6.5.2. Daily Telegraph Blog

samfloy~21 December 2012 /Latin America/Travels

Benque Viejo del Carmen, Cayo, Belize
Friday, December 21, 2012

The Live Blog updates worked as expected; in that they largely didn’t.

Speaking to the guy running it afterwards, he said texts would come in mid-sentence and in the wrong order, at seemingly random points throughout the night.

Two (well one and half) got through the net, so to speak, and they are marked by an astericks.

This is how it should’ve read…

5.28pm: candle ritual beginning on top of tallest temple in Caracol. Anthropologist Timothy Mesh from University of Florida, and nearby village, explains the reverence behind contacting ancestors in this way. Spiritual movements like this began a few years ago in response to treatment of Mayan people by the government.

5.32pm: tranquility of service drowned out by clicking and flashing of persistent photo-taking. One guy has a pretty much constant stream. He could make a flickbook.

10.37pm: visitors at Caracol have just received assurance from Dr Jaime Awe, Director of Institute of Archaeology, that the world will not end tomorrow. Just under an hour and a half until the 21st. Time to sit tight under the stars.

*0.06am: the 21stis here. No great balls of fire yet. Some people are having cigars though, and others lamenting about postponed Christmas shopping.

*02.27am: ritual taking in middle of night. Solitary drumbeat marks route through site. Started on outskirts and worked into centre. Unexpected at this time of night. Those observing debate whether to follow. Is this the end?

05.37am: weather has turned overcast here at Caracol. Rumours of an imminent downpour of amphibians

08.12am: Joshua Brown, of Lonely Planet guidebooks, is disappointed in the lack of apocolyptic events and will asking for a full, or partial, refund from the Belizen Tourism Board or Mayan High Council