Welcome to Central America!!
(Yagul, Mexico)lView of Yagul ruins in Central Mexico
 
 
Dave and I toured Central America two different times during 1992-1993. We visited more than 50 Mayan ruins and archeological sites throughout  Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The photos below are a small sampling of the wonders we saw.
 
 
 
 
The Maya flourished in Central America for over one thousand years. Despite commonly held myths, the Maya did not disappear as a vanished civilization. There are many Maya today and they live, as they always have, in the Peten of Guatemala and Quintana Roo of Mexico. For over 500 years (about 600 - 1200 CE), the Maya lived in huge urban centers with populations upwards of 50,000 inhabitants. Tikal, Copan, and Mirador are just three examples of these huge urban centers. 
 
Rosalia siteCopan Temple 1Tikal
 
 
 
The mystery of the Maya is not where they went - but WHY they went. It is a mystery unsolved to this day; environmental degradation, internal conflict, bloody sacrifices a population would not support…many theories and few facts.  The picture below was taken at Tonina in central Mexico.  It depicts a beheaded warrior, a gaping skeleton and other ravages of wars which were faught to obtain sacrificial victims.
Gaping skeleton
 
 
 
 
The form of writing the Maya left behind is just now being 'cracked'. The Maya littered their monuments and their buildings with their writing. The more we decipher, the more we learn. 
 
 
 
The University of Pennsylvania is working to restore this Mayan site in the Peten of Guatemala. Uaxactun is north of Tikal in Guatemala.  Perhaps it was a suburb of this huge metropolis.  Because it is considerably older than Tikal, some archeologists surmise it was an earlier city that was abondoned as populations migrated to other urban centers.
 
 
 
 
Dave and I find our own buried 'treasure'  
while at a remote site in the Peten of Guatemala.		 Misol Ha waterfall greets a tired traveler after a long day exploring the Palenque ruins (below) in Central Mexico.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Although not Mayan, this ruin site of a silver mine near Tegucigalpa, Honduras speaks of another epoch in the history of the Americas; the Spanish conquerors.
 
 
 
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