On 7 March 2008 the Department of Public Works published a policy document for public comments Notice 337 of 2008. Feedback was expected by 28 March 2008. In this publication it was noted that the following disciplines would be addressed in the newly proposed South African Council for the Built Environment (SACBE): architects; landscape architects; engineers; property valuers; project and construction management professionals and quantity surveyors… (more)

We went to Ek’ Balam (which means “Black Jaguar” in Mayan), a site located about 2 hours from Cancun, near the city of Valladolid in the state of Yucatan.

Words are insufficient, so I’ll just leave you with photos…

There are 2 hills like this. Each has a large, unearthed acropolis underneath.

The ball court:

The main acropolis… 106 stairs. I got halfway up and panicked. Luckily Jorge made it all the way and was able to take photos.

Beautifully preserved carvings at the entrance to a tomb:

And finally… Pepino the snake.

Out of Cacun airport

Growing up from the Philippines, I knew how it was like being in a tropical country. It’s been 7 years since I came back to my home country. My house mate owns a land with a palapa in Sacbe, a jungle in Cancun. He also has a time-share to 5-star resorts around Quintana Roo State area. When I found out a couple of months ago that he was coming over to Cancun this month, I jumped in to join him for a little bit with tropical dreams. A 10 day adventure with a fantasy of doing underwater photography of people. When I stepped out of the plane in Cancun International Airport, I felt like a fried egg from the humidity in the air. Les waited for me at the airport’s cafe watching soccer while eating ceviches. I just had to have those ceviches so when he asked me if I wanted the rest from his big platter of leftover ceviches, I jumped for it. No resistance. Just gobbled it. I was stuck in Edmonton Airport the night before, and I was planning to sleep under one of those rows of chairs in the airport, and be right in time for my 6:30 am flight to Cancun the next day. I didn’t get any sleep at all since at dawn is when the cleaning people bring out their noisy cleaning machines to disturb the isolation of the airport. Ahh. Adios sleep. I just decided to do some studying for my yoga teacher training. I was able to accomplish a lot of reading, but the uncertainty that all the information just read stayed put in my head was doubtful. Without any sleep, I looked forward to the idea of breakfast in the airplane amidst airplane food’s reputation of horribility, instead we only had an option of cookie and tidbits with drinks. So ceviches when I landed in Cancun was just plain awesome.

Snake separating highway

The surrounding area had some sort of nostalgia. A tiny bit like Manila with its similarities. The humid weather and aggressive taxi drivers harassing potential passengers. The Mayan people look so much like Filipinos: dark, short and pudgy nosed. They were warm with that mix of flirtatiousness and all-smiles. Well, that’s where Filipinos originally came from through boat hundreds of years ago, from the Mayan Riviera…so duuuhh… Every couple feet within the airport vicinity I got hit on by these flirtatious young Mayan men, they were pretty persuasive flirts, but instead of feeling harassed, I found them hilarious, so I joked with them and laughed off their flirty wordyness.

The drive to the resort was interesting. The nostalgia got disrupted when I saw vast spaces of Westernized and commercialized resorts and animal sculptures in the middle of the highway. Manila didn’t have much vast space based on how I remembered it. It didn’t have big thousand acre  resorts and it didn’t have big snake sculptures in the middle of the highway.

Main entrance to the Royal Hacienda Resort

Royal Hacienda entrance

Entering the resort vicinity

The Royal Hacienda’s Grand Coral entrance was fancy. It was touristy and grand. The colors made me happy, since fun colors have a way with me. It looked comfortable, but I had to admit, I was worried of the idea of being stuck in resort mode. I wanted to see, hang out and mingle with locals in a non-pretentious atmosphere.

Another angle of the Royal Hacienda

Jacuzzi at Royal Hacienda

My inner hopes came true when Les told me that we were going to the solstice performance celebration happening all day, during my 1st day in Cancun. it was an event at Sacbe where he gave me a short tour of his palapa, and we watched the evening shows. The performances by local performance artists were top notch. It was AMaAaZING! I had soOoo much fun. There were lotsa white hippies from Playa del Carmen. I met a couple of Les’ local artist friends, they were quiet a diverse of characters. It was a good beginning for me in Cancun.

Reminds me of skool, so you’d think I’d be opposed to it.

I flew down to the Yucatán for Stephanie and Michael’s wedding and had a day off last Saturday between the wedding and TTD.

I took the opportunity to scout locations for the TTD at sunrise and indulge my passion for pre-Columbian archaeology.

(For those of you that recall, back in December I forfeited sleep and instead went to the Mitla ruins on 48hrs sans-rest.)

The above photo from the TTD was shot on a mayan sacbé, one-thousand year old stone and plaster roads that criss-cross the Yucatán and connect ancient Mayan cities, some are hundreds of miles long.

This particular sacbé was located near the Muyil archaeological zone inside the Sian Ka’an.

That was part two.  Part one of the TTD was below, at a beach near Tulum, and part three was back at the same beach.

Keep a heads up for a really sick collection of photos from my day off; ruins at Tulum, Cobá, and Muyil, some beach sunrise action, and others, all bleary-eyed and fully-caffeinated.

Enjoy!

Again, I wondered at what is drawing me out here to speak.  The sun, a quaternity – a mandala on a grand scale.

AS ITS fourfold structure indicates the mandala is a symbol of totality, forming, like the Platonic world-soul, a rounded whole “sufficient to itself,”¹ a complete being “organised in accordance with its own internal laws”. ² For Jung the mandala is a symbol of the Self, that psychic totality which is indescribable except in antinomies and indistinguishable from the imago Dei. Its essential nature is unavoidably irrational and irrepresentable, for the union of opposites is a paradox beyond our comprehension. But the age-old mandala is not a rational product of discriminating consciousness; like all true symbols it stems from unconscious sources of creativity, which transcend or predate the world-creating division of opposites. (The Meaning of the Mandala, Philip Williams, June 2000)

The “Self”, the unconscious well-springs of the “self”, the source of the unifying principal within each of us.  It’s amazing how so many ideas of C.G. Jung’s are finding an outward expression in this ancient land of the Mayans.

Para chegar la a melhor opcao é a Royal Holiday e o hotel Park Royal Ixtapa com o servico all-inclusive e voce pode fazer a reserva ou pedir informacoes e como dica de discotecas na minha opiniao essas sao as melhores:

CARLOS ‘N CHARLIE’S, CHRISTINE CLUB IXTAPA, EL ALEBRIJE,LE ROUGE, SEÑOR FROGS, BLACK BULL, SACBE.

http://oncetv-ipn.net/sacbe/

We used our Dahon folding 7 speed bikes.