The Wildlife Refuge and Forest Protection Area of the Cascadas de Agua Azul were established by a presidential decree on April 26, 1980, and extended over an area of 2,580 hectares.
The Agua Azul River descends the limestone bed in steps forming a series of impressive waterfalls that create natural pools contained by limestone levees called Rimstone in geological terminology. At the entrance of the site, there are craft shops, small food stands, and local guides who take bolder visitors to other even more dramatic waterfalls, as the descending river continues downstream until it plunges into the Tulija River, forming one of the most beautiful sheets of water.
Na Bolom Museum: Na Bolom was once home to the famous Dutch archaeologist Frans Blom and his Swiss photographer wife Trudy Blom. The Bloms were great explorers and were amongst the first outsiders to come into contact with the Lacandon Indians hidden in the midst of the dense Lacandon rain forest in Chiapas.
The Lacandones are the only people who managed to escape Spanish colonization by retreating far into the dense jungle. Frans and Trudy established very close ties with the Lacandones.
Having bought their large colonial house in 1951, the Bloms soon decided to turn it into a museum and research center on the Maya. An additional aim was to inform the public about the indigenous population of Chiapas and support them. Well into the 1950s, indigenous people were not allowed to spend the night in San Cristobal nor walk on the pavements. Consequently, the Bloms made Na Bolom a home for the Lacandones when they visited San Cristobal for medical reasons or to sell their crafts.
They chose to name the house Na Bolom, “the house of the jaguar” in Tzotzil, the local language, as it is a play on Frans’ surname Blom and his nickname Pancho, the Jaguar.
Today, Na Bolom is a non-governmental, non-profit Mexican organization. It’s a true hybrid. It houses a museum, a research center, a hotel, and a restaurant and runs a number of social and cultural projects.
Zinacantán sits in a valley surrounded by a patchwork of colors made from thousands of cultivated flowers and pine-forested hillsides. This vibrant city in the highlands of Chiapas, México, has been an important center of trade and commerce since pre-colonial times.
The colorful landscapes have made Zinacantán one of the most photographed communities in the region. The inhabitants are hard-working, having as their main activities floriculture and the production of vegetables for local consumption. The colorful clothes they wear give a singular beauty to the typical multicolored picture of Mexico.
The diversity of colorful crafts also imitates the valley dotted with greenhouses full of flowers, which are a very important part of Zinacantán’s economy as well as its rituals. The people of Zinacantán have always been naturally talented business people and merchants.
Amber from Chiapas originated in Oligocene to Early Miocene, 24 -30 million years ago, and comes from the resin of an extinct tree in the genus Hymenaea family. The amber was known to the world through Frans Blom, a Danish explorer, and archeologist, the authority of Mayan Culture
Amber is a beautiful & fragile gem that artists are able to form into beautiful pieces of jewelry as well as art. Another well know importance of amber is the fact that we are able to recover well-preserved fossilized plants and animals. The Amber deposit in Mexico is important due to the fact that it comes from a time when plants & animals were evolving.
In Chiapas, there have been many cases of never-before-seen species of plant and animal found in the Amber. Recently a flower from the late Oligocene-early Miocene, Swietenia (Meliaceae) was discovered.