Published on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 by Frank D Gardner The best place to be when you are looking for a good adventure is the Yucatan. The Yucatan Peninsula is loaded with lots of wonderful destinations plus sights to see, such as rich and diverse wildlife, tropical and migratory bird species in the vast tropical jungles and ancient stone ruins of the Mayans. The entire peninsula has an abundant ecosystem which is the r...

Published on Friday, March 23, 2012 by Frank D. Gardner Ask yourself: what could be more relaxing than lying on a tropical beach, watching the sun set? Especially in the equatorial latitudes, sunsets are certainly a sight to behold the glowing orange disc descending on the horizon, seeming to melt into the glittering waves as they dance, alight with fiery colors. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear the tranquil c...

Published on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 by Frank D. Gardner The state of Quintana Roo, located on the eastern edge of Mexico's Yucatn peninsula, is one of the most diverse and beautiful in the entire country. It's a tourist's dream come true, providing everything from ancient Maya ruins to lush, unspoiled natural landscapes, to the booming resorts and world-class luxury of the Riviera Maya. In times past it was known simply ...

Published on Saturday, February 4, 2012 by Frank D Gardner Undersea Vistas If you're planning a trip to any tropical destination, a scuba diving excursion should be a firm fixture of your itinerary. Warm-water locations just beg to have their undersea panorama explored at length, and there's no better way to soak in the grandeur of the planet's oldest habitat than with an air tank on your back, affording you hours to just ...

Published on Friday, February 3, 2012 by Frank D Gardner When planning a trip to glimpse the preeminent relics of ancient Mesoamerica, Cahal Pech rarely finds its way onto a traveler's list. Less well-known than the expansive Mayan ruins of Tikal and Chichn Itz, the remains of Cahal Pech are no less magnificent, not to mention a treasure trove of information on the lives of its builders and inhabitants. While you might st...

Published on Thursday, February 2, 2012 by Frank D Gardner God of the Morning Star According to legend, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl met his end by his own doing :via self-immolation, to be exact. Though his body burned completely to ash, one part of him survived the inferno; his heart, which soared to the heavens and took its place among them as the morning star. Though popular culture holds that the Aztecs prophesied Quet...

Published on Sunday, January 22, 2012 by Frank D Gardner Maize was a staple of the diets consumed by both the Mayan and Aztec cultures. Corn, the name it's more commonly known by, was a pillar of nutrition that sustained both empires in a manner similar to that of rice with respect to East Asian civilizations of the same period. Archaeologists have excavated some of the earliest known corn farms in territory controlled by...

Published on Saturday, January 14, 2012 by Frank D Gardner Predictions of the Maya The Maya were certainly a fascinating people, and perhaps it is their continued mystique as pioneering astronomers, writers, storytellers, and city-builders that makes the modern world look backward with wonder at the prophecies and warnings handed down from atop those ancient pyramids. To their credit, the Mayans also created the most accur...

Published on Saturday, December 31, 2011 by Frank D Gardner Spanning the entire Yucatan peninsula and extending into southern Mexico and northern Central America, the empire of the Maya was one of the longest-lived and most accomplished of all ancient Mesoamerican cultures. Though early Pre-Columbian settlements have been dated to almost 5,000 BC, the reign of the Maya began around 2,000 BC, and though they experienced a per...

Published on Friday, November 11, 2011 by Frank D. Gardner It was believed that the lands of Yucatan Peninsula including Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras flourished an extremely advanced civilization between 300 CE to 900 CE. A couple of years later, archaeologists discovered wonderfully established pyramids and also amazingly finely detailed ancient monuments within these areas, that are proven to have endured somewh...