From FoxNews:
Doomsday pyramid to bring positive thinking in Mexico’s Maya Riviera
The Maya Riviera, the northwestern part of the Yucatan Peninsula,
alongside the turquoise Caribbean Sea is home to some of the
most-visited Maya cities, Tulum, Coba and Chichen Itza.
So it's no wonder that this area is turning into one of the main
destinations to celebrate "the end of the world." The ancient Maya
calendar ends on December 21, 2012, the Winter Solstice. It’s not the
end of the world, really --as a some like to predict. Archeologists now
believe it is simply the end of one calendar cycle and the start of a
new one. Maya apocalypse or not, the debate and the headlines are good
for tourism. And I could see that first hand during recent trip.
One of the special attractions set up to celebrate the ending of the Maya calendar is a
new pyramid that's being constructed for doomsday, and beyond.
Mexican artist Xavier de Maria y Campos hopes the new
b’aktunoob,
or Maya calendar cycle, ushers in a new era of positive thinking and
appreciation of nature and the environment, two things the Maya believed
in. That’s why he is building a giant pyramid out of 700,000 recycled
polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water and soda bottles in Aldea Zama,
between the ancient and modern cities of Tulum.
This Pyramid of Positive Thinking is to be completed on December 21,
2012, covered in jungle foliage and topped with a giant mirror that will
reflect the sun's rays during the day and create an artificial light
beam at night.
Visitors are invited to stuff a bottle with a little paper prayer or
wish. Mine was that we use fewer plastic bottles. Visitors also can
insert a wish contributed virtually via the pyramid’s website, a popular
activity for school groups.
As the pile of bottles rises, the structure is planted with greenery.
A gardener handed me a cutting, which I pushed into the webbing holding
the pile of plastic in place. Eventually, this pyramid will look like
just another hill covered with jungle growth, like the hundreds that dot
the Yucatan, hiding Maya ruins which have not yet been excavated.
Tulum currently does not have a recycling program. Campos hopes for
good cosmic karma from the positive thoughts inside the bottles, the act
of getting so much plastic out of garbage dumps, and the eco-awareness
his project is building. It couldn’t hurt.
Maya calendar aside, the Maya Riviera, the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, is also a destination for animal adventures.
Mid-May to mid-September is whaleshark season, when the huge animals
feed where the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico meet, off Cancun and
Isla Mujeres. Snorkeling with the sharks is big business, and you can
sign up for a boat tour at the ferry ports at either end, or through
your hotel concierge.
They are called whale sharks because they are sharks the size of whales,
feeding close enough to the surface that you might actually land on one
when you jump off the boat to swim with them. But that doesn’t happen,
since tour boat captains and swim guides are experts at getting close,
but not that close.
They also could be called polka-dot sharks, because their huge blue-grey
bodies are decorated with grey-white polka-dots everywhere, except on
their dorsal fins and tails. Whatever you call them, it’s like
snorkeling with a submarine.
On my first two jumps, I focused on getting pictures and video with my
underwater camera, which was dumb. It’s tough to see their widescreen
glory when you are watching through a postage stamp viewfinder. So, on
the rest of my jumps, I left the camera behind on the boat.
Each jump, my guide, Juan Carlos Coba, held my hand tightly and helped
me power-swim after “our” shark. Be sure to ask how many people will be
on your boat. Juan Carlos takes no more than eight people, so each of us
had more jumps and more time in the water each jump than the other,
larger boats with as many as 20 tourists aboard taking turns. Click for
more at
CruiseDivers.
The whale sharks were just one of my animal excursions.
On Isla Mujeres,
I visited the Tortugranja, a government-supported breeding farm for
endangered sea turtles. In the last decade, this small facility has
released 1,000 Hawksbill and rare white turtles into the wild.
Carefully, I held a week-old baby about the size of a large coin, before
returning it to one of the attendants.
In Akumel, between Cancun and Tulum, I swam with adult turtles which
hang out in the sea grass just offshore. My guide, Virginia Romano
Franklin, grew up here and has been swimming with turtles since
childhood. She found a pair feeding blissfully, a few hundred yards from
a group of tourists acting like unruly paparazzi, closing in on a solo
turtle who must have been terrified. Click for more at
Riviera Adventours.
Romano Franklin also is caring for a baby spider monkey at her family restaurant,
Oscar & Lalo,
in Tulum. Lalito was found abandoned on the family ranch nearby, and
wears an infant diaper – she cuts a hole in it for his tail – when he
plays tag with guests. Just like a human toddler, Lalito is in constant
motion, except when he stops briefly for a cuddle.
On other days, I swam with trained dolphins at
Xcaret and at
Xel-Ha,
the two family-oriented, tourist-oriented nature parks in the Riviera
Maya. At Xcaret, dolphins do their famous “foot push”, which is pushing a
human visitor across the Olympic size enclosure.
I was instructed to float face down, my legs locked straight, hip
width apart. An instant after the trainer blew his whistle, the noses
of two dolphins were pushing the soles of my feet and I was flying
across the pool with my arms outstretched, like Kate Winslet on the bow
of the Titanic. At Xel-Ha, one of their tricks is to swim upright, so I
could hold their flippers briefly and “dance” with them.
Yes, there is controversy about such captivity and training. The hope
is that anybody experiencing these intelligent and beautiful creatures
so closely will be moved to support protecting them in the wild.
Perhaps somebody has placed exactly that wish inside one of the bottles at the Pyramid of Positive Thinking.
