Our next stop was a Mayan village called Bochojbo Bajo, in Sina Cantan region.

Don’t think that all Mayan villages have the same standard look, or found in the same ways. These have quite big differences. Even the languages are different, sharing similarities only at the basic level. You learn saying “cheers” in one village, and then it becomes something entirely different in another. We already know that languages which don’t take place in the mass media, the newspapers and the TV have local micro differences, anyway. Even in the Black Sea region in Turkey, two Laz villages next to each other lingual differences.

I think I may have talked too much about Laz issues during this journey.

Anyway… Our first stop is a Maya village next to San Cristobal was a women’s collective.

What I mean by ‘collective’ is a women’s cooperative sales place, a sort of charity bazaar, where you can find scarves, dresses, clothes, etc…

Nur, not unexpectedly, started to chat immediately. Fikret and I were using the opportunity of both buying presents and doing charity work at the same time. Since Nur has been in the region in the last seven months, the men of our group are the buying ones and she’s the bargaining one. Thus we now have an eagle with a broken wing…

In brief, we got carried away in the pile of strange clothes. And when it came to dressing up and posing, the friendly conversations got even better. When they got better we felt warmer. As the conversation got warmer, we wanted to drink rakı.

Since we don’t drive, what else is there to stop us from drinking?

We decided to go to a village restaurant and prepare a rakı table.

We asked to the señora for such a place. “A handsome, local restaurant with a view for us to drink rakı….”

And she asked “What the hell is rakı?”

And we proudly said it was milked from lions in Turkey and drunk by lions. She didn’t quite get how…

“No, no… This is Turcoposh.”

The name Turcoposh made Soledad laugh immediately. This is what our señora is called.

And the inevitable outcome: we were invited to dinner. Nothing could make us miss this opportunity of eating with these lovely ladies. We feigned reluctance then slowly went with them.

We greeted the household composed of two Marias and one Juana, and then sat down.

Two friends at the age of 18-19, Marias were quite shy at the beginning. They relaxed after they drank.

Marias sit around the fire, preparing tortillas. They put shepherd’s salad, yoghurt, grinded pumpkin seeds, homemade swine sausage, cheese, and three kinds of hot sauce on the table and it immediately became a genuine rakı table. We put the ingredients in our warm tortillas and ate. Of course, I passed on the chance to eat the poor swine and left this honour to others.

Inevitably, rakı took its place in the middle of our table. We made our standard presentation on how rakı was made, how it became Turcoposh, and how it is drunk.

By the way, we finally found ‘normally drinking’ Mayan people who took more than a few seconds to finish a glass of rakı. This rare occasion added more joy.

All three ladies loved rakı. Marias were not so good with setting their drinking speed, though. They looked at each other, laughed at us, tried to reset their speed. But rakı never stays where it doesn’t belong. The second Maria was drinking a bit faster.

By the way, a phone call from the EZLN made Nur a bit unhappy: Zapatistas rejected her application. The reason for this decision was the fact that they suspended the education at their schools and it wasn’t clear when it was going to start again.

We interpreted this decision as an outcome of Nur’s being unattached to any specific organization. But Manuel corrected us. He said there had been strange things going on in the last ten days, and there was the possibility of stranger things to happen, so it was more possible that Zapatistas had made their decision considering Nur’s safety.

After a little bit of more chit-chatting and a little rakı, we left the house feeling just fine and full. You know, it’s carnival time. There are ceremonies and rituals everywhere.

We passed from Bochojbo Bajo to Bochojbo Centro. Meaning, from downtown Bochojbo to the centre of Bochojbo…

Since it’s carnival time, the village was filled with children in disguise like it’s Halloween’s. Children wearing various “zombie” costumes were possibly chasing bad spirits. Whatever they were doing, they were having a wonderful time for sure. They were the only humans posing for us around. Because we were in a photo prohibited zone as usual. So we took a bunch of masked children photos.

We saw another group and followed them. Again there were priests with their classical colourful shaman dresses, the mamins, and of course, posh, the drinks they never forget bringing.

We followed them for about forty minutes, feeling like we were in a torchlight company. The ritual company, and the people looking out from their windows as well, were all very photographic. Of course, all Fikret could do was to bite his lips. We could only take pictures with out eyes and carved them in our minds.

This ritual was very impressive, too. We chatted with Rafael at the door. He was there representing the police. So he said he was the one to fix things if anything unpleasant occurred.  We asked “How?” “So you really interfere if any problem comes up?”

Rafael said “No.” “If anything happens they come to me and tell about it. And if they tell about it in a nice way, the problems are solved by themselves anyway.”

Rafael’s wise attitude reminded me of Momo. The ones who read Michael Ende’s novel will know what I mean.

Yet, when a brother who had overloaded himself with posh hit his car a little bit to the car of another brother who had drunk posh as well, Rafael had to be in charge. He solved the problem within minutes.

It’s needless to mention his whole role was symbolic. Because I can’t think of a police this naïve and thinking so well.

The inside was magnificent, and yet without pictures again. In this small place, there was music, incense sticks, and posh as usual. We were afraid to bring out our rakı. The limited stocks, you know… And they take in alcohol like sponges.

Just as we were about to get on to our car, we were invited to a relatively larger service area. I call them service space. Maybe some may name them chapels. They maybe like Christian spaces formally but they are far from the Christianity as we know. That’s why I can’t bring myself to calling these little places chapels or churches. Most of them are built in the corner of a house, either temporary or permanent.

This time we did another thing that we shouldn’t have done and brought out rakı, once again. Well, because, one of the cutest ladies in the world offered us posh. And we said we had drunk Turcoposh and didn’t want to mix it with another drink. Then she showed us a way – more of a feeling, though – to drink posh but to avoid getting drunk. Since we had observed nobody drinking posh like the way she described, we said “You don’t know Turcoposh, if you drink something else afterwards, it gets dirty.” And what do you think our lady said after this much provocation? “Bring out that Turcoposh of yours and we will see.”

And we sheepishly brought out rakı. And the rest of the events flourished as expected: 1 litre of rakı was gone in only 10 minutes.

Then we thought we were in just the right mood and decided to head back to San Cristobal.

Our plan for the night was to listen to Mariachis and drink rakı. But it wasn’t our destiny. Despite the dangers of stepping into the area of Nur’s expertise, I want to say something spiritual: Up to a point, rakı designates its own route.

First we went to a restaurant. It seemed like the owners had forced themselves to make it look authentic. At first it appeared as an “Oriental corner for the tourists” sort of thing. But when we befriended the artists with their sales booths around and surrendered to the gentle waiters, and opened a bottle of rakı, the ambience changed inevitably.

We drank some rakı and ate some fish, and chatted with our new friends Memo (there is such a name in here, really) and another friend whose name I’ve forgotten, on the issues of San Cristobal, İstanbul, Zapatistas, and the profound meaning of life.

Later on, there came these two ladies, Gabriella and Viri, who were supposed to take a sip from the rakı and leave. And there it was, the expected unfolding of events: “Oh this rakı is magnificent. OK, we want one more ‘double’ each.” The chatting went on and then we got separated and went to our hotel, only to meet them later at the Maricahi square. We left the car in front of the hotel, since Manuel started drinking too…

We can’t say we liked the ritual of paying Maricahis money per song. We preferred to sit on a corner and drink.

First there was just Memo and Manuel with us. Then came Viri and Gabriella, with two of their friends. Anahis, who came from the Mexican lands right below California, and Carmen who joined us from far away, Sevilla…

Here we talked and giggled about every profound subject from the 2012 issue to the effects the hippie tourists selling cheap stuff have on the local sellers who pay rents for their booths. Both rakı and the conversation were top class.

While we were about to drink our last ‘doubles’, something happened that made us laugh till it ached. The Mexican police had received information. A Turkish beverage was being drunk at the crime scene.

A police really came next to us, and said this: “We were informed that a Turkish beverage was being drunk here.”

We attempted to come forward as the agents of this awful crime. But we couldn’t, and showed them the empty bottles and our smiling faces. The police looked around, saw that all was quiet, had a chat with us a little bit, said goodbye, and then left…