On The Road

One of my favorite spots on the planet was elected as a New 7 Wonders of the World last week. I am a little late in reporting this bit of news from July 7th, but since it is only one of the two places on the list that I have visited, I wanted to mention it.

Personally, I think that in this contest of sorts, Chichen-Itza represents all of the archaeological site on the Yucatan peninsula rather than just this one site. Chichen-Itza just happens to have had the most visitors of all of the sites there. Many of the Maya sites are just as incredible, or maybe more so, than Chichen. Uxmal, Coba, Palenque … all are pretty fascinating and well worth visiting if you happen to ever get to the area.

New7Wonders.com

My story on visiting Chichen-Itza

So, the other day I was bored and decided on another site update. I had been keeping the backend of the site in old-style html because that made it easy to do site updates while traveling, and for some reason I decided that CSS might make things look a little neater and tider. So, as a taste of things to come check out the section on The Yucatan, as that’s the only section that’s completely finished at the moment. No more two window browsing, no pop up windows, and every page is now about exploring cultures with eyes open!

Check out The Yucatan

Over the weekend I was a little wanting for something to do so I wandered around Berkeley, where I’ve been staying for the last year, and checked out some Places to Stay. If I had to choose between staying in San Francisco or staying in Berkeley, for sure I would choose San Francisco. The hotels in Berkeley seem to be completely centered around the university, both in location and in services. San Francisco has a lot more variety and things to do. And I don’t think it’s any less expensive to stay in Berkeley.

I had someone ask me how to make Pico di Gallo and it occurred to me that someone else out there may want to know how to make it so I wrote up the recipe, such as it is, for this Mexican staple. It’s really just a lot of chopping!

Enjoy!

President Bush is visiting the Maya archaeological site of the ancient city of Iximche in Guatamala and the Maya want nothing to do with him. They have even gone on record as saying that they will send in the shamans with their spiritual scrub brushes to cleanse the site immediately after he leaves.

Mayan Indian leaders have vowed to “spiritually cleanse” an ancient site in Guatemala after U.S. President George W. Bush visits during his seven-day, five-nation tour of Latin America.

Mayan priests say they will purify the sacred archaeological site to rid it of any “bad spirits” after Bush is there.

“That a person like (Bush) with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked is going to walk in our sacred lands is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan non-governmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, told The Associated Press.

Read the CNN article.

Photo is from another Maya site, Ek Balam.