Carol Chapman | Carol Chapman

Feedback on the Tiny Mayan Woman

I REPLY TO EMAILS SENT TO ME

I do try, to the best of my ability, to reply to all emails sent to me.

It really matters to ME when a person takes the time and energy to comment about my enewsletters.

My intention is to honor the risk a person takes in communicating with me by sending a reply often within 24 hours of receiving an email sent to me.

I know, from replying to other people’s enewsletters, how frustrating and discouraging it is when I have sent an email that I’ve thought out ahead of time and then received nothing in reply. Therefore, I’ve been there and done that. And, I don’t want to be like that.

In fact, I went through the trouble and expense of buying a mini-laptop just for sending enewsletters and replying to emails while I’m traveling. A larger laptop wouldn’t fit into my backpack with the cameras. I carry all my precious electronic equipment on my back wherever I go because I can’t risk having them damaged, lost, or stolen when I travel.

I’m telling you this to let you know just how important your emails are to me.

Only once, I could not reply because I kept receiving a bounce back saying the person‘s email address was incorrect even though I clicked on “reply” to the person’s email. I tried three times to reply to this woman’s email before I gave up.

But that is an exception. As far as I know, assuming the email sent me and the emails I’ve sent in reply did not get lost in cyberspace, all the emails sent to me have received a reply.

So, thanks again for sending me your comments. They mean a lot to me. Otherwise, it feels as if I’m sending my enewsletters into a void. When you write to me – whether it’s by email or by a comment on my blog at http://www.CarolChapmanLive, you actually honor me.

YUCATAN TRAVEL BOOK

I also appreciate receiving feedback because I plan to use these enewsletters and blog posts as the basis for a book on Yucatan travel. Therefore, your feedback is doubly important because it helps to make my writing better.

FEEDBACK ON THE TINY MAYAN WOMAN

For example, I received a number of emails commenting on my enewsletter about the tiny woman. People wrote to say that of course she was being helpful. How could I think she might be crazy?

Well, that’s because I was writing as if you could read my mind – a common writer’s faux pas.

Now I know to include in the book when I write the story about the tiny woman that:

The waiter kept rolling his eyes at the tiny woman as if her behavior at our table was odd.

Also, she kept going on and on while we were trying to eat.

Miriam thought her “helpfulness” was a bit inappropriate since she was also drawing maps on the napkins beside our plates.

However, the reality is that in the mix between cultures, it is difficult to know what is and what is not appropriate. I prefer to err on the side of assuming that people are sincerely being helpful when they come up to us and volunteer information. Also, I really liked this tiny woman. She felt helpful and friendly. In the interface between cultures, that‘s what really matters – the humanity between us.

Blessings,
Carol Chapman

Subsistence Living in Chiapas

Yesterday I mentioned that I couldn’t help but buy trinkets from the colorful, wool-skirted women from Chiapas.

I believe this is partly because I have read that many of the indigenous people of Chiapas dislike the relentless invasion of their traditional lands by tourists. They also dislike the devastation of their rain forests and natural environment by large business concerns.

However, since they have only a subsistence-based economy, they are also very vulnerable financially and need the money brought in by the tourist trade.

When I think of how far these young women have travelled – it took us two days to drive from Cancun to Palenque, which is in Chiapas – and that they are so far from their families, I want to help them out and easily buy their wares.

Carol Chapman

The Young Women of Chiapas

Later that day, we walked through the square in the middle of Merida on our way back to our hotel. One of many young women from Chiapas came up to me to try to sell me some wares.

These young women are everywhere that we have been in Yucatan. You can tell they’re from Chiapas because of their colorful satin blouses with embroidered trim and dark woolen skirts.

Most of the women wearing traditional dress in the Yucatan are Yucatecan Maya, from the northern Yucatan states. Their tradition dress is called a huiptil and consists of a totally white cotton dress with bright embroidery on a wide collar.

On the other hand, the women from Chiapas do not wear cool cotton but instead, they wear a warm woolen skirt. Chiapas, where Palenque is located, is hilly and mountainous and therefore much cooler than the northern Yucatan.

I don’t know how these young women manage the humidity and heat in their wrapped ankle length skirts.

I like them. They’re often pretty, have gold or silver fillings around their teeth, and sell head bands, purses, wool blankets, bracelets, and sometimes craft items, all of which they carry on their arms and in a big blanket full of items tied around their shoulder.

The woolen blanket is also used as a blanket to keep them warm if the temperature is cool.

I think I must have a sign above my head that reads, “Sucker,” because I can’t help buying from them. They crowd around me. So far, I have two tote bags, a glasses case, a headband and a woven belt.

I try to restrict myself to one purchase per place we visit.

Carol Chapman

Beards and Body Types

Yesterday, I mentioned that my husband John had heard that Maya men without any Spanish genetics in them do not have beards.

Today, I was thinking how I was surprised that Hunbatz Men, because he is a man of influencial stature, was actually only as tall as I am – 5 foot, 3 inches.

I don’t know why I would have expected him to be any taller since most Maya people are quite short. Many are also rather stocky and solidly built.

For me, it’s unusual to be among so many people that are about my height or shorter.

In fact, during our second last day in Merida, this woman came up to us in the restaurant where we were having our lunch and, out of the blue, began telling us about wonderful folklorio dances and where they are held.

I thought that an amazing coincidence since the folklorio dancing is one of the items I wished to have in my Yucatan travel movie but had not yet had the opportunity to get footage of it.

This woman was tiny. Really tiny. Short. Little. Perfectly proportioned. Probably in her 50s. Dark hair. Black eyes. Square faced. At least five inches shorter than me. That’s short.

She was also rather articulate in English, which is very unusual among the people I’ve come across in Yucatan.

We couldn’t figure her out because she also suggested that, if we wanted to buy crafts, we should go to a native artesania cooperative rather than buying the imported goods sold on the street my peddlers.

I thought she gave us this information because she wanted a few pesos. Sometimes people want pesos for helping us park or other little services. However, she gave me back my coin and said she just wanted to tell us about her people.

I’m still wondering about her. Was she crazy or just simply helpful?

Carol Chapman

1

Cenotes and the Chicxulub Meteor Crash

Last night, Miriam ran into our hotel room at Dolores Alba in Merida with her eyes sparkling.

“Guess who I just talked to?” she said.

I couldn’t begin to imagine. By her demeanor, Arnold Schwartzenegger or a rock star came to mind – not very likely, though, in a moderately priced Yucatecan hotel.

“I give up,” I said.

“Kristine and Santiago! They’re staying here at Dolores Alba!”

It made sense that Miriam would be so happy to see the two of them. We always enjoy their company. If you remember, we had recently stayed at Kristine and Santiago’s Flycatcher Inn in the Mayan village of Santa Elena for a couple of days. I now recalled that Santiago had said that they were coming to Merida to visit their daughter and also to shop.

The next morning, after Miriam and John had left for their flights from Cancun to the U.S., I happened upon Kristine and Santiago while they were eating their breakfasts at Dolores Alba in the outdoor inner courtyard.

We had only parted two days ago, but we had so much to say to each other. The topics of conversation went from Hunbatz Men to the origin of the red soil of the Yucatan to the many underground cave systems.

Kristine said, “Have you ever noticed that most of the cenotes are in a semi-circle across the top of the Yucatan Peninsula?”

OK, I thought, it makes sense that she would think of cenotes after discussing underground cave systems since cenotes are openings or sinkholes in the limestone surface of the Yucatan that expose the underlying underground water system.

I thought about what Kristine had said. Were the cenotes in a semi-circular pattern? As a matter of fact, I had noticed the curious fact that on my map of the northern Yucatan Peninsula, the cenotes are clustered and in only certain areas. Now that she mentioned it, I realized that they did form a large semi-circle from north of Uxmal in the west to Tulum in the east.

“Now that I think of it,” I said, “they are in a semi-circular pattern.”

“That’s because the cenotes were formed when the Chicxulub Metero hit,” she said. “I found a map online that shows that the crater is located partly in the Gulf of Mexico and partly on the land.

Here’s a link to the map, which is third image down, on this page on the Flycatcher Inn’s web site: http://www.flycatcherinn.com/mchicxulub.htm

I know that my guidebook says that cenotes form when the surface limestone collapses revealing the underground river below it. Then, the guidebook goes on to say that visitors to the Yucatan need not worry that the collapse of a sinkhole will occur while they are there because these sinkhole collapses occur very infrequently.

However, Kristine was proposing that cenotes were created long, long ago – in fact, 65 million years ago – when the Chicxulub meteor impacted the earth lifting huge coral formations out of the sea to form the Yucatan Peninsula. How intriguing!

With the mention of cenotes, I regretted that although we had visited Cenote Zaci in Valladolid, we had not swam in its waters. Zaci looked so much bigger than I had expected and also its water looked so very, very dark.

All the photos I’ve seen of cenotes look so inviting with their turquoise waters lit by a beam of sunlight shining in through the hole in the earth above the water.

We learned from that visit to Zaci that you need to visit a cenote when the sun is overhead such as around noon hour. I’ve also read that the water can be 500 feet deep. No wonder the black water looked so uninviting.

Now that I knew of the possibility that the cenotes had resulted from the Chicxulub Meteor impact, I felt we simply had to visit some cenotes when we returned to the Yucatan.

Obviously, there is so much more to explore in the Yucatan. But, that will have to wait for future visits.

I’m finishing the chronicles of this visit on my laptop 38,000 feet up in the sky sandwiched between two Spanish-speaking people on this flight from Merida to Mexico City to Los Angeles. I am surrounded by Mayas and Aztecs, many of them, American citizens.

Because John mentioned, during a conversation last night, that someone told him that you can tell how much Spanish a man has in him by whether he shaves or not, I’m looking very closely at the men’s faces to see if there’s any evidence of a beard. The man sitting beside me, who I spent some time with at the beginning of the flight jockeying for space on the arm rest between us, is smooth faced. He looks round-faced and therefore is likely Maya.

Most of the people on the plane with me are of Mexican origin. The gringos like me stick out like white carnations in a bouquet of red and bronze flowers.

It’s time to put the computer away. The pilot’s voice over the loudspeaker says we are making our approach to the airport.

I am sad to say that my wonderful time in the Yucatan is truly over.

Carol Chapman

Mayan Elder Hunbatz Men

Today, we had the honor and privilege of interviewing Mayan Elder Hunbatz Men on tape.

We met in his home and business location in Merida, Yucatan. He also has a ceremonial center in a rural area east of Merida.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover how much John enjoyed visiting with Hunbatz probably because Hunbatz’s approach to the ancient Mayan knowledge, with which he has been entrusted, is through a scientific mix with religion.

He told us about a new book he has written that will be available from Bear & Co. in about a month. The title is something like, The Eight Calendars.

We had an extensive discussion about
Eric J. Thompson, who discovered the Stela in Coba with the December 21, 2012 date on it and the errors Thompson made in deciphering the glyphs on the stela. After all, the glyphs have only recently been extensively translated. So, how could Eric Thompson have been so sure of his information when he visited Coba around 1925?

I thought this was a very good point and wished I had thought of it myself.

It was obvious that Hunbatz is a deep and original thinker. He said that Thompson only knew of three Mayan calendars: the Tszol’kin, the Haab, and the Long Count. However, Hunbatz, through his scientific study of Mayan tradition, has uncovered eight.

I am glad that our conversation was videotaped because, to tell you the truth, we talked about so many topics in the hour in which we met, that I would have to review the tape to recall it all.

Vaguely, a recollection surfaces about a discussion of the validity of John Major Jenkins’ observation about the galactic center line up of the sun and earth as well as my husband John talking about planetary exploration. I do not know how we went from the one topic to the other.

In any case, I knew you were curious to know how the meeting went so I wanted to get back to you tonight, even though we have a full evening ahead of us because of packing up for our flights out of the Yucatan tomorrow.

We ended up having our photos taken with Hunbatz. So often I am busily involved with videotaping the person we are interviewing and forget to get a “I was here with you” photo. I hope to post this photo on this blog sometime after I get home next week.

As we left, I felt happy because Hunbatz said that it was not “good-bye” but “until we meet again.”

Blessings,

Carol Chapman

House of Fall.us, Ero.tic Dreams & Progreso

THE HOUSE OF THE FALL.US

Yesterday, I wrote about the House of the Fall.us in the Uxmal archeological site. This reminds me of the next complimentary dream teleseminar, which will be with Gillian Holloway, author of, among other books, Ero.tic Dreams.

DR. GILLIAN HOLLOWAY – DREAM TELESEMINAR

I am very happy that Dr. Gillian Holloway has agreed to be my next guest for my series of complimentary dream teleseminars. She is the author of one of my favorite dream books, The Complete Dream Book: Discover What Your Dreams Reveal about You and Your Life, as well as Ero.tic Dreams: The Secret to Understanding Women’s Hidden Passions, and Dream Insight: A 5-Step Plan for Discovering the Meaning in Your Dream.

I’ve talked with her on the telephone and found her to be interesting, articulate, and fun. Put a note on your calendar for April 14th at 8:30 pm Eastern Time.

Dr. Holloway has asked me to invite you to send her email questions for the interview. You can email her questions ahead of time to me at Carol@CarolChapmanLive.com. She’s studied thousands of actual dreams, on which she bases her understanding of dreams, and is also an expert on nightmares.

Here’s a link to her web site: http://www.lifetreks.com.

If you want to receive the telephone number and passcode for this dream teleseminar and do not already receive my enewsletter, please register for this blog and I will put you on the list.

PROGRESO, YUCATAN

We are sitting at a table having just had our breakfast under a palapas roof outdoors in the inner square of our hotel, Yakuna, in Progreso. Progreso is a seaside town on the north coast of the Yucatan alongside the Golfo de Mexico. It’s a lovely place where the wind is always blowing thereby reducing the effects of the tropical sun.

Hotel Yakuna has wireless internet in the lobby and restaurant so we, and United Kingdom couple at the table next to us, are getting caught up on emails this morning as palm fronds clack in the breeze around us.

Miriam has just left for the beach and, after enjoying a swim in the light emerald-colored water of the Gulf of Mexico, will meet us for lunch under a palapos roof on the sand at a beachfront restaurant. We have at Sharks during previous visits to the Yucatan and enjoy the delicious fresh seafood.

Last night, we ate at Buddy’s, a very ex-pat Canadian place owned by a gold-necklaced Hollander who also owns a bar. We’ve also eaten there before and John especially enjoys the company of the extrovered English-speaking people who are drawn there.

HUNBATZ MEN INTERVIEW

Today, I telephoned long distance to Merida to set up my final shoot. It will be with Hunbatz Men, a Mayan Elder, who has written a number of books, such as Secrets of Mayan Religion/Science that was translated from Spanish into English and published in the U.S. by Bear and Co.

It has been difficult to set up this encounter because Hunbatz has been busy with an intense program for a couple of weeks centered around the Spring Equinox during which time he led tours to many ruin sites and conducted a number of ceremonies.

I look forward to finally meeting with this learned and kind man. I appreciate that he is willing to be interviewed in English considering that his first language is Yucatecan Mayan, his second language is Spanish, and English is a distant third.

A GOOD YUCATAN TRAVEL

Miriam, John, and I agreed, at breakfast today, that this has been a good trip, that I planned it well so we weren’t driving too many days, and also that I didn’t have us staying for too short a time in too many places. Because of my good planning, our two weeks here felt more like a month . . . a very enjoyable month.

I feel good because, through experience, I’m finally getting the hang of planning a very enjoyable travel in the Yucatan with a good mix of visits inland to smoldering but interesting ruins relieved by refreshing breezy beach visits.

Love and blessings,

Carol Chapman

Uxmal & the Witch’s House

Hi again,

Miriam and I went to Uxmal again this morning. We had spent about an hour the previous day between 4 and 5 pm, just before the ruins area closed, taking photos of the stone carvings on the West Building of the Nunnery Quadrangle.

I suspected the photos would not look as good as they should because we had visited the Uxmal Archeological Zone late in the day when the sun was setting behind the West Building, making the stone carvings look grey and flat.

Last night, when we reivewed the photos and footage we had taken the previous day, as we do most nights, I could see we would need to go back to the ruins and take the photos again in the morning when the sunlight would impart definition and a golden glow to the ancient rocks, many of which are covered in dark mold.

We hoped to be at the ruin early when the air would still be relatively cool. However, we took a long time saying good-bye to Kristine Ellingson and Santiago Dominguez, our hosts at Flycatcher Inn, the bed and breakfast where we stay when visiting Uxmal. They are becoming great friends. As a result, we did not get to the ruin until 10:30 am.

John chose to spend his time at the Uxmal Villas Archeologicas pool where we would meet him for lunch after our jaunt through the ruins.

It was hot. Unlike the coast, where cool breezes blow from the water to constantly refresh us, inland in the Puuc highlands, the sun pours down on us unrelenting. The only sanctuary is the shade or to hope for clouds or even the blessing of rain.

During our exploration of the Nohpat ruins yesterday, Santiago had commented that we were fortunate because some rain had fallen and that our whole time in the unexcavated ruin had been under cloudy skies. He said that a man he had taken to the ruins previously, on a very hot day, had fallen to his knees because of dizziness, and had to be helped out of Nohpat.

Unlike the heavy cloud cover of yesterday, puffy cumulus clouds only occasionally blocked the unrelenting rays of the sun. I did not know I could sweat that much!

We were sure to stop and sit in the shade of a tree every once in a while, especially after climbing hot stone stairs. Miriam is my daughter and I feel I should be taking care of her. However, she takes care of me like a Mother Hen, reminding me to drink water, to wear sunscreeen, to wear my sunhat, and to take occasional rests after exerting myself. I appreciate her help!

I am excited by the stone images carved on the side of the West Building of the Nunnery Quadrangle in Uxmal because they show the man in the feathered serpent’s mouth as well as the dwarf who became the king of Uxmal. This is the same dwarf who is the magician or sorcerer that legend says built the Pyramid of the Sorcerer in one night.

Because of this legend, I believe that the Uxmal area is likely a place where Atlanteans came when they fled the geologically unstable Atlantis. Edgar Cayce’s psychic readings say that Atlanteans fled to Egypt, Peru, and Yucatan.

After completing our photographic survey of the carvings on the West Building, we headed out to find the ruin that is presently called, “The House of the Old Woman.” In books about Mayan ruins published before the 1980s, I have seen this ruin called, “The House of the Witch,” referring to the witch who hatched the sorcerer dwarf out of an egg.

Today, as we approached the ruin, I asked a guide who was leading a group through the ruins, where to find the path to the House of the Old Woman.

“Oh, that’s not an old woman. It’s really about Ixchell, the Mayan Fertility Goddess of both humans and animals.”

I find it interesting how, depending on what the latest trend is in archeological myths, the name of various ruins change.

We found the ruin by following the path the guide suggested. The ruin has not been excavated or reconstructed very much. There were no interesting carvings on what remains of the building.

However, we did find a stone carving under a palapas roof, which might have been a carving of the witch/old woman/Ixchell. Miriam and I had a disagreement over whether the hole in the middle of the goddess’ torso represented her womb or whether she was actually a squat, sturdy woman and the hole was actually the space separating her legs.

It was easy to have thoughts of her womb, because nearby, under a separate palapas roof, there were many stone carvings of falluses. The ancient people of Uxmal seemed to have a great fascination with this part of the male’s anatomy.

I remember seeing a book from the library – it must have been published before 1980 – which showed a photograph of the House of the Fallus in Uxmal. The photograph showed the falluses sticking out of the walls of the building. Was this a place for ritual sexual liasons?

When I’ve asked guildes to take us to the House of the Fallus during previous Uxmal visits, they have said the building was too far away or it was in accessible or out-of-bounds for tourists or some other reason.

By the looks of the dozen or so falluses protected under the palapas roof, I wonder if they came from the House of the Fallus. In any case, they were displayed in an area where few people ever visit because guides no longer take people to the House of the Old Woman/Witch/Ixchell.

I am glad we came upon these out-of-the-way, non-publicized ruins. It made our visit interesting and has given us a lot to think about.

Carol Chapman

Tulum Cabanas & an Unexcavated Ruin

TULUM CABANAS

Our guidebook tells us that there are cabanas on the beach in Tulum with a beautiful view of the ocean and gorgeous white sand beaches, so we decided to check them out for possible future lodging.

We found the beaches to be superb. However, the cabanas are not our style. For the most part, there is no electricity, therefore, after dark, generators roar and most places are totally dark after about 11 pm.

They’re also very pricey. We did find one place advertised as $39 USD per night that had small sand-floored bungalows made of sticks, like a typical Mayan home. The sticks let the cool breezes blow through the building.

None of us liked the shared bathrooms. At the Winter Star Party, which is located at a girl scout camp in the Florida Keyes, there is a girls and a boys shower house, so we don’t mind sharing. But these bathrooms afforded very little privacy at all.

EXPLORING AN UNEXCAVATED RUIN

Today, we went with our friend and host at the Flycatcher Inn bed and breakfast in Santa Elena, Santiago Dominges, on an exploration of an unexcavated ruin next to Uxmal.

San drove us into the site which is on farmland where San personally helped his uncle plant corn during San’s younger years. I am so glad we drove in instead of walked in, even though San had to drive very slow over the rocky parts of the tire-track dirt road through the jungle because Miriam had to sit in the cab of the truck. It was a very long way to walk!

Nohpat is one of the many ruins on the Puuc Route, of which Uxmal is the main one. Because Kabah, Labna and Sayil, also on the Puuc route, are not especially large sites, I expected Nohpat to be a relatively small pile of rocks with trees growing out of it.

To my surprise, the site is huge and contains one large pyramid, which is a huge pile of rocks with trees growing out of it, and many smaller piles of rocks with trees growing out of them that look like they are temples.

We felt like Stevens and Catherwood, who had been in Nohpat in the late 1800s, because little has changed since that time. We walked and walked hoping not to get too many ticks on us or to get too many mosquito bites.

Santiago is very excited about Nohpat because this whole area consists of his ancestral lands. We wanted to show us first one pile of rocks then another pile of rocks, cutting through the overgrown path with his machete.

Finally, dragging my video camera and its tripod plus a walking stick to keep my balance over the rocks, I thanked him and told him that we had seen enough.

He would have been glad to take us to many more ruins. He knows them all very well and, even though there are trees in the way, can see in his mind’s eye where the central square would have been.

We took many photographs and a lot of footage. This site is supposed to be the site of the witch that hatched the sorcerer dwarf out of an egg.

Carol Chapman

Maya Repair Palapas Roof Damage

When we arrived for breakfast at the Lol He Beach Club resaurant, where we usually have our morning meal in Akumal, I noticed that there was a three-foot hole in the top of the huge paplapas roof that covers this seaside restaurant.

Shortly after we finished our meal, while we sipped on coffees and discussed the day’s itinerary, our waiter asked us to move to a table in another section of the restaurant. He said the hole in the top of the palapas roof had occurred overnight. It looked as if the wind had ripped off a palm frond and hurled it into the roof to rip open the hole.

A number of Maya men, dressed in overalls, arrived with pipes and put together scaffolding that reached up to the roof. Two men climbed to the top, another dragged in a bunch of palm leaf fronds and attached them to a yellow rope the men on top of the scaffolding threw down to him.

I felt delighted to watch and record the repair of the hole in the palapas roof. Watching the men climb the scaffolding brought back to me my years as a photojournalist at NASA when I, too, climbed scaffolding, but, in my case, for the purpose of photographing aircraft below.

With the wind blowing so fiercely off the ocean, I was reminded of one experience on the top of a “cherry picker” when the head of NASA Langley’s Photo Lab and I photographed our fleet of experimental aircraft below. We were so high above the ground to get all of the planes that the truck below us looked like a child’s toy.

At the top of the “cherry picker” the wind made it sway back and forth. I felt afraid but did not want to show it because weakness can be jeered at among the rough and ready photographers. Fortunately, the head of Photo Lab was a kind man.

We stood side by side in the basket on top of the “cherry picker’s” tall arm.

I asked him, “Do you mind if I put my little finger over yours?” He knew I was afraid as the basket swayed this way and that.

“It’s OK, Carol,” he said, “and I won’t tell anyone.”

Bless that man!

Our photos looked great and were published (in my case as the press photographer) and used in scientists’ paper (in his case) the way they should be.

Today, I thought how these Maya men were the descendents of the men who made the pyramids. They are also the same men who have built the huge hotels in Cancun. They are unafraid of heights.

As John say, “The men have incredible balance!”

They climbed up and down the scaffolding in wind off the ocean that made the tarps along the restaurant walls billow so stronly that earlier, little children eating breakfast at a nearby table, had bounced off the billowing tarps.

In the past, I have seen construction workers at night lit by a single incandescent light lounging in hammocks a number of stories up in a building they are constructing and had wished that I would have photographed them.

Today, I got my chance.

Carol Chapman