Word: mirador
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Guatemala's most popular Maya ruins lie at Tikal, but for real bragging rights you'll have to head deep into the Peten jungle, where you'll find the ancient city of El Mirador. Dating back to 300 B.C., it's about a century older and more than twice the size of Tikal. And while getting to Tikal is a simple matter of climbing into an air-conditioned vehicle, to get a glimpse of El Mirador's monumental temples you need to trek your way through the jungle - the nearest road is about 45 miles (75 km) away...
...trail proper starts at the village of Carmelita and the wise will arrive in dry season (November to May), when the rainforest is scorching but mosquito- and mud-free. The journey is utterly exhausting, of course, but your inner Indiana Jones will exult at your first glimpse of El Mirador - thought to be home to around 80,000 at one time. (See 50 authentic American travel experiences...
...breathtaking: thousands of ruins lie over an area of 23 square miles (38 sq km). Towering 236 ft. (72 m) over it all is the Danta pyramid, of greater volume than the Egyptian pyramid of Cheops and affording sweeping views of the lush green canopy. No trip to El Mirador is complete without a climb to this aerie of the gods - nor a wry contemplation from its summit of the long slog back...
...character--and those who peg him as a reactionary may be surprised to learn that his new film sounds warnings straight out of liberal Hollywood's bible. Apocalypto, which Gibson loosely translates from the Greek as "a new beginning," was inspired in large part by his work with the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson and his rookie cowriter on Apocalypto, Farhad Safinia, were captivated by the ancient Maya, one of the hemisphere's first great civilizations, which reached its zenith about A.D. 600 in southern...
...Maya are also called the Greeks of the New World--they invented the concept of zero, built astonishing cities and used a more complex calendar than ours. Gibson insists the glory gets its close-ups too. Says Richard Hansen, a Maya scholar at Idaho State University, head of the Mirador Basin Project and a consultant for Apocalypto: "This is by far the best treatment--the first treatment really--of the Maya any film has ever done. I'm amazed at the detail Mel's shooting...