The Location of Yucatan in Mexico

A map of Mexico showing the location of Yucatan.

My husband and I love travelling in Yucatan. It is in southern Mexico. We find it very safe and enjoyable.

We love to go to Yucatan in the depths of the winter, because it is so wonderfully warm there.

If you look at a map of Mexico, it’s like a hand and the Yucatan is like a thumb. So, that’s the whole Yucatan Peninsula.

Excerpted from the End of the World EBook and the End of the World Book.

~ Carol Chapman, director/producer of the End of the World 2012 Movie

Yucatan travelogue is also superbly discounted on Amazon for “Black Friday”

For travelers and armchair travelers alike, the Yucatan Travel Movie: Cancun to Chichen Itza is also superbly discounted on Amazon right now, from $16.95to $14.99.

New Page on this Blog: “Carol Chapman’s Videos” featuring the Yucatan Travel Movie

Yucatan Travel Movie DVD Case Front Cover

There’s a new page on Carol Chapman Live called, “Carol Chapman’s Videos.”

Our first feature is the Yucatan Travel Movie. For a full description including Bonus Features and About the Actor, Writers, and Director, please click here.

Available on Amazon.

Only three Maya “books” or codices survived the Spanish conquest of Yucatan

A page from the Dresden Codex showing images from Maya civilization. ~ from Wikipedia commons–this image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

The Maya, an indigenous people of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico plus Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, made folding books written on the inside bark of certain types of fig trees.

Called “codices” (codex in the singular), many were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors and priests.

For example, in July of 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa ordered the destruction of all of the codices in the state of Yucatan.

De Landa also destroyed a Maya temple in Izamal, using the stones from the temple to make an elegant convent, which we visit in the Yucatan Travel Movie. Izamal is a gorgeous colonial city only about an hour and a half drive from Chichen Itza and well worth the visit.

The three codices that survived the Spanish conquest are named by the location of the museum where they presently reside.

• The Dresden Codex, is housed in Germany, is made of 74 pages (39 leaves written on both sides), contains descriptions of rituals and astrological information on eclipses of the sun and moon as well as the cycles of Venus.
• To my way of thinking, the Paris Codex, in France, is the most interesting since it deals with the Maya calendar and includes prophecies for various tuns and Katuns.
• The Madrid Codex is the longest at 112 pages and is housed in Spain. Researchers believe it was put together quickly after the Spanish conquest.

Occasionally, hopelessly decayed codices are found in Maya ruins:

Given the rarity and importance of these books, rumors of finding new ones often develop interest. Archaeological excavations of Maya sites have turned up a number of rectangular lumps of plaster and paint flakes, most commonly in elite tombs. These lumps are the remains of codices where all the organic material has rotted away. A few of the more coherent of these lumps have been preserved, with the slim hope that some technique to be developed by future generations of archaeologists may be able to recover some information from these remains of ancient pages.

Maya Codices

Yucatan Travel links added to this blog site

Today I added a couple of links to this blog site. They will take you to websites dealing with Yucatan Travel:

• a new blog site called, Yucatan Peninsula Travel
• a website for a new travelogue DVD, Yucatan Travel: Cancun to Chichen Itza

I love to travel in Yucatan and have been there six times. My outstanding interest is always the quest for evidence that inhabitants of the lost city of Atlantis visited Yucatan in millennia past. I have written about my experiences in my books When We Were Gods and Arrival of the Gods in Egypt.

While in Yucatan, I also began videotaping the many places we visited. These became the DVD travelogue Yucatan Travel: Cancun to Chichen Itza.

Those of us who made the Yucatan Travel DVD listed above decided to also start a blog about some of our favorite places in Yucatan. If you’ve been to that tropical paradise, we invite your comments, especially those that would be helpful to other travelers.

Atlantis and the Yucatan Travel Movie

You may have noticed that I have written books on finding evidence of Atlanteans in Egypt and Yucatan. I’ve also made a movie, which is almost ready to be distributed, on Yucatan Travel. Atlantis and Yucatan Travel seem to be separate subjects. Here’s how it came about: It turned out that while I was doing research in Yucatan for the books, I couldn’t find DVDs to show me what to expect while traveling in Yucatan. As a result, I decided to videotape my experiences in Yucatan in the hopes of being helpful to other people who want to know what to expect. That’s how the Yucatan Travel Movie came about.

Tales from the Yucatan Jungle doing well on Amazon

I am really happy today, because a book I worked on as editor, Tales from the Yucatan Jungle: Life in a Mayan Village by Kristine Elllingson, is doing very well.

Yesterday, on Amazon.com, the paperback book went to No. 3 in books on the Yucatan Peninsula.

This morning, on Amazon.ca (Canada), the paperback was No. 1 in books on the Yucatan Peninsula.

This morning, on Amazon United Kingdom, the paperback was No. 5 in books on the Yucatan. 

 The Amazon.com Kindle is doing well also. Yesterday, it was No. 1 in books on Mexico. Not too shabby!

It is a great book and I highly recommend it. It’s not only a love story of how Kristine met and married her Mayan husband of 20 years, but it’s also a behind-the-scenes insider’s view of a Mayan village. Most expat stories are about the difficulties of being an outsider in a foreigner country. Kristine has become an insider. She tells stories of a Yucatan that tourists see while they drive by in their tour buses, but seldom know anything about. Get this book and get the inside story!

Tales from the Yucatan Jungle: Life in a Mayan Village

Have I mentioned that I’m an editor/publisher at Suntopaz? I’m pleased to announce that SunTopaz has just published the Kindle edition of Tales from the Yucatan Jungle: Life in a Mayan Village by Kristine Ellingson, an American who has been married to a Mayan man and living in a rural Mayan village for 20 years. Very interesting!

Mayan shamans and 2012

While filming the Yucatan Travel Movie: Cancun to Chichen Itza, I wondered what the Maya had to say about 2012. After all, it is a Mayan prophecy that originated all the ruckus about December 21, 2012. Therefore, while shooting video footage for the movie, I also interviewed every-day Maya and Mayan shamans. These interviews became the nucleus of my upcoming presentation for the Edgar Cayce Forum on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Significant Mayan ruin in danger of being lost

El Mirador, a Mayan ruin located in the north of present-day Guatemala’s El Peten region, is in danger of being lost to modern development. A road bringing logging equipment in to harvest the surrounding forest is running roughshod over ruins. In addition, looters remove ancient Mayan artifacts for big profit. El Mirador is especially significant because it harbors evidence of settlement far into the past … as long ago as the 6th century BCE according to the Wikipedia article El Mirador.

For me, any especially ancient pre-Columbian Mayan ruin could be a site visited by Atlanteans in our far distant past.

Carol Chapman
When We Were Gods
Arrival of the Gods in Egypt