Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods [Hardcover]

Christopher Shaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

At the border of Mexico and Guetamala lies the Usumacinta river. The river and its tributaries form the region that once supported the achievements of the Maya. Shaw has travelled these rivers by canoe, his story brings together the thrill of adventure travel and the acute eye of the naturalist.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Flowing across the limestone plateaus and tropical forests of Mexico and Guatemala, the Usamacinta River was the cradle of ancient Mayan civilization, heavily traveled and lined with palaces and huge cities. In the aftermath of the European conquest, the rugged Usamacinta country became a remote afterthought, a place where few travelers dared to venture.

Christopher Shaw, an American writer and canoeist, makes a journey down the Maya's "watery path," reporting his sightings from this broad stream of "pale jade shot with turquoise and slightly clouded with silt." Sacred Monkey River (whose title translates the Maya name for the great watercourse) is a spiritually charged quest into once-sacred geography--but a land profaned in recent years by warfare and ethnic division. Traveling by kayak, a craft he explains to locals as a canoe of the winik, or native people, of the far north, Shaw takes us through forbidding territory, delivering glimpses of rainforest country that is in imminent danger of being felled by the region's expanding timber concerns and dammed by governments intent on harnessing hydroelectric--and political--power. Ironically, his snapshots of the unspoiled Usamacinta may turn out to be documents of a disappeared world--unless, he observes, international environmental agencies find ways to join with the Maya to preserve their forest world. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

A naturalist who once edited Adirondack Life magazine, Shaw canoes the rough waters of Guatemala's Usumacinta River in this uneven Mesoamerican travel adventure. Like the river itself, the narrative begins slowly, gradually gathering momentum as the author abandons secondary anthropological research in favor of his own, often profound, impressions. The Usumacinta has always contained a liminal world; Shaw describes the fluid boundary between Guatemala and Mexico as "an unruly no-man's-land inhabited by political refugees, fugitives and foreign adventurers." Shaw's travels took him through Mexico's Chiapas region not long after the Zapatista uprising (a little more modern political history earlier in the narrative would have helped novice readers immensely, especially since Shaw slips back and forth between the main journey and one undertaken in 1989, before the uprising). During his river run, he encounters rebels, wayfarers and, in the book's most exciting sequence, drug smugglers. He also confronts exhilarating danger in the river itself ("the boat leaped forward onto the crown, and the world dropped away"). In describing the remote, rugged landscape, Shaw comes down heavily on the side of ecological conservation, bemoaning the loss of the surrounding rainforest to loggers and chicleros (workers who harvest sap from the chicle trees to make gum). A gifted travel writer, Shaw evokes the Usumacinta's territory with startling clarity, though his chronology is sometimes confusing. Veteran canoers and armchair travelers, as well as fans of ancient Mayan civilization, will find these narrative waters exhilarating, if a bit choppy. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393048373
• ISBN-13: 978-0393048377
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,592,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Travel > Latin America > Central America > Guatemala

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, August 5, 2000

By 

Walter Martin (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods (Hardcover)

Just read this wonderful book. Shaw, in a CANOE, not kayak, unlike what the editorial says, runs the Usumacinta and Jatate rivers in Chiapas and brings back a wonderful tale of adventure, in the framework of a profound and insightful understanding of the place and its cultural and geographical contours. His theories on the connection between canoe travel and the Maya spiritual world are enlightening and raise plenty of their own questions. The descriptions of the rivers and ruins are vivid and inviting. The author's connection between river travel and Maya spiritual travel makes me want to run a river as soon as possible. His knowledge of rivers and their intricacies, as a former whitewater guide, together with the interesting characters he meets along the way, all come together to form a fascinating take on a mysterious and awe-inspiring world. What a great read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a real page turner, September 27, 2000

By 

Nathan Farb (Jay, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods (Hardcover)

This book has been a genuine page turner for me, and as I approached the end I tried not to read too much at each sitting so I could prolong its pleasures.

It is for anyone interested in Mesoamerica, Mayan culture, canoeing as adventure, or boats as the movers of trade and ideas. Also for anyone who is lusting for an otherworld experience, metaphorically or actually, though trave, boating, psychogenic drugs, or all of the above. It is full of honest hard-nosed obserevation of nature and the specific nature of this area, and at the same time streches for and is able to peek at the"final" trip, perhaps as many civilizatins saw it, goin on a craft down a river or out to sea/see. shaw effortlessly intertwines some Spanish into his evocative--dare I use the word--poetic English, always aiming for and touching precision and clarity without sacrificing mystery. On, I believe, its deepest level, the language as well as the story drew me into the unknow, into the future, and of course the past as well.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what I've been waiting for, October 13, 2000

By 

Timothy Greebaum (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods (Hardcover)

This is the real thing folks. No more cute travel stories that romanticize without substance, that Disneyize and exaggerate. This book is the story of the author's courageous and thoughtful trip through an amazingly historical place that is also presently complicated and important. However, the author comes at it from a personal angle: the cosmology of canoes. We learn the importance of canoe travel not only to the Maya but to the author and people in general. That connects to the Maya cosmology and culture, the sense of place that is inherent in living in a watershed and having your existence contingent to flowing water (whether you live in the Lacandon forest or Westchester County), the importance of the geography of the region to the people who live there, and then finally to how all this connects to the Zapatista movement and the modern, and not so modern (this thing is full of scholarly but apt historical asides) plight of the indigenous Maya. All along the way you get to like the author, in his sometimes goofy gringo ways but his omnipresent awareness of his own place within the experience. Sprinkle in healthy doses of heart-thumping whitewater in canoes with inexperienced bow-men, death defying swims, life-threatening bandits, and tight, musical prose, and you've got one heck of a book. I tell you what, Shaw's got it right, the same way Matthiesson did. I recommend this book extremely highly. I wish it were getting more publicity. Read it. Its important.