Why The Modern Maya Don’t Think The World Is Ending

by Elizabeth Seward on

If you want to meet Maya people, go to the Yucatan. More specifically, go to the city of Merida. Merida’s population is nearly at a million and 60% of all inhabitants are of Maya ethnicity. Roughly a third of the population of Merida speak Mayan – the Yucatec Maya language. Fighting for space for my body on the crowded sidewalks and space for my car on the congested streets, my time in Merida was spent in close physical proximity to the modern Maya, as comes with the territory when visiting the downtown area of a capital city in Mexico over a weekend.

Although Merida was created atop a Spanish-overtaken and demolished Maya community, the Maya culture today is preserved in Merida through museums, music, dance, art, fashion, markets, cuisine and language, as well as in other areas of modern Merida life. When the conquistadors set out to rule the land now known as Merida, the Maya were forced to learn Spanish and their books were burned. The stones from Maya buildings were used to build Merida – the walls of the cathedral downtown are made from these stones. Old Spanish city gates that were once a part of a massive wall still stand in Merida. The wall was initially erected to protect the city’s center from revolting Maya. The last major revolt was the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901). Today, an outwardly integrated city greets travelers and it is flush with Maya souvenirs and Maya experiences to take home.

%Gallery-173726%The words of Rigoberta Menchu were in my mind when I conversed with the local Maya about the popular Doomsday Prophecies:

“We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.”

Before entering into these conversations, I already knew what I later found supporting evidence for in my discussions: modern Maya don’t think the world is ending on December 21. Careful not to speak in a way that would carry offensive implications of mystic misunderstandings, I asked the Maya I met about their own take on December 21 and all the hype. I asked the Maya on the street and in the market, I asked the Maya at restaurants and hotels. The answer was the same for everyone, there was no exception to this.

“We are entering into a new cycle,” they’d tell me. “This is just a new beginning,” they’d say without doubt.

I’m not alone in my findings. In a MINNPOST article, Phyllis Messenger, the president of the Maya Society of Minnestoa, is quoted as saying, “I have not yet run across any indigenous person who believes this is the end of the world.” The article’s author, Catherine Watson, goes on to make a good point when she reiterates the words of archaeologists with, “The Mayans probably didn’t fear the end of one baktun and the start of the next, archaeologists say. More likely, they celebrated it, much as we go all-out for really significant New Year’s Eves, like the ones when a century turns.”

Modern Maya aren’t worried because ancient Maya weren’t worried. The 13th baktun, a 400-year unit, is coming to a close and a new one is beginning. But because it is not a 14th baktun that is beginning but rather the first again (this method of tracking time is cyclical), the ancient Maya inscribed the date in zeroes. The lesson to take home from modern Maya: zeroes in this context represent resetting the clock, not unplugging it.

Make sure to check out the rest of my series, “Life At The End Of The World: Destination Yucatan,” which explores the Yucatan region, Maya culture and more.

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: I Was Once An ‘Ilegal Immigrant’ In China (Part 2 of 2)

by Dave Seminara on

Read Part One of This Story

The Urumqi Airport Aviation Hotel had a huge bug zapper behind the reception desk that gave off a piercing blue glow. I was handed a room key and a glossy brochure that brightened my mood considerably.

“Built in 1974, Airport Hotel locates in Urumqi ariartion airport that today is over 6000 meters! It joints the terminil building by a bridge. It is such a perfect hotel to choose if you traveling by air!..To have a tasteful meal here is dream here. According to your requirement, Airport Hotel restaurant might prepare you all kinds of local delicious…Other hotel services include beauty center, taxi, tour trip, Shopping, and complete checking in procedure arranging conference.”

My first meal in China was something of a blind man’s banquet. The Airport Hotel Restaurant had no English speakers or menu, so I had to resort to circling dishes listed in my Lonely Planet phrase book.I pointed to the Chinese characters next to five or six dishes but my waitresses kept shaking her head and eventually walked away. I was convinced that the warm Liquan beer I was drinking was all I was going to get, but just as I was about to get up to leave, she and two other servers arrived with five steaming entrees, a bowl of soup and a plate of cooked peanuts.

I was thoroughly confused but since Xinjiang Airlines was paying, I didn’t bother to send anything back. The Airport Hotel felt a bit like a very strange college dormitory in that most of the guests kept their doors open and had their television sets blaring. There were three channels – all showing a badminton match between Indonesia and Denmark.

My room had an assortment of odd signs, each containing various warnings. My favorite was one on top of the TV that read: “Don’t touch it yourself!”

How does one pass a weekend under de-facto house arrest in Xinjiang province? I decided to take a day trip to what the Chinese call Heavenly Lake – two hours to the east. Tianchi, (Heavenly Lake) is a majestically serene lake flanked by the 5,445-meter high Mt. Bogda, known as the Peak of God. The excursion and a relaxing Sunday spent chatting with novice English speakers at an Urumqi park helped me forget that I was a passport-less illegal immigrant, at least for the weekend.

On Monday morning, I rose early and sat in the lobby of the hotel, listening to the hum of the blue bug zapper as I waited for my parole hearing, which was scheduled for 9 a.m. I waited impatiently until about 10, when I received a call from a woman at Xinjiang Airlines who told me to call her Holly.

“Dayveed, we have problem” she said. “So sorry but we must come toomahwoaw. The cahmandeeng offisah not heya today, call back toomahwoaw.”

“Holly, I want my passport back TODAY!” I pleaded. “I want out of here, I’ve got to get to Shanghai! I’ll pay the damn fine! Please get me out of here.”

“Today is not paw-see-bull!” she said.

I slammed the phone down and went out to find a phone card to call the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Trying to find the number and figuring out the local phone system took some doing but the call produced immediate dividends when I got through to a local Chinese employee at the embassy who promised to look into the mater and then called me back a half hour later.

“Mee-stah Sem-eee-nah-rah, the Chinese said they’ll be there in 10 minutes,” she said.

I regretted that I hadn’t figured out how to call the embassy even sooner, and weeks later, I realized that the embassy’s intervention came less than 48 hours before the U.S. House of Representatives voted on granting China permanent normal trade relations. The Chinese were on their best behavior once I got the embassy involved.

Ten minutes later “Holly” and a colleague of hers from the airline, Miss Yang, arrived and greeted me nonchalantly. And five minutes at that, two Chinese soldiers arrived at the hotel.

“You must pay 1,000 yuan now,” Holly instructed, before pausing to add, “please.”

My de-facto captors wrote up a myriad of reports on a “Fancy Lion” notebook that had a cute image of a kitty on it. I was given no less than 5 receipts to sign, so if the penalty was a bribe they were going to have a serious paper trail to cover up.

I paid the fine and before the soldiers left I showed them an article in that morning’s English language, China Daily, a state controlled newspaper, which stated that the government had set the poverty level at 635 yuan per year ($76).

“So you see,” I said, “you have fined me more than one year’s wages for a Chinese worker, all for arriving here one week late on a perfectly good visa.”

The group studied the article for a few moments and then Holly interpreted the response of one of the stern faced officials.

“Yes, but he says that you are not a Chinese peasant,” she said. “You are American, and you have much more money. We think this is not very expensive for you.”

They handed back my glorious looking passport, which had never looked so resplendent. I was granted a 24-hour visa, and the girls from Xinjiang Airline agreed to accompany me downtown to extend it.

The visa office had a sign in English that was engraved on the wall, “strictly enforce the law – enthusiastically serve the people.” I was sold on the former but needed convincing on the latter as I plunked down another $40 for a month-long visa. As the three of us walked out into a steady rain, Holly tried to console me before saying goodbye.

“You know, we are trying to change but it takes long time,” she said. “Maybe the next time you come China, things will be easier for you.”

When my girlfriend arrived in Shanghai, I was there waiting for her with a bouquet of flowers and an outstretched fan with her name stenciled in Chinese characters on it. We were married the following year and shortly thereafter I joined the U.S. Foreign Service and found myself interviewing visa applicants on a daily basis. I never told anyone that I was once an illegal immigrant myself.

Read Part One of This Story Here

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service.”

[Photo credit: Avixyx, Dayou X, on Flickr]

Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Australia’s Indian Ocean Idyll

by Alex Robertson Textor on

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been.

This is strange to admit, even embarrassing. Travel writers are not supposed to make such claims. We’re supposed to give information, provide historical context and show how our readers might make the journey we’re sketching. We’re not supposed to lose our cool and submit to the sheer gorgeousness of a particular place.

But the fact is that the Cocos Islands, an Australian external territory, are exquisite. The beaches are damn near close to perfect and the lagoon is full of exotic marine life. For anyone who has gone out of his or her way to visit deserted beaches, the Cocos Islands are the Holy Grail. And for those who have waited for hours to witness a single sea turtle clamber ashore on one or another Caribbean beach, the thousands of sea turtles simply hanging out in the Cocos lagoon will come as a revelation. The same goes for the reef sharks, of which there are an impressive number.

It’s also hard to beat these islands for their remoteness. They’re 1700 miles and two time zones to the west of Perth, the most practical launching pad for the islands. (It’s also possible to book a charter flight to the Cocos Islands from Kuala Lumpur via Christmas Island on a Malaysian airline called Firefly, but most visitors fly from Perth with Virgin Australia.) It takes over six hours to reach Cocos Islands from Perth, with a 50-minute refueling stop on Christmas Island.

In terms of geography, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands consist of two coral atolls, 26 islands in all. Of these, just two are inhabited: West Island, home to the territory’s airport, most of its administrative offices and around 100 mainland Australians, and Home Island, home to around 500 Malay descendants of the indentured servants brought to the island by its previous owners, the Clunies-Ross family. (I’ll write more about the territory’s tangled colonial history soon in a later post.) The island is characterized more or less by residential self-segregation, though there is some mingling – students from Home Island take the ferry to West Island daily and people travel in both directions for work.

The Cocos Islands are by no means a five-star outpost of luxury in the Indian Ocean; the territory cannot compare on this front to Seychelles, the Maldives or Mauritius. For high rollers, Cocos’ basic guesthouses, motels and house rentals will seem terribly simple. That’s fine. The rest of us – who by the way will have already paid a pretty penny to get to Cocos – will not mind simple accommodations in a place as beautiful as this one.

So who visits Cocos? Government officials, kitesurfers, birdwatchers, fishers and divers – and me. I visited in November, soaking up enough tropical heat to last me through the impending winter. I have a few posts forthcoming on Cocos, on island activities and the different cultures of Home and West Islands, as well as some notes on the nature (and future) of tourism in such a remote and remarkably gorgeous place.

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Gigapixel Image Of Mt. Everest Conveys True Sense Of Scale

by Kraig Becker on

We all know that Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on the planet, standing some 29,029 feet in height. But unless you’ve actually been there, it is difficult to get a true sense of the scale of the peak. But now, thanks to an impressive new image released by GlacierWorks, anyone can witness just how large the mountain is without ever leaving the safety and comfort of their home.

The photo, which you can view by clicking here, was shot this past spring by famous documentary filmmaker David Breashears. He was on another mountain known as Pumori, which sits just five miles to the west of Everest, when he snapped the photo using a special camera designed to capture extremely large images. Where as most photos are measured in megapixels, this one is actually more than a gigapixel in size, displaying an unprecedented level of detail and a sense of scale unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Don’t believe me? Click on the image yourself and look for the tiny yellow dots in the lower left corner. Those yellow dots are the tents in Everest Base Camp where the climbers make their home for about two months while they are climbing the mountain. A set of controls at the bottom of the screen allows you to zoom in or out of the image to see things close up, while also moving the camera around to take in all of the amazing details. If you look closely, you can even find some of the higher camps on the mountain and spot a trail of mountaineers making their way up the South Col. To truly take in the shot, I highly recommend you put the photo into full screen mode.

The image was taken as part of GlacierWork’s efforts to document the impact of global climate change on glaciers in the Himalaya. Everest’s Khumbu Glacier is one of the most famous in the world, and like many others across the region, it is in full retreat. Because these glaciers are a source of fresh water for the people that live in the Himalaya Range, their disappearance could cause massive problems in years to come.

[Photo Credit: Pavel Novak via WikiMedia]

Photo Of The Day: The Walt Disney Concert Hall In Los Angeles

by Jessica Marati on

One of Downtown Los Angeles‘ great treasures is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a Frank Gehry-designed structure home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the Los Angeles Major Chorale. It is captured brilliantly in today’s Photo of the Day, taken by Flickr user Nan Palmero using a simple Canon Powershot S95. The sky’s brilliant blue casts a cool hue upon the structure’s stainless steel exterior, illuminating what is truly a building of the future.

Do you have any photos of great architecture? Upload your shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.[Photo Credit: Nan Palmero]