Life as James knows it

Located within the Riviera Maya, which runs from south of Cancún to Tulum and the Sian Ka'an biosphere reserve is Playa del Carmen.  Once a small fishing town, it has now rapidly grown into a major tourist destination.  So fast has it grown, that the city infrastructure seems to be bursting in an attempt to cater for the daily influx of people.  Thankfully however, city planners have taken initiative and have begun making the town more pedestrian friendly. A 4 km foot and bicycle path will run the length of the town along 10th Avenue in Centro, along with two additional foot and bicycle paths which will connect two commercial corridors near Centro Maya in south Playa del Carmen and Col.  The construction is in full swing along 10th Avenue, and when complete, the transition to function as a major tourist destination will be evident. While everything is reasonably cheap in Player (in western dollar comparison), it's far more expensive than every other part of ...

The Maya name "Chichen Itza" means "At the mouth of the well of the Itza." This derives from chi', meaning "mouth" or "edge", and ch'en or ch'e'en, meaning "well." Itzá is the name of an ethnic-lineage group that gained political and economic dominance of the northern peninsula. Built by the Maya people of the Post Classic. The archaeological site is located in the municipality of Tinum, in the Mexican state of Yucatán. I cannot begin to attempt to convey my feelings in writing of the awe I feel while walking around inside the city.  It's a large city, and easy to see how this would have been a thriving metropolis during the classic/post-classic Mayan period.  Their understanding of mathematics and astrology was amazing, every structure manipulates the alignment of planets and stars to serve a purpose of calendar alignments .... perfectly!  Most likely the manipulation of astrology in this manner would have creat...

A cenote (from Yucatec Maya dzonot or ts'onot) is a natural pit, or sinkhole resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Especially associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings. Cuzama is located to the south of the State of Yucatan to 42 km from the city of Merida.  To access the cenotes of Cuzama, a small “truck” is boarded, which was once used to transport the plant of henequen to the machine house for processing.  The truck is like a small train carriage, which is pulled by a horse on rails. Chanusil (small insect) The access to water level is via a rustic wooden stair that descends about 20 meters among plants and trees, the water is blue turquoise and very clear.  The size of the initial entrance is quite small, and I initially thought how am I going to move around once inside. Once inside, the vault of the cenote is like a tunnel...

Mérida is the capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, and largest city of the Yucatán Peninsula. The city, like much of the state, has heavy Mayan, French, British and to a lesser extent Dutch influences. Mérida has the highest percentage of indigenous persons of any large city in Mexico with approximately 60% of all inhabitants being of the Maya ethnicity. It was built on the site of the Maya city of T'hó, which was also called Ichkanzihóo or Ichcaanzihó ("City of Five Hills") in reference to its pyramids. T'ho had been a center of Mayan culture and activity for centuries: because of this, some consider Mérida the oldest continually-occupied city in the Americas. Carved Maya stones from ancient T'ho pyramids were widely used to build Spanish colonial buildings of downtown Mérida, for example, in the walls of the main cathedral. Traditional Cantinas can be found all around the city, accompanied with the old style swinging doors along with popular tra...

A visit to a Zapatista Army of National Liberation village, a physical base is made up of mostly rural indigenous people ... bit of an eye opener.  Referred to as Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), they're a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. The Zapatistas have been in a declared war "against the Mexican state", although this war has been primarily defensive, against military, paramilitary and corporate incursions into Chiapas. In recent years, it has been focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The ideology of the EZLN is reflective of libertarian socialism, paralleling both anarchist and libertarian Marxist thought in many respects, the EZLN has rejected and defied political classification, as that would be just becoming part of the greater issue.  They retainin distinctiveness due in part to the importance of indigenous Mayan beliefs. The EZLN aligns itself with the wider alter-globali...

Located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, Palenque was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that flourished in the 7th century. The Palenque ruins date back to 226 BC to around 799 AD. After its decline, it was absorbed into the jungle, the discovered city area covers up to 2.5 km², however only about 2% of the city has been excavated and restored and is now a famous archaeological site. Palenque is a medium-sized site, much smaller than such huge sites as Tikal, Chichen Itza, or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayas produced. Much of the history of Palenque has been reconstructed from reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the many monuments; historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dynasty of Palenque in the 5th century and extensive knowledge of the city-state's rivalry with other states such as Calakmul and Toniná. The most famous ruler of Palenque was Pacal the Gre...