Mayan marvels

Verdant growth: The jungle waits to claim another temple. Picture: Kate Turkington

Verdant growth: The jungle waits to claim another temple. Picture: Kate Turkington

Published Feb 7, 2011

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It’s official. You can stop worrying. The world will not end on December 21, 2012. It seems that some ill-informed woo-woo pundits got hold of the Mayan prophecies and got them all wrong.

How do I know this? Because I’m standing in the jungle ruins of Tikal in northern Guatemala, a Unesco World Heritage site, the largest protected area in Central America, where once a mighty Maya kingdom held sway, as Miguel, our Mayan guide and respected shaman, puts the record straight.

Colourful toucans and green parrots flit through the tall straight trunks of the kapok trees as the shrieks of howler monkeys echo through the tropical rainforest’s high canopy. The air is filled with the strange fluting whistles of exotic birds as shafts of sunlight filter through the tall mahogany and tropical cedar trees.

A couple of spider monkeys hanging on their long black limbs from the high branches eye us curiously. A coati – a member of the raccoon family – potters about the undergrowth as Miguel explains.

“Our Mayan calendars show us that on December 21, 2012, there will be a solar eruption (this is confirmed by astro-physicists). The earth will align with the galaxies and the light from the Milky Way will wash the cosmos.”

He reminds us that this is the first time in 26 000 years that this will happen. “We expect change, a new consciousness, but our calendar goes on continuously after this date.” He smiles at us. “So you are all quite safe.”

Tikal is one of the most impressive sites in the Mayan world. Situated in the north of Guatemala, the citadel and its massive temples stretch over 120km2, but so far only 22 percent has been excavated. Some of the temples soar to over 47m. The site dates back to 400BC although it was at its most splendid and prolific during the Maya Classic period between 200-900AD.

To put this into historical perspective, when Europe was engulfed in the Dark Ages, here was a civilisation which built great pyramid temples, palaces, tombs, imposing administration buildings, reservoirs and accurate observatories.

Stelae – tall standing stones – are covered with hieroglyphics, carved animals and birds. All the stones are chiselled by hand, as the Mayans had no tools. They used obsidian to cut the soft limestone. They could do other stuff too. Miguel tells us a screwtop jar, circa 500AD, was found here. In 1525, the Spanish conquistador, Cortés, passed within a few kilometres of the ruins, but made no mention of them in his letters home.

We wander around the central plaza where the Temple of the Jaguar looms, built by a king whose jade death mask adorns tourist posters of Guatemala. Further into the uncleared jungle, where every vegetation-covered mound and small hill is an unexcavated temple or building, a few of us climb to the top of a pyramid-shaped temple, up the 297 wooden steps built at its side. The view from the top is stupendous. Jungle as far as the eye can see, with the stone tops of temples poking out of the forest canopy.

A small group of friends and I have come to Mexico and Guatemala to learn about their culture and history. By the time we get to Tikal, our journey is nearly over – we have visited the world-famous site of Chichén Itzá in Mexico (splendid but not as overpoweringly amazing as Tikal) where we stood in the biggest ball court in Central America – think Harry Potter in a huge quidditch court. The ancient Mayan game had only two players, who each tried to throw a heavy leather ball through a hoop fastened to the court’s stone side walls. From a modern perspective, we find it hard to understand the motivation to win, because the winner got his head sliced off as homage to the rain god.

As we approach the central plaza, where the greyish-white stone pyramids stand straight against the cloudless blue sky, we hear the sound of clapping. A tourist has climbed up to the high central door and is clapping his hands. Apparently when the high priest ceremoniously clapped his hands in front of the central door of the main pyramid, the sound exactly echoed the call of the sacred quetzal bird and the onlookers thought it was magic.

We knew about Mexico’s beautiful beaches (not a patch on our South African ones) and the stunningly exquisite Guatemalan woven handicrafts. What we hadn’t expected were the charming old Spanish colonial towns with their cobbled streets, high pavements, imposing churches and vibrant markets.

We spent a couple of nights in San Cristobal de las Casas, where the open-air ground floor of the hotel is surrounded by superb life-size reproductions of the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. At night, the zocalo, or main square, comes alive with music, people eating, dancing and drinking. We quaffed frozen margueritas and feasted on nachos and guacamole.

The World Heritage Site of Antigua in Guatemala is another unexpected delight. Built in 1540, it has survived earthquakes, civil war and neglect, but a century ago coffee brought the old Spanish city back to life. That night, as we slept in one of the first houses built by the Spanish in Antigua, we were rudely awoken by quite severe earth tremors. I fall back to sleep thinking that this house has survived since the 1540s so there’s no point worrying. The next day our guide, Alex, tells us that there’s a major earthquake every 25 years. We don’t ask him when the last one was.

Today, where once the mighty Maya ruled, it is the Catholic church which rules in Mexico and Guatemala. But one day, in the tiny Mexican village of San Juan Chamula, we visited a once-Catholic church that has now become totally Mayan.

Imagine a big stone church at one end of a small, bustling market square, where women in thick black wool skirts, wearing shawls atop their long black pigtails, rub shoulders with men in white woollen tunics, cowboy hats and worn leather boots. We go inside the church where the outside is draped with colourful banners, flags and garlands.

Inside are flickering lights, groups of people squatting on the rush-strewn marble floor, saints in glass boxes, the heady smell of local incense. The worshippers clear little spaces on the floor where they “plant” their candles in groups of three, six or nine – all fortuitous numbers. The colours of the candles are significant too. Red, black, white – all have different meanings. Bottles of Coke, Fanta and Sprite stand among the candles, echoing the individual colours. Supplicants to the gods chant their prayers oblivious to anything else around them save the saints and the altar as shafts of sunlight pierce the glass of the old arched windows.

One old woman with a long white plait, shaggy black skirt and purple satin blouse, crosses herself as she enters the church, before making her way to find her own candle space in the half-light. Another woman breastfeeds her newborn baby. Another has a live chicken in a cardboard box, ready to have its neck wrung in sacrifice. A man chats on a cellphone as other men sit on the wooden steps at the back of the church and gossip.

The Catholic church has outlawed this place and has no dominion over it. Tradition has triumphed.

By boat we visited little villages on the shores of Lake Atitlan, where three volcanoes stand sentinel over the vast inland sea. Another day we chugged down the Sumidero canyon where black vultures wheeled over cliffs up to 1 000m high. We survived a taxi blockade in a border town in southern Mexico (hey, we’re from South Africa!), treacherous, almost impassable roads and hairpin bends, thick mist, awful food and cancelled flights.

On our penultimate day, as we were trying to get flights back to Mexico from the breathtakingly beautiful country of Guatemala, one of my friends got a call from her husband in Grahamstown. “Where are you?” he asked.

“San Salvador,” Susie replies.

“Why are you there?”

“I have no idea.”

I’m often asked what are the best things to take with you on your travels. My answer is always the same. Pack a sense of adventure, a sense of humour, an open mind and a thirst to learn new things.

You’ll need all these and more when you go to Central America. - Weekend Argus

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