How Tikal Hotels Are Preparing for the End of the World

If the Mayan calendar is correct, the world is going to end in 2012. That's why tourists have been heading to Tikal, Guatemala, ground zero of the conspiracy set. All this week, Jonathan Franklin and Morten Andersen, the guys behind Addict Village will be looking into the madness behind the newest tourism trend, Doomsday Tourism.

Thanks to the buzz from the Mayan calendar prophecies, local tour operators and hotels are upgrading their services. El Camino Real, a luxury hotel near the Tikal ruins, is now pushing Mayan cultural tours to the forefront and beginning to offer cultural nights with Mayan elders telling stories of the doomsday prophecy.

Mayan recipes are being resurrected and brought back onto the restaurant menu.

�I come from the restaurant side,� said Xavier Cid, the new hotel manager. �So I am completely redoing the menu, going out to the community meeting the older women and asking them what ingredients they use, what traditional dishes we can include in our menus.�

Cid, who worked in Guatemala City previously, says he will never go back to city living. �Where else can I be woken up by the �toc...toc..toc� of a toucan pecking at my window.�

Tikal is not, however, an easy place to visit. First a flight to Guatemala City (you can stay overnight at The Radisson) then another flight north to the town of Flores, then a drive out to the ruins. Most travelers stay just two nights � a big mistake.

Four nights is a far more reasonable visit, especially if you are culturally inclined, have read a few books and care to pause and take pulse of what is a romantic and mysterious destination. Even in current day Guatemala a total of 22 languages are still spoken. For the tourist they all add up to a single voice � adventure and diversity. Security in Guatemala is an issue, so driving back country roads at night is ill advised.

Yet Tikal lives up to its mysterious reputation. Thanks to an extensive written history, archeologists have pieced together intriguing facts about this ancient culture. As lakes nearby dried up or were drained, the Mayans built a massive system of slanted terraces which collected rain water and delivered it to a series of cisterns.

Archeologist Richard Hansen, from the US, has spent decades researching and excavating ruins in and around Tikal theorizes that the Mayan culture collapsed because they over exploited the local forests. To make pyramids the Mayans used massive amounts of firewood to make the stucco.

Hansen sees the Mayan collapse as a classic example of overpopulation and unsustainable growth. From a peak of 70,000-150,000 in 800 AD, the Mayan civilization at Tikal collapsed and by 1000 AD the city was abandoned. Doomsday Tourism can't bring Mayan civilization back but we can still learn about, while there's still some time left. maybe this could change?

Related Stories
· It's the end of the world as we know it so get out your camera [Jaunted]
· 2012 [Official Site]

Text and photo by Morten Andersen.

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