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I have been  traveling in Maya areas since 1983, at times with others,  on occasion with my little sister as shown here and occasionally alone.  To me, touristy places are good to the extent that inexpensive flights go into them, although you can usually find non-touristy places in locations such as downtown Cancún if you look.  It is instead the outlying hotel zone that is something for normal travelers to avoid. I am not an expert on the Maya; I am mostly a rather enthusiastic aficionado. 

I like buses and prefer to travel without a rental car, but anyone can find one useful at times. To me it is interesting to get out and meet the locals and I prefer to eat at places that cater to them. To my way of thinking, it is important to learn from cultures around us, especially when traveling among them. 

I was most recently in a Maya area in December 2007, mostly in the Highlands.  In February 2007 I visited El Peru, Uaxactún and Cancuén. Earlier it was January 2006, visiting El Mirador, Wakná and Nakbé. In February of 2005, when two of us flew into Cancún and biked from Mérida to Punta Allen. The year before, I flew into Villahermosa, Mexico and out of Belize. Along the way were adventures, but not as many as I had hoped for. The year before, I traveled to Chiapas and also got to see the ruins of Piedras Negras as a short side trip from between Palenque and Frontera Corozal. My previous Maya trip was to El Mirador and Nakbé in July 2002.

By the way, I am happily married to a wonderful and rather younger lady who somehow manages to put up with me, and I have been enjoying an early retirement from the Social Security Administration since 1999.  Back then, the thought was to somehow downsize the US government, so they offered early outs. Then Bush came in to get rid of the "taxing and spending" and to replace them with "spending and spending", drunken sailor style, but I was gone by then.

This photo shows me on the far right from my sister and a good friend who later headed out with me to El Mirador, In the photo, we were about to begin a ride to the ruins at Dos Pilas in Guatemala. Believe me, from what I have seen of Guatemalan horses, I am not overly impressed by them. I called mine Guatemalan Wind, but not due to its speed. 

Even when I was making what were to me the big bucks, I was tight with a dollar when traveling. With me, it is a matter of priority. When I had a job and before I retired, the question was, do I want to travel in style every several years or do I want to retire early?  Now it is - I do I want to travel in style every several years or do I want to still head out every year? Well, I want to go somewhere with Maya ruins every single year I have left, so mine is one of budgetary constraints. So, with my love of budget travel anywhere, but especially among the Maya, I pursue this interest vicariously much of the year and travel in Maya areas another two weeks or so. 

Keep in mind that this website is a hobby. I don't intend to even try to make any money from it.  For one thing, the overhead is lower than the cost of some magazine subscriptions, which seems fitting for a person who prefers budget travel. Also it is helping me plan that next trip there to some extent.

Because there are so many links in these pages, I check them fairly regularly, but I don't  jump all over them right away. Some of the time a link will come back online, but often it doesn't. If it does not, how important I think the link is determines how much time I spend looking for it at a another address. 

Originally I started this site in a much smaller way as a project for a web page design class. However,  when I began to see so many links related to the Maya and how people could either save money by them or, at least, have some vicarious joy in seeing what is available, I started to realize how good it would be to have a lot of sources about travel in Maya lands all together and in a manner that with me passes for some sort of organization.  For one thing, this approach already has begun by helping me on a good number of trips. I don't claim to know everything about travel there and in many places I know little, but I do enjoy looking for and finding out useful information and I hope that this can be helpful to others and to the local Maya populations.

                                                       May we meet in Maya lands and sip cold cervezas frías together.

                                                                                       Dwayne Shreve

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