Chiapas, Without Reservations

After two nights, though, the Temple attracted small black ants that bit viciously. The signs were clear: It was time to make like the Mayas and find a new dimension, preferably one with fewer stinging things.

A Jaguar in the Jungle

We came to the scorching hot Lacandon Maya village of Lacanja Chansayab after a morning at Bonampak, a small set of ruins about 80 miles south of Palenque. Bonampak's fabulous frescoes, among the best examples of Maya painting anywhere, show wild celebrations, royal heirs and victorious kings (the latter looming over captives dripping blood from yanked-out fingernails).

Lacanja Chansayab seemed decidedly less dramatic. In fact, it was downright ugly. Tin- and thatch-roofed buildings -- as well as a glut of rustic tourist cabins -- were strung along a weedy main road. Otherwise humble houses sprouted satellite dishes. Roadside clear-cutting had obliterated almost all shade.

My clothes were soaked by the time we met 43-year-old Chambor Lastra, a free spirit from the neighboring state of Tabasco. Then night fell and the cosmic landscape started to shift.

Wiry and ponytailed, Chambor was traveling with Anna, his blonde 24-year-old Swedish girlfriend. They had met in Guatemala, where Chambor made a living selling handicrafts and occasionally working as a deejay. I could not help but think that he had done pretty well for himself in the relationship.

The friendly couple was traveling in Chambor's pickup, an ancient Ford F-150 with what amounted to a one-room house built onto the back. Built of mahogany planks, it had a peaked tin roof covering a small but comfy bedroom complete with a bookshelf. Che Guevara looked out from a poster plastered to the back, just above Chambor's e-mail address.

Chambor invited us to tag along on a visit to his friend, the shaman Kayum Yuk Maash. The shaman lived just up a gravel track, and visiting his home felt like entering a movie's dream sequence. Logical thought faded into a series of surreal associations: Kayum with his thick glasses, boots without laces, and off-kilter face, suggestive of a stroke survivor's . . . a dirt-floored lean-to with a dark TV stuck in a corner . . . the shaman explaining that he was also an evangelical Christian who didn't go to church because the people were close-minded.

My brain felt stuck in a gooey spider web well into the next day, when we took a guided hike to a clear, spring-fed waterfall deep in the Lacandon jungle.

Such treks are the main reason to visit Lacanja Chansayab, and our hike took us into a sylvan world shockingly different from the desolate village beside it. We walked beneath the blessed cool of the jungle canopy, once stopping to stare at jaguar tracks that crossed the trail. All around, vines hung in spirals and parabolas.

But nothing surpassed our crossing of the Rio Cedro.

Our guide, 28-year-old Jose Kin, first ventured across the river on a very slick log that ended at least 10 feet short of the far bank. Surely, I thought, we were not crossing the river here. Even Jose's dog was barking in alarm.

But Jose slipped waist-deep into the swift, tannin-colored water and told us to follow. We crossed the rest of the river on submerged tree trunks, balancing on long, vertical sticks that Jose had just jammed into the riverbed. It was a thrill, but I was almost equally excited to catch a ride out of Lacanja Chansayab in the back of Chambor's fabulous gypsy truck.