Exploring Maya beyond the calendar

Join us as we travel along the award-winning journalistic trails of the CRAZY RIVER, explore prehistoric Spirit Stones and contemplate the end of the world in Maya 2012.

First, award-winning travel writer Richard Grant will take us through East Africa and down the Nile River.  Despite escaping death in Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre, an adventure he describes in his adventure classic God’s Middle Finger, Richard’s curiosity and restlessness took him to Africa, where he set off on another adventure-- to find the source of the Nile River.  In his newest book, CRAZY RIVER: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, Richard writes that he had trained and prepared for a physical adventure in the wilderness, but his biggest challenges were intellectual.

Then, award-winning author Dianne Ebertt Beeaff shares her transcending book, SPIRIT STONES, a historic exploration that took nearly a decade to complete.  Dianne explores the enduring lessons of Western Europe’s prehistoric monoliths, stone circles and burial chambers.

Finally, Joshua Berman offers some insights into Maya culture and events surrounding the end of the Maya calendar on December 21, 2012 in his new guide book MAYA 2012.  Joshua has been traveling, living, teaching, and leading trips in Central America since 1998, the year the Peace Corps sent him to Nicaragua. During his two and a half years there, he heard tales about “lost worlds” and Maya pyramids.  A predominate story that he encountered is what the Maya have been anticipating—the end of the Long Count, a 5,125-year cycle of the Maya calendar, which will occur on December 21, 2012.  Some believe that it will be a peaceful transition while others warn it will be apocalyptic.