12-21-12: The End of the World?

You are probably very familiar with the notion that the Mayans predicted the world to end on December 12, 2012. Since you are reading this you are also quite familiar with the fact that they were wrong. With the whole idea of the world ending I have learned an interesting fact about the Mayan prediction:  December 21, 2012 was not actually the date of the end of the world but the date of the end of their cycle. Their ‘cycle’ is something very similar to our ‘millennium’ and they believe that at the end of each cycle, the whole thing starts over again. It was all just a bunch of hoopla from the get go.Regardless, Harriet, Beth, and I still wanted to go to the heart of it all and be a part of the extravaganza. The first part of my Christmas vacation was spent traveling with my two favorite British people to the Copan Ruins. (They had plans to go and meet up with the rest of the volunteers in their program, so I tagged along for the fun.) We had the unique opportunity to be at the Mayan ruins on December 12, 2012. Who better to celebrate the end of the world with than the Mayans themselves?

If you got as excited as I did just thinking about how cool it would be to celebrate the Mayan prediction of the end of the world on the stomping grounds of the Mayans, then you will be just as disappointed as me to find out how big of a bust it was. I’m not talking about it being a bust because the world did not actually end (I never expected it to); I’m talking about it being a bust because there was no significant celebration there. When we first visited Copan back in October, we were promised an end of the world celebration that would be phenomenal. There were supposed to be ceremonies and reenactments galore. There was even talk of the event being on world-wide television! We were deceived and terribly misled. However, we wouldn’t allow the let-down to ruin our trip and we still had fun together.

We spent the day time wandering through the markets and eating delicious food. If you read my earlier post about this town then you will remember that it is a tourist’s dream. There are artisan stands up and down every street with more souvenirs that you would ever need. I completed all my gift shopping the first time around but I still liked perusing. I bought a few more things while enjoying the Mayan sun and a good bargain. The rest of the volunteers wanted to travel cheaply by eating basic local food, but the three of us were beyond ready for something other than typical food. We treated ourselves to the exotic cuisine of sandwiches and pizzas every day. We re-visited all of our favorite restaurants that we ate at on the first trip, and we found a few more hidden treasures. It’s just too hard to stay away from enticingly delicious food when we’ve been living in La Unión for so long!

The ruins themselves were the disappointing part. The souvenir-filled market and tasty food will always be in Copan, but how often does the end of the world roll around where the Mayans used to live? As I mentioned we were eagerly looking forward to any kind of ceremony or reenactment to show us what Mayan life was like. The ruins would be the obvious choice to put on such a show and, even up until the point of us actually going there to face the ugly truth, we were promised fantastic things. The schedule of events told us there would be a performance on the ruins’ grounds at 5pm because that is when the sun goes down which is symbolic for the apocalypse. So we went a little before that to buy our tickets, get amazing Mayan masks to add to our excitement, and to stand in line so we would not miss a thing. 
We did not see any documentary cameras or tv stations setting up, or an insane crowd filling the grounds, but we were still naïve and hopeful. The moment came when they finally started letting people in and we were preparing to start pushing people over in order to get good seats. But we quickly realized the hype was for nothing. We wandered into the ruins and waited for someone to usher us to a seating area or to be surrounded by men and women dressed up like the ancient Mayans and chanting, but there was nothing. We waited and waited thinking maybe they were going to do a surprise attack on all the tourists, but there was still nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only unique thing about the whole experience was that it was the first time that the ruins had been open to the public after dark so it was the first time people were getting the chance to see the ruins under the lights. Sorry to rain on the parade, but the ruins look better during the day than they do at night lit up. We could not admit defeat yet so we kept wandering and doing a goofy tourist photo shoot in our masks, but eventually we got bored and quit. We headed out, disappointed and heartbroken, after our Mayan end-of-the-world ‘party.’

Really, Honduras? You couldn’t pull it together to put on a one-of-a-kind event that the whole world was anticipating? We did confront the tour guide who had been promising us all of these wondrous things, and he apologized but admitted that we had been fooled and ripped off. He tried to convince us that there were supposed to be some ceremonies later in the night – one at midnight and another at 4am with the sunrise – but we had already learned our lesson. Apparently the town square did host traditional dancing at one point, but we completely missed it. We were tricked into thinking that this place, where Mayans left their mark, would be more alive and crazy when given the opportunity to celebrate the end of the world, but you and I are both very wrong. Oh well, we still survived the end of the world (just like everyone else) and we did it in style. You have to admit, our masks are pretty cool, huh?