Introduction
Our tours will take you to Mexico, the Northern most Latin American nation, south of the border with the United States. Mexico has some of the most interesting remains from the Ancient Maya Civilization.
We shall also focus on this area to the South and Southeast, which comprises Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula and the states of Tabasco and Chiapas, West of the Peninsula. Tabasco runs parallel to the Gulf of Mexico while Chiapas extends all the way into the Pacific Coast. Both form the lower end of the Tehuantepec isthmus. This region is known for having been the most populous region in the Maya World during the Post-Classic period.
The Yucatan comprises cool volcanic pine mountains, dry tropical forests, dense jungles and savannas as well as tropical beaches and marshlands on a vast flat limestone platform that rises only a few meters above sea level. Tabasco is mostly a lowland rainforest while Chiapas has both lowland and highland forests, volcanic slopes and mountains with mixed forests- bearing a closer resemblance to the neighboring Guatemala.
During the Late Classic period, the Mayas abandoned the southern Maya lowlands in Guatemala and resettled in most of the cities found throughout this region.
Many of these Late Classic sites continued to be occupied until the Post Classic Period. Some of these sites were home to many Yucatecan Maya who lived pretty much the same way their Maya ancestors did for centuries.
Around the year 900 AD the Toltecs, guided by Quetzalcoatl (later known as Kukulcan) arrived from the Mexico Valley into the Yucatan Peninsula and founded the great city of Mayapan. The Xiues were a Maya-Aztec society that had established themselves in the Yucatan Peninsula some centuries before and founded the city of Uxmal.
Mayas and Toltecs became one powerful formula and forced the Xiues out of Uxmal, establishing the Mayapan league, an alliance that included the cities of Mayapan, Uxmal and Chichen Itza.
Wars between the Maya-Xiues and the Cocoms (Maya-Toltecs) characterized this times until the arrival of the Spanish Conquests.
Along with this rich history Mexico's Maya sites include the famous Palenque, Tulum, Kabah and Labna and the impressive Yaxchilan on the Usumacinta River. ecoturismoyaventura@outlook.com