By , October 4, 2011 9:00 am

When we said goodbye to San Pedro to head to Xela (Quetzaltenango) it was to visit the  “Feria Centroamericana de Independencia.”

The fair was worth checking out, but as you may know from a previous post, we wish we had known a few things before we left.  So here’s our top 7 tips on attending the Xela fair:

1.  Despite the fact that it’s called the Independence Fair, you don’t actually have to go on Independence Day.  The fair runs for ten days and unless you like snuggling with thousands of complete strangers while walking past the food stalls, the rides, and the games… choose another day to go.

2.  If you hear from your taxi driver, your local guide book, your hostel owner, and the drunk guy on the chicken bus that you shouldn’t take anything more with you than the cash you need for the day, you should trust them.  You don’t know better than them, so leave everything else safely locked in your hostel room.  If you really really want pictures to remember it by, draw them by hand (see below).

3. Don’t underestimate the mad skills of the Guatemalan pickpockets.  Ever.  When you hear that every pickpocket in the country will be there, consider that one of them may be able to outsmart you.

4.  If you ignore my advice in #2, remember that a zipper on your pocket does not constitute an adequate defence for your camera against a pickpocket.

5.   Neither does constantly moving.

6.  Everyone has heard of the “spill something on you” pickpocket tactic, but don’t ignore the tiny old lady elbowing your back and butt tactic.  Even if you’re used to it from shopping in the markets, this old lady may have other intentions.

7.  If you decide to ignore all of the above advice, at least try this… if you absolutely positively must carry the camera and you know pickpockets are about… loop the camera strap around a belt strap on your pants so you will likely probably maybe feel the tug on the camera before it’s gone.

To sum up, I can definitely say the pick-pockets here are artisans. I kept the camera in a zippered front pocket in my pants. I thought for sure I’d notice any attempt to unzip a front pocket. Nope.  Now instead of pretty colourful photos, you get to admire Ashley’s hand-drawn pictures of the Xela fair.

The Camera is Gone

No camera there

So what about the fair? It was big. Really big. With tonnes of people and food stands as far as the eye could see. They sold roscas (a sweet cookie made just for festivals), churros, french fries, chicken, tortillas and beans, licuados, and some of the best cheap pizza we’ve ever had.

Roscas For Sale

Roscas for sale

Then there were the rides. Ashley is fond of saying that the rides look like Cold War era torture devices re-purposed to fair rides by hanging a sign indicating the price of a ticket. There were a couple of rides similar to what we have at our fairs at home, like the zipper, the gravatron, and the ferris wheel… but they had a few twists. For example, the zipper looks like it was manufactured from light weight angle iron by a fifteen year old kid in shop class. The gravatron has no walls, and the ferris wheel turned at obscene speeds in both the forward and reverse directions for an ungodly length of time.

Ferris Wheel Goes Forward and Back

A reasonably accurate representation of the ferris wheel

Ferris Wheel Death Trap

The death trap we picture in our mind when we think of the ferris wheel at the Xela Fair.

We didn’t actually ride any of the rides at the fair, partly because of their suspect design standards, and partly because Ashley was getting over a stomach bug that she caught the day we left San Pedro. None the less, it was still a fun experience.  We even overcame our new-found fear of pickpockets and returned another day for more fair food.  Without a camera of course.

By , September 28, 2011 6:00 pm

Well, we’ve been on the road for a few days now, and it dawned on me that we never quite finished our pre-trip “how-to” type posts. So today, we’re officially releasing our daily budget.

Our daily budget for two people is $100 Canadian Dollars per day. This figure includes airfare, food, lodging, new clothes, replacing stolen cameras, and each and every other expense we may incur on the road.

To keep on budget, we have the following tricks up our sleeve that we intend to use at some point:

  • Volunteer in exchange for food and lodging, or a portion there of.
  • Avoid pre-arranged tours, and the tour operator’s cut.
  • Travel overland where possible, avoiding expensive flights.
  • Buy groceries and cook for ourselves more often than not (we love cooking anyways).
  • Do our own laundry.
  • Don’t buy “stuff” unless necessary.
  • Couchsurfing.
  • Stay in locations long enough to get a good price on accommodation. Often there are discounts for stays of a week or longer, over a month apartments can generally be rented cheaply.

Our running daily total can be found on our statistics page. Ashley diligently writes down our expenditures in a little notebook and later transfers them to a nifty little site called budgetyourtrip.com, so we always know how far above or below our goal we are.

Country Summary (so far):

These numbers do not completely jive with our goal, as they do not include airfare, or other transportation between countries.  But none the less, they give you an idea of what it costs by day for the two of us country by country.

Mexico: $51.80 CAD
Guatemala: $43.04 CAD ($24.97 excluding Spanish classes and camera replacement)
Belize: $42.44 CAD
Honduras: $52.97 CAD ($25.28 excluding diving)
Costa Rica: $52.68 CAD
Nicaragua: $31.84 CAD
El Salvador: $23.26 CAD
Austria: $55.00 CAD
Bulgaria: $12.32 CAD (not including buying a house and car)
Turkey: $42.44 CAD

European Cities
Barcelona:
$52.97 CAD
Paris:
$107.16 CAD
Vienna: $80.01 CAD
Zagreg: $20.97 CAD
Belgrade: $16.73 CAD

By , September 20, 2011 12:55 pm

According to our neighbour, San Pedro is conducive to sloth. You would have no trouble spending your days looking out over the beautiful lake, reading a book, and eating out at top-notch restaurants. Likewise, it would be just as easy to consume your evenings with your favourite beverage, some live music, or a movie. Rinse and repeat.

To be fair, we had no shortage of sloth filled days while we were in San Pedro. And we enjoyed every relaxing minute of them. That said, we were also able to waste away a few days in slightly less sloth filled pursuits or day trips. Most of them were arranged through our Spanish School.

Zip-lining:

Just up the hill from San Pedro, near Santa Clara exists the Chuira-X-amolo zip-lines. They proudly boast to be the longest zip-line in Central America at 400 meters, though a quick google search proves their claim false. Still, zipping 400m between two mountains with a deep gorge between them and a fantastic view over Lake Atitlan was worth the trip. The second I cleared the trees and found myself suspended so high, I was in awe. So much so that I forgot to snap a photo… sorry.

There are a total of two zip-lines at this park, the first being somewhat shorter than the second, and a platform at the highest point of the mountain where you get a chance to practice some rappelling. If you’re lucky with your timing, you can witness the local Catholic/Mayans performing a service at the Mayan alter. Their mournful wailing creates a strange juxtaposition to your adventure sport. It was eerie, and certainly added to the experience. We paid Q150 per person including transportation.

A view from the bottom of the 400m zip-line

Coffee Plant Tour:

On the outskirts of San Pedro exists a cooperative coffee plant where the local farmers bring their coffee for processing. When we visited, coffee season had not yet begun and the machines were in various states of assembly as workers made repairs and alterations in preparation for the upcoming season which begins in November.

Because we took this tour with our Spanish School, we opted to have a Spanish speaking guide. We pretty much understood everything that was said, and took turns translating into English for the benefit of the rest of the group.

The basic process is quite simple. The lightweight (floats in water) coffee beans are first separated out for local consumption. For these “garbage beans” no more processing is required aside from a quick roasting.

The good beans that are meant for export are next sent to have their pulps removed followed by a three day soaking in water to remove some of the acidity from the beans. Once the beans have soaked, they are separated based on density in a sluice with the most dense beans being of the highest quality. Finally, the beans are sun dried for 5 days and either shipped as is, or roasted by hand and packaged both ground and whole.

The waste water is further processed by filtering, and treating with lime to reduce the acidity to a point where it can be re-used for processing or released into the lake. The pulp from the beans is stockpiled and fed to worms to make compost. The resulting compost is sold as inexpensive fertilizer and is highly prized for its ability to be used for many years without any negative effects unlike chemical fertilizer which has been known to “burn out” farm land when applied in heavy doses.

This same cooperative also produces honey and pollen. If you’d like to purchase their products, or arrange your own tour, they have a store just up the hill from the Pana Dock.

Soaking ponds and pulp remover

Kayaking:

This one is pretty self explanatory. You can rent kayaks from either dock for Q15, or from the Hotel San Francisco for only Q10 per hour. As for where to go, there is a swimming beach just past the point of Volcan San Pedro marked by a wooden dock, and good rocks to jump off of near San Marcos.

Climbing the Indian Nose:

The Indian Nose

Named for its appearance (can you see the profile of a face looking up with its mouth open?) the Indian Nose stands 1,800 meters above sea level (I think…) and can be reached from two routes. The shorter begins in Santa Clara, and requires only a half hour or so of walking to reach the summit. The longer starts in San Juan and requires a 2-3 hour assent. We split the difference taking the long way up, and the short way down. Transportation to either location is easy to arrange by pickup near the market and park in San Pedro. We paid Q50 each for entry fees and a guide from the school.

Volcan San Pedro:

This is the big volcano at 3,020 meters, although on our way to Xela our driver told us it was only a volcanito (little volcano). None the less, we thought it was pretty big, and the views were spectacular. We left San Pedro at 5:30AM and arrived back by 12:00. That included a little bit of time for transportation, and an hour long break at the top of the Volcano. I highly highly highly recommend leaving early for this hike, especially during the rainy season. We were lucky and had great visibility while we were at the top, but the clouds were already rolling in by the time we started our decent. The cost was Q100 per person and included a guide.

The guide is not optional. About two and a half years ago, there were a lot of robberies on this trail. We were told that the bandits used to hide out in the trees with full sized automatic weapons and would steal everything (shoes, watches, backpacks, everything). Since then, the government has made the volcano into a national park, and now it is regularly patrolled by police officers. It seemed quite safe to us.

Us at the top of Volcan San Pedro

Clouds rolling in during the descent

Stuff We Didn’t Do:

There’s lots more to do that we didn’t find the time for:

  • A day trip to Chi-Chi on Thursday or Sunday to see one of the largest markets around.
  • Paragliding over Lake Atitlan
  • Horseback Riding
  • Scuba Diving
  • Exploring the surrounding towns and villages.

Just because we didn’t fit these activities in does not mean that they are no good. On the contrary, everyone we spoke to who had done these activities had nothing but good things to say about them. As such, we are still wrestling with the idea of returning to San Pedro to take in some more activities, and chill a little while longer on the balcony of Hotel San Francisco.

By , September 12, 2011 3:55 pm

On Friday we finished what was 5 weeks of Spanish Class for me, and 6 weeks for Ashley. We took our classes at the Cooperativa Spanish School located just up the hill from the Santiago Dock. The school (or escuela) is located in the middle of a well kept garden full of flowers and various fruit bearing plants including lemon trees and coffee plants. Inside the garden there are roughly a dozen thatched roofs covering an equal number of tables and twice that number of chairs. All instruction here is 1 on 1 with a qualified instructor (as in university trained). As for the school itself, I really have nothing but good things to say.  However, since they are not paying me to write this, I’ll try to keep it brief:

  • The instructors are friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.
  • A portion (10%) of all tuition is given out as food aid to 20 different needy families in San Pedro. As a student, you are given the opportunity to visit one of these families and deliver the food yourself every second week.  A very rewarding experience.
  • The school is not just for foreigners. The teachers also teach Spanish to the local population, many of whom speak only their indigenous Mayan Language.
  • Outside of class time, they provide free activities several nights a week. The general staples are movies on Tuesdays (illustrating Central American history, sometimes graphic, always tear-jerkers), salsa classes on Wednesdays and conferences on Thursdays (where a live speaker comes to speak about and answer questions on a topic of local importance in Spanish).
  • Other excursions the school arranged at minimal extra cost.  Examples include a kayaking trip to the beach, traditional weaving classes, zip-lining, a coffee plantation tour, and hiking to the top of two mountains (the Indian Nose and the San Pedro Volcano).

I’d like to thank Scott and Shawna from Get Up And Globe for telling us about this school, we thoroughly enjoyed our time here.

Mike and his teacher Lucy

What we learned in 5+ weeks:

When we first started looking into Spanish Classes, we really wanted to know just how long we would need to take classes for until we could speak Spanish. Our goal was not just to be able to order a drink in a bar or book a hotel room, but to be able to actually have a conversation with someone.

To give you an idea of where we started, here are a few of the things we actually said in Spanish because we didn’t know any better:

She believes in fish
Where I live it is very plate
Can we room tomorrow one night corn

We were truly that good.

Ashley and her teacher Flores

So, after 5 weeks of study, you’re probably wondering if we’ve reached our goal. Honestly, not quite, but we are close. I think the knowledge base is there, it’s just a matter of getting out there and practising. We can generally understand most of what is said to us and we can get our point across fairly well too.  Unfortunately, it still takes us a fair amount of time to think of the words we are trying to say and to conjugate our verbs.  Most of what we require now is practice.

Personally, I think 5 weeks has been a great introduction to Spanish. For me, it wasn’t until about half way through week 5 that I was able to understand almost all of what was being said to me.  Any less, and I could still get by, but I wouldn’t have been nearly as conversational as I am now.

Here’s an idea of the language concepts we learned to say. Of course, we can also turn them into questions or negate them.

I do this
I’m doing this
I have done this
I had done that
I will have done this
I probably did that
I did this
I was doing this
I am going to do this
I will do this
I might do this
I do this for you
I do it
Do this

Really, a good chunk of the practical parts of a language. There’s still a lot more lessons for us to learn, for example on my last day of class my instructor estimated that it would take me another 3 weeks to complete their program. I may go back to class if I find there are a few concepts I can’t wrap my head around, but it seems to me the more I practice the better I get, and the rest may just fall into place without the need for more direct instruction.

The teachers of Cooperativa and our giant selves

By , August 24, 2011 11:43 am

Ashley and I have been living in a hotel room on the 4th floor of the San Francisco Hotel in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala for the last 3 weeks. San Pedro is located on the beautiful Lake Atitlan, which I believe to be the caldera of an ancient volcano. To illustrate the beauty of this place, I wanted to share a few photos I took from our balcony. For those that are Interested, I tried out a few new photographic techniques: the first two are stitched panoramas, and the next three are HDR images.

One last thing, all our photos are for sale, if you see something you would like to hang on your wall anywhere on this site, please use the contact us form and we’ll work out the pricing.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally,

Images of our balcony and our hotel room.  It’s just larger than our bed, but has a private (hot) shower!

 

By , August 17, 2011 12:26 pm

Flores is known as the town of painted doors (maybe just to us?) and is located on an island that was supposedly once occupied by the Itzas after they abandoned Chichen Itza. Today, there is absolutely no sign that the island was ever occupied by the Itzas. Instead, the place is filled with expensive hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies.

Mike and the Green Door

Mike dressed like a door. Sorry for the animation, scroll down and it'll go away

Getting There

To get to Flores, we booked a tour from Palenque Mexico which included a bus ride to the river that serves as the natural border between Mexico and Guatemala, a boat ride up the river (in the most unstable boat I’ve ever been in), and a bus ride from the Guatemalan side of the river directly to Flores. I suppose it’s possible to book all this transit individually, but going through the tour agency sure saved a lot of hassle, and wasn’t really that expensive.

A very long and narrow boat

What Is There To Do?

There’s not much going on in Flores itself. The town was built for the express purpose of shuttling tourists out to the Tikal Ruins. We’ll write more about Tikal in an upcoming post.

You can swim in the lake, but be warned the water is warm… bordering on hot. We jumped in one afternoon trying to escape the heat and were somewhat disappointed. On a cool overcast day, it would be awesome though.

Ye Old Swimming Hole

There are boat shuttles that will take you to a small island with a museum, a beach, and an animal rehabilitation centre. We didn’t do any of these, but the option was there.

At the very top of the island exists a church overlooking a park. The church itself was by far the tallest structure built at the highest point on the island. After asking around in our really bad Spanish, we managed to find the priest and ask him if we could go to the top of the church to take some photos. He agreed, and the three of us, along with a local parishioner who had apparently never thought of asking to do the same, made our way up. The view was the best on the island. And we had a good time trying to converse with our two companions.

View from the Church

We only spent two nights in Flores, and that was enough for us. It was a nice enough, but if we were to do it over again, we probably would spend only one night in Flores, and the second in Tikal. As it turns out there are a few places offering accommodation in Tikal for a lower price than we could find in Flores. There is also the possibility of finding late night or early morning tours through the Tikal Ruins outside of the peak tourist hours when the park is closed to the public. Watching a sunset or sunrise from the top of the ruins would have been impressive.

By , August 7, 2011 4:40 pm

As mentioned in my last post, Ashley and I have been spending a lot of time visiting Mayan Ruins and Museums. I wanted to write down some of the odds and ends that I’ve put together, partly so I don’t forget, and partly because I find it really interesting and don’t mind sharing.

Before I get too far, here’s my disclaimer. Everything I’m writing here could be (and probably is) entirely fiction. It’s mostly information I’ve put together myself after talking with tour guides, visiting a lot of ruins, and visiting several museums each having their own varying qualities of English translations. Please take everything here with a great big grain of salt.

Who Were the Mayans?

The Mayans are a distinct race insomuch as there are distinct races of human beings. As a race, they are characterized by their dark skin, their large noses, and short stature. I’ve also been told that their men do not grow facial hair.

As a people, they formed several distinct civilizations throughout history. The one responsible for the majority of the ruins we have to admire today began around 250AD and lasted for 650 years before a complete collapse around 900AD.

It’s important to note that very little documentation survives today that describes ancient Mayan society.  The two biggest reasons for this are that the Mayans lost the ability to read and write their own language when their civilization collapsed, and that the Spanish, as much as possible, destroyed all writings and carvings that they could find during the time of the Conquistadors.

Beliefs

The Mayans believed that the gods created man from a mixture of their own blood and corn. They believed that the reason they were created was to worship and honour their creators. Thus was the purpose of man.

Sacrifices were made of variously coloured liquids obtained from trees, of animals such as jaguars and in rare cases of men. Two notable cases where humans were sacrificed were the ball courts found at all sights we visited, and the cenote (sink hole) at Chichen Itza.

Coba Ball Court

Little is known about the ball game played by the Mayans. It’s generally understood that the game was played with a heavy rubber ball, and that the players were only allowed to touch the ball with their hips and elbows.  The goal of the game was to pass the rubber ball through one of the two hoops on the walls of the court. It is believed that the game was not a game at all, but more of a religious ritual. At the end of the ball game a sacrifice was made, though it is not known if the sacrifice was someone’s life, or only a small mutilation such as a pierced tongue or scarification. It’s also not know if the subject of the sacrifice was a player for the winning team, the losing team, or if they were even players in the ball game.

As for the cenote at Chichen Itza, the Mayans believed that cenotes were a gateway to the underworld where there resided many important gods, such as the rain god. At times, human sacrifices would be made to the rain god by throwing children and men into the cenote. When the cenote at Chichen Itza was excavated, hundreds of human remains were uncovered.

Cenote at Chichen Itza

The Mayans worshipped many gods, each reigning over their own dominion. One interesting aspect of these gods was their ability to be combined and broken apart many times. Thus when all the gods were combined, the Mayans worshipped a single all powerful being. But, when they were broken apart, they worshipped a wind god, a rain god, a blister god (yes a god of blisters) and many more.  Each of these specific gods were aspects of the one god yet individual in their own right.

Unfortunately for the Mayans, the makeup of the gods most commonly worshipped were confused by the Spanish to be Christian devils and demons. For example, the Mayans believed in one all powerful god, divided into 3 main gods of the heavens. This paralleled the Christian belief of a single God who can be expressed as the father, son, and the holy spirit. So in the eyes of the Spanish, the Mayans knew about the Christian god. Here’s the catch, the Mayans also believed in an underworld with 13 gods that were popular to worship. For the Spanish 13 was an evil number and they called gods of the underworld demons. Thus, the Mayans were branded as demon worshippers by the Spanish and every effort was made to destroy all of their temples and writings.  There’s no doubt that this contributed to the poor treatment the Mayans received from the Spanish.

Corn

So man is one part blood of the gods and one part corn. Why corn? Corn was probably the most important factor in allowing the Mayan civilization to come into existence. By farming corn, the Mayan people were able to spend less time in the pursuit of food than would otherwise be required without the aid of agriculture. This free time allowed them their civilized pursuits of trade, war, worship, science, and temple building. Without corn, we wouldn’t have called the Mayans civilized, and they themselves were well aware of their reliance on corn.

Science

The Mayans were very gifted in science. In mathematics, they were the first group on earth to discover the number zero. In astronomy, they were able to accurately track the movement of the Earth and several planets around the Sun. This allowed them to create an accurate calendar containing 365 days in a year. They were also gifted in engineering, as demonstrated by their great buildings, and hydraulic water systems. Some of their palaces had indoor toilets and running water, something many other civilizations had not yet developed.

Subjugation of the People

The ruling class of the Mayan civilization claimed to be direct descendents from the gods, and thus ordained to govern the affairs of men. They also claimed to be in communication with the gods.  They claimed to convey the problems of the people to the gods and to determine for the people what appropriate sacrifices were required for the gods to be satisfied and ease their hardships. No doubt this was perceived as an essential service by the general populace.

To back up these claims, the royal family undertook several drastic steps. Here’s a few examples:

  • They deformed their heads as children so that they would appear to more closely resemble an ear of corn. This would have set them apart as a visually distinctive race, and helped convince their subjects of their divine origins.
  • They studied the calender and were able to determine when the rainy season would start each year. Keeping this information secret, they would hold rituals where they would spill their own royal blood in a public and gruesome way, claiming that their blood was payment to the gods for the rain needed to grow the corn. Within hours or days of this ritual, the rainy season would start thus proving their divinity once again.
  • Using their knowledge of engineering and astronomy they caused their temples to be built in such a way that the sun would shine through small windows and give flashes of light or display symbolic shadows at important times of the year. The general populace would take these signs as acceptance from the gods for the sacrifices ordered by the royalty and would thus again be confused.

Elongating the skull to look a little more like corn

To keep up this trickery, only the royal family and their closest servants were allowed to study the arts of astronomy, and science. When a system of writing was developed, again, only a select few scribes living within the palace were taught how to read and write. In this way, the knowledge of astronomy and science could be passed down through the generations without the common people becoming aware of it’s existence and thus believing the above trickery to be divine.

One down side of this “keep it in the family” approach was the inability of the royal family to bring commoners into the family for fear of them revealing their secrets. For this reason, incest was quite common, resulting in many strange physical deformations in the ruling class. As they claimed to be of divine origin, these deformities were sold to the populace as proof of divine favour and the Mayans came to worship dwarfs, albinos, and those who possessed more than 10 fingers.

Temple Building

Having thus subjugated the general populace by feigning to be divine, the royal families ordered the construction of great palaces, tombs, temples, markets, and other buildings as they required. The commoners would not have lived in these buildings, but would have spent a great deal of their lives contributing to their construction.

Though there is evidence that the Mayans kept slaves, these great constructions would have been gladly built by commoners without the need for mass enslavement. It was likely considered a great honour to be able to devote one’s life to the glorification of the gods, and the royalty would have had little trouble in convincing the number of people required for construction to work long days with minimal reward.

Previous to my visits to these Mayan ruins, I had imagined that the Mayans lived in harmony with nature, living among the animals and trees of the jungles. The reality is that this was not at all true. In constructing their great buildings, it was necessary to cut and burn the trees of the jungle to supply mortar and plaster. This was prepared by burning limestone and combining the result with wood-ash and water. It is said that when the Mayan cities were in their peak, they would have been cleared of trees as far as could be seen.  In their place would be great buildings, humble dwellings, and vast corn fields.

Trade

The Mayans had developed a trade network that reached far north into today’s USA and far south.  Between their own cities, trade was done on a large scale and was very important. The royal families established their cities for specialized purposes, for example one city may have been established for corn production while another existed to worship the fertility god or to study astronomy. The fruits of each city’s labour were then exchanged between them.

To facilitate this trade, raised roads were constructed stretching up to 100km through the jungle. The roads were raised 3-4 feet above the grade and were roughly 10 feet wide. The tops were covered in a smooth white plaster (which today is quite slippery when wet as we discovered). It’s not known why the roads were built in such dimensions as the Mayans never made use of beasts of burden nor wheeled carts.

War and Slavery

As with any other great civilization occasions of tension would arise between various cities as a result of unfair trade. The royal families would also, at times, seek to extend their sphere of control or to elevate their position against their brothers and sisters. This led to campaigns of war. Little is known about the extent of the wars, but there is evidence that cities would be occupied by forces from other cities for years at a time, the victors of these wars would carry off slaves, and the royalty would be disposed or enslaved.

Decline

This is probably the most interesting aspect of the Mayan civilization. For one reason or another, the whole of the Mayan civilization ceased to exist around 900AD. Although the cities themselves were abandoned en masse the Mayan people themselves never disappeared and still survive today along with their spoken language.

My best guess as to why is that a large portion of the region inhabited by the Mayans underwent a period of drought. The result of which would have been catastrophic to the rulers. The populace must have discovered them to be the frauds that they were, when they were unable to produce the necessary rain, or would have considered the ruling class to have done something to offend the gods and thought the solution was to rise up against them.

Other suggestions have been put forward to me, including mass disease, a poisoned drinking water supply (from dumping sacrifices into it for hundreds of years), and overpopulation (Tikal had around 200,000 residents in it’s peak, other cities around 50,000.) This would have had a great demand on food and drinking water). The reality is, nobody really knows why the Mayan civilization ceased to exist so abruptly.