis. Thus we found ourselves, some four hours out of Mexico, facing backwards down a sandy Carribean road bordered by brightly painted wooden stilted buildings and clinging to our possesions while our driver cheerfully swung the golf cart around the twists and turns of the island, taking us closer to what I could already feel would be a very refreshing change in direction from the last two weeks.


Caye Caulker, Belize
17th July 2009

A Fond Farewell To Mexico

After a stirling turnaround by the British Embassy, the passport found its way back to our eager hands within a couple of days of arrival. So excited to finally be leaving Mexico, and even more so Chetumal, we rushed back to our dingy hotel to collect our belongings and get out of town before doing damage, either to ourselves or others.

Bowling along to the border in a taxi, spirits were high with the immanence of escape until, regrettably, we reached the border. Exiting the taxi at the Mexican exit stamp booth, I asked the taxi driver to wait a second with our belongings while we got stamped and transferred to a bus. Straight away we were descended upon by a smooth talking Belizian who dressed close enough to be a priest, in black with a white collar and the obligatory crucifix dangling from his neck, who proceeded to try and rush us through the process so that he could accompany us in a taxi to the other side of the border, a journey that turned out to be some 15 minutes long and would have, under his reccommendation, cost us 350 pesos compared to the somewhat more economic 20 peso fare for the bus.

Making it clear that we didn't need his assistance, language or religion, we arrived at the window to the booth, where an obese sour faced Mexican official bulging from within a sweat stained uniform checked our passports and decreed within seconds that my paperwork was not in order and as Lou had no entry stamp in her brand new passport we would have to return to Chetumal to pay the necessary charges. When I explained in my most restrained way that it was simply not an option to go back, he pounced with the inevitable proposition that he could "forgoe the hassle" with a simple payment of 400 pesos. Our pseudo-Christian friend stuck his head into the fray at this point to helpfully suggest under his breath that he was an undercover cop, and that we should play along so that he could gather evidence.

We were completely at the mercy of the Fat Official; under no circumstances would we return to Chetumal, and he knew it. With steam spiralling from my ears, I held out two 200 peso notes which he insultingly ignored for a while, busying himself with papers on the other side of the cubicle while muttering to himself about the outrage of being asked for a reciept for the costs incurred. The tiny exit stamp was placed in the passports, lacking the aplomb that I would have hope 400 pesos would have paid for, and I stormed away from the window to confront our taxi driver who, insensitive to our recent travails, had decided to charge us double the agreed fare for a 10 minute wait. My Spanish was suddenly released from its bonds of English decency and I let fly in a tumbling cascade of obscenity at the injustice of it all, sparing a little something for the Belizian "undercover cop" who was sidling around us trying to carry our bags and asking for some money "for the effort".

Lou sheparded me onto the bus as I scowled at anybody who I could make eye contact with and as we rolled across the border, finally, into Belize I reflected with a degree of sorrow that the last taste in my mouth of the place that I called home for 6 months was made bitter by corruption, greed and self indulgent opportunism.

Corozal, Belize
17th July 2009

One Very, Very Good Reason to Visit El Salvador

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Trouble for Big Blue

With the reflections of human impact on ocean environment still prevalent in my mind, a couple of pertenant things landed in my inbox, which did very little to improve my mood; the first an article from one of my favourite subscriptions, the National Geographic writer John Bowermaster about the recent effects of rampant "eco" tourism on an increasingly fragile Galapagos Islands, and the second about the latest sensationalist film about the destructive power of humans on natual resource, this time covering the effects of overfishing.

Always slightly grumpy about the haphazard and fairly diffuse of the "eco" label by tourism outfits, this latest dispatch serves to distance me yet again from seeing intelligent, sustainable and considered tourism as a possiblity. Check out the trailer.

Hailed as "The Inconvenient Truth About the Oceans" by the Economist (a debatably good association), the film "End of the Line" was released on June 12th and seems to be garnering a fair amount of interest. Based on the book by Charles Clover, the film looks at the effects of the commerical fishing industry and, draws some fairly sobering conclusions.



Despite best efforts and a nice relaxing break in Bacalar next to the impressive Languna de Siete Colores (Lake of 7 colours), morale is low and we remain keen to cross the border and escape to Belize, where necessary but gloomy revalations about the capacity of humans to systematically ruin things can be shelved for a while.

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Killing Time

So, after an excruciating day of trailing around Palenque town performing administative duties required to eventually get a new passport from the British Embassy in Cancun, Lou and I wearily put ourselves on the next bus to the captial of Quintana Roo, Chetumal. This dusty and soul-less town sits on the border with Belize, and would form our base for time unspecified as the dynamic forces of the Embassy processed Lou's passport application. After a single night, we realised that we would probably end up killing and eating someone if forced to spend a full week waiting in the same place, thus hiring a car and driving with enthusiasm towards the Carribean coast.

Our point of escape, with no particular form of planning, turned out to be Mahahual. Arriving on a blustery and overcast day, we were greeted to the sight of a deserted town bordered by acres of dead mangroves on one side and a classic carribean sea on the other. Two days was about all we could handle in our slightly fragile state, frustrated by our forced improsonment in Mexico by circumstances; the strangeness of the town was, in our particular state of mind, a bit too much.

Mahahual grew fast from a small fishing village into an overflow point for the more famous beaches to the north of Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, also developing a healthy passing trade in backpacking tourists. Things were going nicely until Hurricane Dean hit in 2007, flattening the entire town and tearing the life out of the mangrove forest that consequently delivered a crushing blow to localised marinelife and ecosystems. Since then life slowly recovered and Mahauhual regained some form of income as a cruise ship stopover, with up to 5000 people simultaneously flooding the tiny town at sporadic moments to come ashore, engage in drunken debauchary along the seafront and return back to their cabins after some hours. This, no doubt, was instrumental in breeding a very predeatory feeling to the place; one could not escape the sense that the locals watched you like hawks as you passed; not through curiosity, but sizing you up to see how they could get what they needed from you before you left.

Speaking with Evan, a young Texan expat with verbal diahorrea who was the proud proprietor of a new local bar/restaurant/cabaña setup, another sobering revalation came to pass. At the point of our initial arrival we drove up the coast in a bursting desire for exploration, and noticed a fine skin of rubbish littering the ungroomed aspects of the shoreline outside the main seafront in town.

"I've picked up some of the rubbish to check the labels when I've been wandering around the beach sometimes," explained Evan, "And it always says that it was made in a different country; China, Cuba, Europe, the United States. It never says 'Made in Mexico'".

It was saddening to realise the global impact of negligence in such wide scope, and got me thinking about the footprint of human activity at a time that was already more gloomy. Turning the car around and heading back inland, we once again began the search for a place to put our feet up for a few days, recuperate from our traumas and wait.

Chetumal
11th July 2009

Guns, Knives and Short People

On the next brief stop-off from the high speed journey from San Cristobal to Belize, Lou and I booked onto a tour to pay a lightning visit to Agua Azul, a collection of Very Blue Waterfalls that had been reccommended by numerous people. Shooting past campesinos heavily laden with wood who trudged along the side of the paved roads in our air conditioned tour bus with tinted windows I felt the vestiges of a sinking feeling. The feeling grew to a nagging discomfort as we arrived at Agua Azul to find a series of well paved walkways between different "viewing galleries", crowded with tourists merrily elbowing each other out of the way to get their perfect photographs.

Persevering despite growing negativity, we continued up the hill alongside the sections of the falls with the hope that the vast majority of photo-goons would not see the value in trying to break crowd mentality. Hope became smugness as the paths became empty the further away from the carpark we got and we soon found ourselves trotting along beside electric blue water bordered by jungle and lush green banks.

Within five minutes our blissful wanderings brought us to a chap lounging by the side of the path wearing a "rural tourist police" t-shirt with a radio strapped to his belt, in the process of informing a Dutch couple that they couldn't go any further up the track. Fortunately for all concerned, my 6 months of spanish practise allowed me to talk with him and ascertain that it would be fine to go up the track, provided that he remained with us as an escort. With smiles all round and the smugness building, we continued to the end of the track where a large, foreboding sign proclamed that we we premitted to go no further, UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES. Merrily casting aside all possesions on the tiny fine sand riverside beach to be warily watched by our police friend, we tumbled into the water and spent the next half hour splashing around, basking on the large stones that sustained the small section of waterfall and throwing ourselves into the rapids to be spat out spluttering in the calmer waters.

Eventually following the example of the Dutch couple we retreated to the beach to towel off when, in a rather surreal moment, I looked up to see four figures heading out of the jungle in a running crouch; from the fact that they were all wearing either balaclavas or hankerchiefs over their faces and carrying rifles and machetes, I quickly ascertained that it was unlikely that we'd just recieved participants for a picnic. In a moment of uncharacteristic lucidity I threw Lou's waterproof camera behind me into the shallows with the knowledge that we were, at the very least, about to lose all our possesions. Meanwhile one of the group had taken up position next to our guard (whose radio proved to be a somewhat ineffective measure against a firearm) and had the barrel of a rife tucked against his skull. Our attentions were immediately directed elsewhere, however, as a remarkably short assailant with a knife that would have made even Crocodile Dundee think twice arrived within chopping distance and informed us in as many words that we would do very well to give him a lot of money.

With visably trembling fingers the Dutch couple handed over 1500 pesos and were relieved of their camera, pleading for the memory card and trying to enlist my help to get our diminutive new best friend to take the time to locate the card slot, perform the complicated operation of extraction (which would require self-disarmament to facilitate the use of both hands) and allow them the gift of the 300 photos that were stored. My Spanish capabilites, already somewhat under stress from the situation, ground to a halt as I briefly considered and then discarded my capacity as bi-lingual negotiator. Aside from dynamics of practicality with their issue, I was also distracted by the worsening problems of Lou and I; having run our financial resources slowly down in anticipation of leaving the country and transferring currency we only had 120 pesos, not deemed a sufficient enough haul for the risk undergone through armed robbery. Drawing himself up to his full height of almost my nose level, our masked aquantence took Lou's day bag from the ground, rifling though it and growing incresingly frustrated as he encountering items of value such as personal journals, mobile phone chargers and ladies personal effects. With a noise of frustration somewhere between a grunt and a squeak, he scuttled off cradling Lou's bag, the camera and money to retreat to the safety of distance where the rest of his companions were waiting, presumably with the mentality that somewhere in the bag, eventually, he would encounter untold riches and ignoring my jumbled requests to return something of little value but great importance, during which I'm pretty sure I accidently referred to him as a "señora".

Sadly for us, the bag contained Lou's passport. Without the benefit of time to reorganize her stuff, this cruicial jigsaw piece of our Belizian picture was disappearing into the undergrowth in the hands of a group who almost certainly had absolutely no use for it. And disappear it did, leaving our slightly shell shocked group standing on the small crescent of sand criss crossed with the footprints of the past couple of minutes. Our wide eyed guard leapt from the log on which he'd been sitting and let fly with a tumbling stream of terrified language, disavowing all responsibility, blaming our actions, cursing all and sundry for the ill luck and the looming possiblity of their imminent return.

With eyes cast fearfully towards the opening in the foliage we collected the scattered remenants of our belongings; mercifully our wallets had been left, containing our identification and bank cards to finance the impending lengthly administrative process of insurance claims and obtaining a new passport that sat like a black cloud in the back of our minds; the Dutch couple through a blessed twist of fate had managed to retain their bag which contained both their passports and wallets; I retrieved the camera from the shallows of the river, a minor triumph that would prove to be short lived when it would, at some point, slip from the bundle that I was carrying and fall to the trail never to be found again; and began the walk back down the hill past groups running the other way driven by radio alerts that had come too late, to a new and painful phase to our freshly begun travels.

Palenque

9th July 2009

Ruined

Reflecting on the swift dash from the oven temperature depths of Chiapas to the Belizian redezvous with friends, it seemed somewhat daft to ignore the archelogical heavyweight of Palenque that I would be bussing straight past. Thus after a late night drop off in the tourist friendly spot of El Panchan, tucked neatly into the edge of the jungle in the amaiably run "Jungle Palace" collection of cabañas, I found myself lulled to sleep by the noisy chorus eminating from the foliage, hinting fears of the army of mosquitos that were no doubt poised to breach the cube of mosquito netting in which I was installed and drain me dry.

Fortunately the night passed without failure of my defense measures, and Lou and I found ourselves shuttled rapidly over the well greased path to the ruins by colectivo that hundreds of thousands of tourists had worn down over the years. Despite fears that we would be two heads in a vast seething crowd of tours, the site was really quiet. The ease of access and slick measures at the ticket booths for entry hinting at a much higher expected level of traffic and, coherent with experience elsewhere, showed the fairly devastating effect that negative public relations of swine flu and drug wars has exacted upon national tourism.

I wasn't complaining; wandering without aim around the site having given the brush off to countless offers of paid guidance was an impressive experience. They estimate that only 5% of the already vast site has been discovered and excavated to some degree, and that much was evident from the range of buildings on display. From the groomed and towering edifice of the palace, covered with workers chiselling stone, brushing dust and trimming grass, bringing it to as close a state as they dared to demonstrate it's former glory to the tucked away and overgrown residential housing blocks partially swallowed by jungle, the site (intentionally or not) gave a sense of discovery as you moved betwen buildings. The majority of the tourists going no further than the impressive entrance buildings in the main plaza left a sense of isolation, leaving us to duck in and out of the jungle that formed some of the most impressive views of the site as the sprawling ruins of a once powerful civilization did battle with the vegitation that was reclaiming them.

After dispiriting examples of a country's effort to showcase its natural drawcards, Palenque was a site in which I sensed a respect for the area in the way the tourist infrastructure was developed and the place was groomed and maintained. It is encouraging to see that despite some unfortunate reported behaviour of visitors (building guards describing examples of tourists taking stones from structures as keepsakes and using inner chambers as toilets), the keepers of the site have had the capacity to act with a perspective of sustainability, taste and intelligence.

Palenque

8th July 2009

Mexican elections

After an extensive, and no doubt expensive, campaign on television by the key political parties, the national ballots opened on the 5th July. Due to concern by the higher powers that the availability of alcohol would somehow inhibit the process of democracy, no booze was made available for 48 hours prior to The Big Day.

Perhaps due to their weekend festivities being spoiled or otherwise, the elections did not sit well with the population. In an overwhelming lack of involvement, 55% of the population (some 43 million voters) decided that it wasn't worth the effort, with another 5% choosing to openly reject the state of modern politics and vote null. Information regarding the election results is surprisingly thin on the ground, with this skewed article being the only item of significance after a bit of digging:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3665.html

A sad time indeed for Mexican national unity and the communication of the government with its people, especially in a country that has needed to draw together when under so much international pressure of late with the issues of drugs conflict and swine flu.


San Cristobal de Las Casas
7th July 2009

On The Ropes in San Cristobal

Somewhat punch drunk from the end of the teaching semester, I arrived with my good friend Lou Whitaker into the familar clutches of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Utterly bereft of energy and enthusiasm for progress, the majority of the weekend was spent completely sedentary, occasionally breaking into a slow shuffle; respect due to Lou, who no doubt in a state of recent escape from the UK was keener for a somewhat more dynamic approach. Apart from a booze free weekend thanks to the proximity of the Mexican elections and partaking of food and coffee at various establishments, we paid a visit to one of my favoured spots in San Cris, the Kinoki Theatre. A small independent cinema combined with a tea house that makes for a very pleasant evening sitting in tiny screenings of up to about 15 people watching alternative films from the comfort of a sofa.

One such film that we partook in was a locally crafted piece of engaging propaganda about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) and their ongoing struggle against the Mexican government since coming into the public eye in 1994 with their opposition to the then recently signed NAFTA free trade agreement with the USA. Whatever opinions might be held about the Zapatistas, it has certainly been a fantastic achievement for them to coordinate remote rural groups without the benefit of any modern methods of communication to provide opposition to the manuevers of the military during the most intenseperiods of stuggle. It is also refreshing to see an element of the population galvanised in reponse to political agenda in a time in Mexico that seems to be characteristic of political indifference, judging by the recent elections.

For better or worse, their local presence in recent history has been a valuable drawcard for the tourist industry, with Zapatista dolls available on every street corner and licence given any wannabe revolutionary to spout their idealogical leanings over their drinks in the numerous coffee houses and bars about town.

San Cristobal de Las Casas

6th July 2009

The End of The Beginning

Suddenly, with the fanfare of the end of term exams and the obligatory sugar-fuelled party classes on the final Friday, I was no longer a teacher; my semester had reached its conclusion. Memories still bounce around inside my skull of the final day, recorded with forensic precision in my personal journal; my smallest and roundest student from my 4pm class, Nimsy, participating only partially in the "construct a mummy" race as he stood in his giant heeled wheely shoes gazing with affection at the miniature donut in his hand as a team mate knelt at his feet, industriously wrapping them in toilet paper; the unexpected and terrifying wall of early teenage female hormones that doused me in tearful goodbye hugs as my 5pm class said their farewells; the highly dubious homemade money for my 6pm class game of poker, ranging in value from $73 per note to an ambitious $100,000.

Goodbyes were said all round; students, teachers, mexican family and friends amassed over the last 6 months, and with little delay I very nearly ran to the colectivo stop on Saturday morning in my final bid to escape the heat, dogs, noise and watered down local celebrity status of white, foreign, confused teacher.

How does one summarise 6 months of being dug into a small town, and reflect with brevity on the experience? Maybe a better Blog Scribe than I could achieve it, but I struggle. The fundamental things that shuffle into focus are the times of incredible challenge and difficulty trying to build meaningful relationships and assert oneself in a town which had no scope for English communication, the kindness and curiosity of the population of Chiapa de Corzo, the blistering heat and propensity for incessent sweating, the rollercoaster of teaching children and teenagers, a blend of teeth grinding patience, magical humour and dark longings for the return of corporal punishment.

It has been a true test of my self assurance and personal security, being given license to interpret every situation in which I flounder without the benefit of understanding on a daily and frequent basis as a positive, strengthening learning experience; grasping constantly for some hook, some point of understanding as to how those around me are feeling and how it is reflected in their relating to me.

With this first step away from the securities and familiarities that sit thousands of miles away back on the shores of Jolly Old England, even in these early stages of change I can appreciate in retrospect that all the struggle and difficulty has been for the benefit of, paso a paso, becoming closer to where I am.

San Cristobal de Las Casas
6th July 2009