Mexico's Riviera Maya Will Party on December 21 Anne Chalfant - Mercury News
go to original September 21, 2012

At this Maya ceremony at Hacienda Tres Rios in Mexico's Riviera Maya area, participants wrote down life obstacles on slips of paper and then tossed them in the fire for "new beginnings." Ceremonies like this will take place throughout the Maya empire leading up to the end of the Long Calendar on Dec. 21, 2012. (Chad Case)

The reports of the world's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

All it took was the rock-carved inscription of Dec. 21, 2012, on a single ancient Maya artifact, and doomsday prognosticators became wild-eyed.

But no, experts say, there is no apocalypse coming that day. Rather, the inscribed stone is more like an ancient "Save the Date" that marks the end of the Maya Long Count calendar and the start of a new one.

It's high time to ring in the new. This current calendar has been slogging along for a dreary 5,126 years.

Did someone say "Let's party"?

The Maya 2012 celebration is under way in the Riviera Maya region of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, and tourism is up 7 percent. As if anyone needed an excuse to visit. The 80-mile stretch south of Cancún is the stuff of travel brochures, with white-sand beaches, great snorkeling and diving - and some of the best-excavated Maya ruins, including Chichén Itzá, Tulum, Cobá and Muyil, within an easy drive.

I was checking out the Riviera Maya in June, with winter tourists gone and weather bearably hot. One day it rained refreshing sheets at the Muyil ruins in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Wearing pink plastic ponchos, we sped across a rain-lashed lagoon in a motor boat to Xlapak, a Maya temple. Our boatman steered with one hand and bailed with the other. In better weather, from here we would have donned life jackets and floated along a crystalline river through mangroves, spotting all kinds of birds (336 known species) in this 1.3 million-acre reserve, where a "No Mas Plastik Party" sign signals the tendrils of the Riviera Maya's ecotourism.

Sian Ka'an translates as "where the sky is born," and Maya culture is famous for its knowledge of the night sky - movement of planets, sun, moon and stars.

By December, watching the night sky with an astronomer will be a popular event. Look for astronomy events offered by tour operators and perhaps even at some of the ruins (www.rivieramaya.com).

The Viceroy Riviera Maya Hotel already is running a series of Observatory Dinner Nights on the 21st of each month, with a Maya-inspired menu and observation of the night sky.

Another place to check out the sky is Xel-Há, an eco-park around a beautiful lagoon. Xel-Há (pronounced shell-ha) will be lighting up the night sky and shimmering waters with a thousand floating candles on Dec. 20 and Dec. 22. They're also throwing Grand Dinners from Dec. 17 to 22, with stargazing and explanation of the Maya astrological predictions.

Read more at The Mercury News

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