Back from Maya land trip in Mexico/Guatemala -- pix --

[Christopher O'Brien]

Mexico Trip parts 1 and 2 of 5 -- La Venta Museum, Palenque, Bonampak, Yaxchitlan and Comacalco.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Yes, lucky bloody you!

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Yes, lucky bloody you!

Yeah, I suppose... first vacation to the tropics in 10 years and I worked my ass off and trashed my knees climbing ? temples and pyramids... 5.5 hrs of HD video and 500 photos later, I need a vacation and re-hab from my so-called vacation... Lucky me.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

What's a vacation?

 

[Wade]

Getting yourself all set up for december 21 chris ?

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Getting yourself all set up for december 21 chris ? Happy Thanksgiving!

Yeah, hopefully I'll be back down to Guatemala filming the actual Baktun ceremony at one of the earliest Maya civilization sites at Izapa. Izapa is home to one of the earliest Long Count date inscriptions ever found and the ballcourts and many monuments there are aligned directly to sunrise on Winter Solstice. Celebrations at the site will include a culmination of ceremonies that Maya elders have been performing at the site for millennia. The trip is from Dec 17-23. We have wrangled permission to visually document the event for my brother's company, Mayasites Travel. Interested in attending the rituals being performed at "ground zero?"
Go HERE:
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[Christopher O'Brien]

What's a vacation?

A vacation is when you manage to set aside a small amount of time to go somewhere and (hopefully) relax. Ideally, you figure out a way to get other people to pay for it, but it all springs from allowing yourself permission to make it so. I made it a so-called "working vacation." In other words, I worked my ass off and documented the journey properly and with flair—and managed to have a great time w/ cool people!

 

[RenaissanceLady]

You have gone to the places I have always wanted to go but never been. Yes, even if it was truly a working vacation, I'm still envious. Thank you for sharing these photos and your story.

 

[Randall]

Too bad you forgot to take one of those Accutron Torsion Field Detectors ! Maybe Hoagland could have loaned you his ....

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Sorry Chris - your explanation of needing another vacation to recover from the first, does not wash with me!
Still bloody lucky! I remember Kevin Smith used to say he was organising a beach party in Thailand for his listeners over the Dec 21st (end of world) type-deal.

I think I shall be alone on that date, looking out the window at the miserable UK winter weather. Great.

 

[pong]

Thanks for sharing, Chris! There are plenty more secrets in the jungle and people like you will slowly tease them out. Our education--about the past--is just beginning. Personally, I love the Olmec heads. Bigger is better.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Those heads are undeniably African faces. There just has to at least have been regular trade between the Americas and Africa way back before and Columbus?

 

[RenaissanceLady]

If the Vikings were (probably) on this continent long before Columbus, I don't think it's too hard to fathom that Africans might have been here as well. There is support for this premise. I agree that I think the evidence is at least fairly solid, in part because North Africans had some stories giving evidence to a voyage prior to Columbus and some mummies appear to have had traces of tobacco and cocoa - which were not believed to have existed in Africa until after Columbus' arrival. Then you also have the Olmec culture. None of this is 100% conclusive but it's may be very likely.

 

[ProphetofOccam]

It's all certainly fun to think about. Still, I think the head looks less like an African and more like M.O.D.O.K. Perhaps the early Mayans were time travelers with unarguably excellent taste in literature.

George