Seeking lasting knowledge and inspirations in Mexican Riviera Maya

From an article by Stefanie Baeker in the newsletter of The International Ecotourism Society:

As one of the supporters of ecotourism in this region, I have launched Project Mayan Encounter in 2008, to offer group tours and escorted trips to Riviera Maya, with the primary goals of promoting ecotourism and making available the unique experience of the rich Mayan culture and nature reserves to active seniors, students and special needs groups. Our trips can be adapted to wheelchair users and travelers with other physical needs.

Due to our individualized service, we see travelers from all walks of life. Our tours always include healthy food, and sufficient time left to enjoy some of the world’s top-rated beaches. We work with guides certified by INAH (Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History), for tours inside the archaeological sites, and with Mayan natives and biologists in the nature reserves. We offer small group tours (no larger than 20 travelers) to ensure each participant can follow the guide’s presentation inside the archaeological sites, and that our impact on the local Mayan communities is kept as low as possible.

In January 2010, we launched a new small-group 8-day Study Trip, which is primarily geared to school classes, but equally fitting for active seniors or any adults who love to learn. The focus of this trip is to learn about the unique ecosystems of the Yucatan peninsula with its underground river network and cenotes, rich marine life and the world’s second largest barrier reef, as well as Mayan history, culture, and archaeology.

Our goal is to help students interpret Mayan history and sharpen their analysis skills and chronological and spatial thinking. Depending on the age group, tours are designed to match school curriculum requirements, and we set the focus accordingly.

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The Mayan ruins of Chicanná, Mexico

An article from Polyglot Travel:

The Mayan site of Chicanná, located in the Mexican State of Campeche, in the Yucatan peninsula, is one of the smaller archaeological sites of the area, but certainly not a less interesting one. The ruins were discovered in 1966 and it is estimated that the site was inhabited from 300 BC to 1100 AD. The original name of the site is not known. After its discovery it was named Chicanná (meaning “house of the serpent mouth” in Maya) with reference to its most impressive building, structure II, which represents a monster’s face with a wide open mouth showing long teeth.

Le site maya de Chicanná, situé dans l’État mexicain du Campeche, dans la péninsule du Yucatan, est l’un des plus petits sites archéologiques de la région, mais il n’en est pas moins intéressant. Les ruines ont été découvertes en 1966 et il est estimé que le site était habité entre l’an 300 avant J.-C. et l’an 1100 de notre ère. Le nom original du site n’est pas connu. Après sa découverte, on lui a donné le nom de Chicanná (signifiant « maison de la bouche du serpent » en maya) en faisant référence à son bâtiment le plus impressionnant, le bâtiment II, qui représente le visage d’un monstre à la bouche grande ouverte dévoilant de longues dents.

El sitio maya de Chicanná, situado en el estado mexicano de Campeche, en la península de Yucatán, es uno de los más pequeños sitios arqueológicos de la región, pero aun así es interesante. Las ruinas fueron descubiertas en el año 1966 y se piensa que el sitio fue habitado entre el año 300 antes de J.C. y el año 1100 de nuestra era. No se conoce el nombre original del sitio. Después de su descubrimiento, se le dio el nombre de Chicanná (lo que significa “casa de la boca de la serpiente” en maya) con referencia a su edificio más impresionante, el edificio II, que representa la cara de un monstruo con la boca abierta mostrando largos dientes.

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Destination:PEACE and PEACE Isla Mujeres join together to create an incredible volunteer vacation

From an article on Mexico Premiere:

Destination:PEACE Volunteer Vacations is branching out to Isla Mujeres to provide a beautiful experience for travelers who want to take their vacation one step further with a Vacation for the Soul

Destination:PEACE is making its way from the Pacific Ocean to the turquoise Caribbean waters and landing on Isla Mujeres, a quaint tropical island located just eight miles east of the coast of Cancun, yet worlds away. Destination:PEACE was born out of an idea to couple volunteer opportunities with the amazing landscapes throughout Mexico. During a Destination:PEACE Volunteer Vacation, guests will experience another culture while making a difference in the lives of others: children, women, families, animals and the environment. A volunteer will help raise awareness and contribute to the overall love, community and hope to the people and animals affiliated with PEACE Mexico, a non-profit organization currently operating in Punta de Mita and Isla Mujeres. Destination:PEACE gives a portion of their proceeds to PEACE in order to further their mission.

Founded in 2008, PEACE Isla Mujeres provides support to established nonprofit/community groups and develops initiatives focused on educational opportunities, youth development, environmental responsibility, animal care and protection and economic empowerment. Community grants, volunteerism, educational initiatives, and animal spay/neuter clinics are among the various projects.

From the Destination:PEACE Web site:

It’s not all work. Each five-day volunteer vacation combines volunteerism with the relaxing practice of yoga, taught by credentialed yoga instructors, spoils you with authentic Mexican cuisine, and enables you to explore the region and experience either cultural or adventure activities. Cultural activities might include salsa dancing, preparing fresh dishes using native plants or turning clay into masterpieces. Adventure activities might include hiking, surfing, mountain biking, whale watching even guiding baby turtles into their new world. There is a beautiful balance between the volunteer opportunities and the time to reflect and relax here in Mexico. We want you to enjoy yourself so much that you come back year after year.

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Volunteer at Centro Ecológico Akumal (CEA)

From the newsletter of Centro Ecológico Akumal:

CEA is an organization that depends heavily on volunteers. If you have the willingness to have fun while you help to preserve the environment, come and be part of CEA! You can participate in different programs.

Our next Reef Monitoring phase begins this March 28, while our Sea Turtle Program will start May 10. Other programs are already running, but you may still apply. Don’t forget to send your application forms now!

For further information visit our Web site or send an e-mail to info@ceakumal.org.

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Belize is a winner, by a nose

From an article by David Bird in The Gazette (Montreal, Canada):

Toucans, kingfishers offer magic moments

Every birdwatcher has a story or two about a feathered epiphany - what I call magic moments. I had two such moments in my recent trip to Belize.

This small country nestled on the east side of Mexico is a jewel of a place for birders that has retained a large portion of its wildlands. I went there in the last week of February to create contacts for setting up birding excursions and to investigate the state of ecotourism for my wildlife conservation course.

My magic moments occurred near Hopkins, a sleepy little town on the coast just south of Dandriga.

While staying at the comfortable and affordable All-Seasons Guest House, run by Ingrid Stahl and her cook, a Canadian expat, I had foolishly left it too late to book a guided bird-watching excursion. With her usual pleasant smile, Stahl said: "Why don't you take one of the bicycles and ride just down the road a mile or so? You will likely see some parrots and toucans along the river there."

Toucans! I could not grab my binoculars and get on that bike fast enough. I had never seen a keel-billed toucan, which happens to be the favourite bird of my daughter, Erin. She tells me that it has nothing to do with Froot Loops cereal.

About a half-hour later, I was driven out of the woods by voracious mosquitoes. These little monsters were biting right through my safari shirt and were drinking the DEET in my repellent.

Then I spotted a young man hacking vegetation with a machete. I asked him if there was any place nearby to see toucans. He directed me down the road to Toucan City.

Toucan City? Five minutes down the road, I turned into the driveway of Toucan Sittee. The place was named after the Sittee Rive,r upon which it is located. I was there for less than five minutes when I heard a frog-like, scratchy "krrk" from above. There, just above my head, was my very first keel-billed toucan. It was a magnificent bird, resplendent in black, yellow and red with that humongous beak of lime green, red and orange. A magic moment, indeed.

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Mexico Simplifies Visa Procedures

From an article on Mexperience.com:

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) has announced a range of amendments to its immigration and internment procedures to be implemented starting May 1, 2010. Although the amendments do not significantly alter the core rules and regulations which underpin current immigration law, the changes will make the paperwork and procedures less complicated for foreigners wishing to enter Mexico; particularly for those coming to Mexico to do business and those who wish to live, work and retire here.

The current entry form completed by all foreigners entering Mexico and traveling beyond the 20km ‘frontier’ zone, known as FMT-Forma Migratoria Turista-will be replaced by a FMM, or Forma Migratoria Multiple.

The new FMM will cover visits of up to 180 days for tourists, business visitors and technical visitors, with sections on the form for each category type. Business and technical visitor categories are clearly defined and the entry extension to 180 days is a significant change to current regulations which allow business visitors only a 30-day window to remain in the country.

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All American oceanic birds threatened by climate change, research finds

From an article on NatGeo News:

All 67 oceanic bird species in the United States are imperiled by the changing climate, the authors of a comprehensive assessment said today.

Many land-based birds are also at risk as habitat and food sources change.

The findings are published in the State of the Birds 2010 report, a collaborative effort as part of the U.S. North American Bird Conservation Initiative, involving federal and state wildlife agencies, and scientific and conservation organizations.

Partners include American Bird Conservancy, Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Klamath Bird Observatory, National Audubon Society, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey.

State of the Birds 2010 is the first comprehensive vulnerability assessment of bird species to climate change across the United States. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the report's release at a press conference in Texas today, along with several environmental organizations that had collaborated on the publication.

"As climate change impacts are increasingly felt throughout the United States and beyond, conservation efforts affecting birds will take on a doubly important role in protecting not only birds that are already threatened, but also more common birds as well," said David Pashley, vice president of American Bird Conservancy, in a news release about the report. Pashley was one of the authors of the report.

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Scientists reinvent the corn tortilla

From an article on Tierramérica by Verónica Díaz Favela:

Mexican scientists are working to make "nixtamalization," the ancestral technique for preparing maize to be made into tortillas, a more environmentally sustainable process.

MEXICO CITY, Mar 1 (Tierramérica).- The process for making corn tortillas, the tasty and millennia-old food for much of Mexico and Central America, contaminates huge volumes of water and consumes a great deal of energy.

"Some years ago, a group of millers came to ask us if we had done anything in this area, and we realized that with thousands of mills in the country, the problem was big and something should be done," Gerardo Ramírez Romero, researcher at the biotechnology department of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM), told Tierramérica.

That is how the study, "Nixtamal Mills: Towards a Sustainable Enterprise", began.

Corn tortillas are consumed by people of all socioeconomic levels in Mexico and, like bread, accompanies nearly every meal. It is also the basis for tacos, a popular dish.

At the mill, the maize is cooked in limewater, a calcium hydroxide solution, and then ground to make the dough for tortillas. The process, nixtamalization, was developed by indigenous peoples of the pre-Hispanic era. To make the tortilla, about 30 grams of the dough are made into a ball, then rolled out to form a circle, approximately 14 centimeters in diameter. It is then cooked on a hot surface on both sides.

Cooking the maize in limewater produces a byproduct that is rich in starch, cellulose and calcium, a mix known as nejayote, and dumped directly down the drain, said Ramírez Romero.

Every kilogram of maize uses two liters of water. And a small mill can contaminate 1,000 liters of water each day. There are 20,000 of these mills in Mexico. In the first phase of the UAM study - which lasted three months - the experts were able to reduce water contamination 80 percent, by removing the solids and producing more dough with them.

The next step will be to use solar energy to heat the water in which the maize is boiled, as a means of reducing consumption of natural gas, said Juan José Ambriz García, head of UAM's department of engineering processes and hydraulics.

But the sun barely heats the water to 50 degrees Celsius, and the maize cooks at 90 degrees. The temporary solution is to pre-heat the water with solar energy and then make up the difference using gas, Ambriz told Tierramérica.

This way, the mills would be able to save 40 percent on gas.

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Scientists settle on Yucatán asteroid as end of dinosaurs

From an article by Thomas H. Maugh II in the Los Angelese Times:

A 'dream team' of researchers concludes that the massive Gulf of Mexico impact 65.5 million years ago -- not volcanoes or multiple impacts -- indeed caused the greatest extinction event of all

It's official: The extinction of the dinosaurs and a host of other species 65.5 million years ago was caused by a massive asteroid that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, creating worldwide havoc, an international team of researchers said Thursday.

The 7.5-mile-wide asteroid was traveling at a speed about 10 times that of a rifle bullet when it hit, releasing a billion times more energy than the Hiroshima atom bomb. The impact blew dirt and rock around the world, set massive wildfires, knocked down forests worldwide, triggered massive tsunamis and earthquakes of magnitude 11 or larger and even caused parts of the continent to slip into the ocean.

Those events wiped out more than half of all species on Earth in what has been called the greatest extinction event of all time. The species lost included not only the dinosaurs, but also the bird-like pterosaurs, large marine reptiles and many smaller land and sea creatures, clearing the way for the emergence of mammals as the dominant life form on the planet.

All of this may sound familiar. In fact, the idea was proposed 30 years ago by Nobel laureate physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter after they found abnormally high concentrations of the element iridium in sediments from what was then known as the K-T boundary. This 65.5-million-year old layer of Earth separates fossils of the Cretaceous period from those of the Tertiary period.

Iridium is rare on Earth, but common in space, and the Alvarezes proposed that a giant asteroid had hit the Earth, producing the sudden decline in species diversity previously observed at the K-T boundary -- which is how the boundary got its name in the first place.

Then, in 1991, researchers discovered a 120-mile wide, 1.5-mile deep crater called Chicxulub in Mexico with the same age as the K-T boundary. Most considered it the smoking gun for the extinction.

In recent years, however, some scientists have speculated about alternative causes for the extinction, arguing that it could have resulted from multiple asteroid impacts or, more likely, massive volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps in India.

To settle the question, European researchers decided to assemble what Kirk R. Johnson of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science called "a K-T boundary dream team," a collection of 45 internationally renowned scientists in a broad spectrum of disciplines to analyze the possible causes of the extinctions. Funding came from the National Science Foundation in the United States and from similar groups in other countries.Their conclusions will be published Friday in the journal Science.

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'Women of Yucatan' are a force to be emulated

From a book review by Rekha Basu in The Des Moines Register:

The first female mayor of her Mexican city was overcome with shyness before becoming a forceful public speaker.

The farmer creating a community garden had to fight rumors she was planning a house of prostitution.

The first woman theater director faced stereotypes about women in theater being immoral, crazy, lesbian.

Those are just three of the people profiled in “Women of Yucatan: Thirty Who Dare to Change Their World,” (McFarland & Co.) by George Ann Huck and Jann Freed of Central College in Pella. Others fought to bring electricity or water to their village, stood up for the rights of Guatemalan refugees, lobbied for contraception, and started a school for children with Down syndrome. One challenged the view that people in wheelchairs shouldn’t go out, much less compete in sports.

It’s a book that speaks to the commonality of women’s experiences globally — and is a good gift for a woman you care about on International Women’s Day (Monday).

While younger readers may be shocked at patriarchal traditions that endure in Yucatan, older ones will have “Aha” moments about similar struggles American women faced, or still do.

As Ana Rosa Payan, Merida’s first female mayor, says, “When we attempt to bring forward women’s issues, they say, ‘Oh no, not the woman thing again!... As we move forward, we take up spaces they had before.’” Physician Sandra Peniche observed of government programs for women, “We can all participate behind men, or for men, but we can’t participate on our own.”

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Father, daughter hike Mexican coastline

A story by Sarah Delage on WLBZ-TV (Bango, Maine). For more about her trip see Wendy's blog:

BANGOR, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- A father and daughter from Maine are pursuing their dream of hiking the coastline of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Wendy Morrill of Bangor always dreamed of hiking from Cancun to the Mexico/Belize border. In 2005, she asked her father Richard Bailey to join her on the trip. They started the journey that year, and every year since they have walked another leg of the five hundred mile coastline. This May they plan to complete the trip, walking the remaining 50-100 miles to cross the border into Belize. Morrill presents slideshows of her photos from her travels to schools all over the state encouraging students to chase their dreams.

"I never know where i'm going to sleep," Morrill said. "I never know where i'm getting my food for the next meal. "It's just the excitement of surviving. Simple, surival."

Morrill hopes to get sponsors for their final trip so that she can raise money for cancer research.

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Scientists reinvent the corn tortilla

From an article by Verónica Díaz Favela on Tierramérica:

Mexican scientists are working to make "nixtamalization," the ancestral technique for preparing maize to be made into tortillas, a more environmentally sustainable process.

MEXICO CITY, Mar 1 (Tierramérica).- The process for making corn tortillas, the tasty and millennia-old food for much of Mexico and Central America, contaminates huge volumes of water and consumes a great deal of energy.

"Some years ago, a group of millers came to ask us if we had done anything in this area, and we realized that with thousands of mills in the country, the problem was big and something should be done," Gerardo Ramírez Romero, researcher at the biotechnology department of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM), told Tierramérica.

That is how the study, "Nixtamal Mills: Towards a Sustainable Enterprise", began.

Corn tortillas are consumed by people of all socioeconomic levels in Mexico and, like bread, accompanies nearly every meal. It is also the basis for tacos, a popular dish.

At the mill, the maize is cooked in limewater, a calcium hydroxide solution, and then ground to make the dough for tortillas. The process, nixtamalization, was developed by indigenous peoples of the pre-Hispanic era. To make the tortilla, about 30 grams of the dough are made into a ball, then rolled out to form a circle, approximately 14 centimeters in diameter. It is then cooked on a hot surface on both sides.

Cooking the maize in limewater produces a byproduct that is rich in starch, cellulose and calcium, a mix known as nejayote, and dumped directly down the drain, said Ramírez Romero.

Every kilogram of maize uses two liters of water. And a small mill can contaminate 1,000 liters of water each day. There are 20,000 of these mills in Mexico. In the first phase of the UAM study - which lasted three months - the experts were able to reduce water contamination 80 percent, by removing the solids and producing more dough with them.

The next step will be to use solar energy to heat the water in which the maize is boiled, as a means of reducing consumption of natural gas, said Juan José Ambriz García, head of UAM's department of engineering processes and hydraulics.

But the sun barely heats the water to 50 degrees Celsius, and the maize cooks at 90 degrees. The temporary solution is to pre-heat the water with solar energy and then make up the difference using gas, Ambriz told Tierramérica.

This way, the mills would be able to save 40 percent on gas.

Read more...

Yucatán and Mayan History

From an article on History.com:

Mayans flourished and established one of their greatest cities, Chichén Itzá, in what is now Yucatán. Because it was relatively isolated from the rest of Mexico until recently, the state developed its own unique culture.

One of the most advanced indigenous cultures of the ancient Americas, the Mayans began as hunter gatherers and migrated into the Yucatán around 2500 B.C. During the pre-classic period (500 B.C.-250 A.D.) they appeared in Quintana Roo, where they established ceremonial centers at Coba, Dzibanche and Kohunlich. Quintana Roo was considered to be the gateway to the Mayan world. Between 300 and 900, the Mayans built several cities in the Yucatán region, two of the most spectacular being Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.

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