Talk about the Maya and the Maya Calendar

I went to Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, yesterday to find a Mayan Daykeeper. A daykeeper keeps track of days according to the Mayan Calendar. A daykeeper is also probably a shaman or a priest. Their task is extremely important in Maya life. You see, there doesn’t appear to be a Mayan calendar in the sense that we are used to having a Gregorian calendar hanging on the wall. Prior to the printing press, most of our ancestors did not have such a reference either.

For hundreds of years the adopted calendar of the Western World has been the one ordained by the Catholic Church. Priests have maintained and the Catholic Church has defined our sense of time. This seems to be common within other cultures as well, for example, the Egyptians.

The trip to Santiago Atitlan is a complete journey in itself even though it lies just across the lake from the village where I stay.

Around 10:00 a.m. I catch a launcha (a small boat usally carrying 10-20 people but at times holds a scary overload of 30 or more) for the village of San Pedro. A short trek to the other side of San Pedro leads to a second launcha trip for Santiago Atitlan.

The boat schedules at this eary time of the day can already be thrown off but the boats usually run every half-hour to every hour.

Each trip cost about $2.00 US and is a 20-30 minute boat ride.

I arrive in Santiago Atitlan and go for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, beans and plantinos (resembles a fried banana). I asked for bread with the meal as it doesn’t necessarily come with the plate. I remembered it probably would not be toasted so I also asked to have it toasted. Based on the look the lady gave me I didn’t even ask for butter. Nevermind, I’ll eat it dry. Breakfast costs around $3.00 US plus I tip.

The ladies at the comedor (restaurant) are actually very nice, you just can’t throw too much their way at once.  So after breakfast I ask them if they know any of the three men I seek. Two were unknown but the third was a hit. The ladies know his family and his house is a short 15 minute ride by tuk-tuk (a small open-door taxi).

I flagged down a tuk-tuk and the ladies quickly explain to the driver who I am looking for, all in their native Tzutuhil language.  The driver also knows of the man so off we go.

We drive out to a Panabaj, a smaller village, and the tuk-tuk stops in the middle of an empty field.

“This is the land he owns; the people who live around here are his family.”

“Ok,” I said slowly, “so where is the man?”

I’ll have to ask,” he replies and drives back towards some houses.

He stops the taxi, gets out, and I see him going among multiple houses. Ten minutes later he comes back. Apparently the man has moved to the village we just came from, Santiago Atitlan.

The taxi cost $0.50 so far but now the man wants $5.00 to continue driving me around. Everything considered it is high but reasonable considering he could have run 3 passengers in the time we have already spent. I agree and off we go again.

We drive back to the middle of Santiago Atitlan, he parks the taxi, and we go directly into the market, looking for a tienda (small store). He finds the store he is looking for and explains to the shop attendant, a man about 25 years of age, who we are looking for.

“He’s dead,” the attendant replies.

It turns out this man is a nephew of the man we seek. I offer my condolences, we all chat a little, and then the taxi driver and I leave. We spend a couple of hours looking for the other men, one of which we did manage to get a lead on. I make my way back to San Marcos and my hotel.

This is what traveling is like for me. I have a destination in mind but it is the journey that makes it worthwhile.

On my recent trip around southwest Guatemala (April, 2008) I took a day and went to the Maya ruins at Tak’alik Ab’aj, near the Guatemalan city of Retalhulue. I speak Spanish fairly well but still can’t pronounce Retalhulue, even after going to the city. The locals abbreviate it to Rea but even that, with only three tiny letters, is not pronounced like it is spelled and you have to do something funny with your throat that made me hoarse for the rest of the day.

What a beautiful site! It is an active archeological dig and the staff were in the process of extracting and cleaning a 4 foot stone with hieroglyphs all over it. The archeologists were not allowing any photos of the stone until it is fully extracted, cleaned, and interpreted.
Tak’alik Ab’aj, I was told, means “Standing Stones” and there are plenty to be found. Numbers and heiroglyphs abound on the stones as you can see from this photo. Numbers are the straight lines and dots in the middle. I didn’t ask but would bet it is a date.

The site is considered Pre-Classic. One of the interesting points is the site is considered to be the only place, on a large scale, where The Maya and The Olmec lived together. The Olmec were an ancient civilization living in Mexico and were in decline during the Pre-Classic Maya Period. Economic reasons, resulting from the city’s proximity to Mexico, were most likely behind the cultural integration. This is an Olmec influenced carving from the site.

On a scale of 1-10 I give Tak’alik Ab’aj a 7.5 - the wonderful temples at Tikal being a 10.