MexiMayan Academic Travel, Inc.
12 S 675 Knoebel Drive, Lemont IL, 60439
1-800-337-MEXI (6394)
meximayan@meximayan.com
Past Trips
MexiMayan travel adventures escort the serious traveler to the heart of ancient cultures and intellectually stimulating adventures. They truly are: “Museum Quality Tours” at sensible prices!
Discovering Peru With Larry Conrad
And MexiMayan Travel Adventures
Adventuring into the lands of the Incas
Peru's wealth of archaeological sites is unsurpassed. In fact there are so many "must-see" archaeological sites and museums spread across remote and difficult places that archaeologist Larry Conrad has decided not to try to do it all in one trip. This year you will have the opportunity to visit the modern capital of Lima, the Inca capital of Cuzco and the fabled Machu Picchu. From these hubs we will visit a series of important museums and archaeological sites. If you have the time there will be an optional trip to The coastal desert, the Ballestas Islands, also known as the Mini-Galapagos, where you'll see a variety of birds and sea mammals and a flight over the enigmatic Nazca "Lines" which include not only geometric figures but also mammals such as a monkey, a humanoid and a canid; birds; a spider and a tree.
Ecuador: Explore the Treasures of Galapagos Islands Expedition Cruise & Andean Cultural Discovery
Travel on the Pan-American Highway through the Spectacular Avenue of the
Volcanoes. Learn about the long history and living traditions of the
indigenous cultures in the Andes. Bargain for leather goods, wood carvings, weavings and tapestries, and other handicrafts in local Indian markets. Overnight at a 400 year old Hacienda and enjoy the genteel colonial lifestyle. Learn about ancient indigenous cultures of the Andes and see their descendants today.
Egypt: Ancient Egypt: Tombs and Temples with Marta Barber, President of the Institute of Maya Studies, Prof. Edward Kurjack and Egyptologist Ahmed Ali invite you to explore three thousand years of Egyptian history. Ahmed Ali’s knowledge has been called encyclopedic and he is a great teacher.
Peru: Holy Week in Ayacucho is a weeklong celebration that dramatizes all the excitement of Peru’s ancient and cultural treasures; it’s the greatest show on earth.
Peru: Semana Santa 2010 en Ayacucho: The Greatest Show on Earth: March 24 – April 5, 2010. (An itinerary in detail.)
Panama: Explore River of Gold: Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte, Panama with MexiMayan and the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College, April 12-21, 2009 with an optional extension to the San Blas Islands.
Press Release
Egypt: Jewels on the Nile: Temples, Tombs, and Pyramids of the Pharaohs January 27 – February 11, 2010. Egypt as you had always imagined it to be.
itinerary | Flyer | Egypt Map | Nile Map | Jordan Map | Sinai Perta Jordan Extension itinerary
Personalized Video Journal
From MexiMayan Travel
MexiMayan Travel, specializing in special soft adventures into other cultures and traditions, provides a special bonus for its travelers.
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Videographer, Robert Stelton, accompanies most travel adventures as an escort/leader and traveling companion. |
Stelton, a retired educator and Fulbright Scholar and archaeologist, documents the travel experience in digital video. His documentary captures the chronology of the package with special explanations of the package’s special features.
From hours of unedited digital tapes, that include many scenes of participant activity, a final Video Travel Journal emerges. Final credits are personalized with the travelers name. |
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MexiMayan extends this invitation to the participants,” Come along for the ride and become a movie star!” Every participant receives a personalized copy of the final DVD. During the editing process participants are invited to submit a favorite photo that will be included in the DVD.
MexiMayan regards this feature as an exceptional opportunity for participants in its travel adventures to receive their personalized travel souvenir.
A recent travel adventure on DVD is Rediscovering the Mysterious Mayas with Northwestern Adventurers and Friends. You may request a DVD by calling 1-630 972-9090.
For more information please call MexiMayan at
1 800 337-MEXI.
Below is a brief description of some of the trips we have run before, a
detailed itinerary is attached to each description.
Ancient Egypt 2009 Print Version PDF
November 30 – December 18 2009
Prof. Lawrence A. Conrad invites you to accompany him in his continuing pursuit of the compelling history of ancient Egypt with special permits into many of the most significant tombs and temples. Popular Ahmed Ali, Egyptologist, will be our guide. The new expedition will follow some different routes with seldom-visited archaeological sites. You will return with new understandings of the lives of the pharaohs, the workers and the people throughout the sweep of Egyptian history from the Archaic through the Ptolemaic.
MexiMayan Travel’s group departure is on November 30 is with Lufthansa Airline (a code share airline with United) departing Chicago O’Hare Airport on LH #431 at 3:45pm connecting in Frankfurt and arriving Cairo at 3pm on December 1st. We are counting the arrival date as Day 1, which will then coincide with the days of the month.
Day 1 Tues. Dec 1. We arrive Cairo at 3pm and are driven to our elegant historical hotel, a former palace with a view of the pyramids. Mena House Oberoi. D
Day 2 Wed. Dec 2. Cairo. We will meet Ahmed Ali in the Cairo Museum - arguably the most fabulous museum in the world and an institution without peer. We will see up close the details and true colors of artifacts and art objects that we have seen in books since childhood. Many that we have not seen include the New Kingdom “wonderful things” that Howard Carter saw in Tutankhamun’s Tomb. We will find artifacts from the undisturbed tombs of Tanis that we will visit later. In the Mummy rooms we will meet Ramses II, Thutmosis III and the recently identified mummy of Hatshepsut, the famous woman Pharaoh. Mena House Oberoi. B
Day 3. Thurs. Dec 3. Giza. This entire day is for exploring the Giza Plateau and the Great Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. We will be entering the great pyramid of Cheops and a series of Old Kingdom tombs and temples and we will examine the 4,000-year-old “solar boat” of Cheops. With a special permit we’ll descend to the level of the Sphinx close enough to touch it, which of course we will not do. Nor will we call to those tourists far above asking if they can see it from there. There is time for a picture with you on (or beside) a camel with pyramids in the background so that you can document that “I was here“. Mena House B
Day 4. Fri. Dec 4. Sakkara. As we travel towards the monuments of the “Golden Age of Achievement” we see farmers using some of the tools depicted on tomb walls. Here is Zoser’s famous Step Pyramid and Complex (look into his serdab at his ka statue) created by the architect and demigod, Imhotep. With special permits, we will visit the late 5th dynasty pyramid of Wenis (or Unas) important for the first Pyramid texts and Tomb of Nefer, with probably the most perfectly preserved mummy in Egypt. Leaping ahead 2500 years, we’ll see the Tomb of Maya, Vizier to the last 18th Dynasty pharaohs. Mena House Oberoi B
Day 5. Sat. Dec 5. Tanis and Luxor. We drive north through the Delta to Tel Basta famous for the temple of Bastet, the Lioness Goddess. Then we move on to the city of Tanis, known to many as the site where Indiana Jones found the Ark of the Covenant (or not). But to Egyptologists it is the site of the 22nd and 23rd Dynasties capital where the only truly undisturbed pharoanic tombs were excavated. We fly to Luxor. Sonesta Hotel B
Day 6. Sun. Dec 6. Luxor. We begin our exploration of the vast New Kingdom mortuary complex on the West Bank in the Valley of the Kings. We will visit three pharoanic tombs plus the tomb of Tutankhmun with his mummy now on view. Later we’ll explore the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut with its frieze depicting her trading expedition to the land of Punt and her sacred descent from the god Amun. This is the famous Deir el Bahri. We’ll then visit the mortuary temple of Ramses II (El Ramesseum). Guidebooks may mention a statue that was immortalized by Shelly in his sonnet, Ozymandias. It is not here. It is in the British Museum. We’ll also visit Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple/fortified palace of Ramses III. We will see the famous propaganda reliefs of his successful battles with invaders including the enigmatic Sea People. We will end the day with a visit to the tombs of the Valley of the Queens. Sonesta Hotel B
Day 7. Mon. Dec 7. Today we board our cruise ship. But in the morning we return to the West Bank and the Valley of the Nobles to see five colorful tombs. We’ll go to Deir El-Medina, the tomb workers Village and to the Colossi of Memnon (damaged gigantic statues of Ampelopsis III (not the god, Memnon) flanking the entrance to the ruins of his mortuary complex. After lunch on our Nile cruise ship we will visit the East Bank with the incredible Temples of Karnak and Luxor and the connecting Avenue of Sphinxes. The Temple of Karnak is the largest religious building in the world. It is a vast complex of temples, chapels and monuments donated by all the pharaohs of the New Kingdom and beyond, including Alexander the Great. It was dedicated to the Theban Triad and was the most sacred of places. 5 Star Cruise Ship B L D
Day 8. Tues. Dec 8. R & R. Today we sail up the Nile and experience the process of passing through the locks and viewing the activities of the denizens on shore, There is time for relaxing, reading, swimming, sun bathing or visiting the ship’s gift shop . Cruise ship B LD
Day 9. Wed. Dec 9. Today we disembark to visit Edfu, taking carriages to a Ptolemaic temple of Horus with dramatic pylons. We continue to Kom Ombo, a Greco-Roman Temple of Sobek, the crocodile god, and Haroeris. We can read or write in our journals. Cruise ship B L D
Day 10. Thurs. Dec 10. Optional: Excursion to Abu Simbel to see the Great Temple of Ramses II. Here we can observe the deification of a pharaoh with a colossal ego, ritually deifying himself and showing himself as a victor of many wars. It cost 40 million dollars in 1965 to elevate the temple threatened by the Aswan High Dam. We also will visit Aswan and the incredible Nubian Museum. This modern museum covers the history of the southern Nile Valley from the Paleolithic period to the present. Archaeologists rescued sites from Lake Nassar as increasingly high dams were constructed over a century. The amazing collection forms a stunning exhibit. Nearby are shops with a distinctly African flavor. We will sail to Elephantine Island with its numerous structures including an ancient synagogue. Cruise ship B L D
Day 11. Fri. Dec. 11. We’ll take a felucca to the temples of Kalabsha. The largest was built principally by Caesar Augustus (Octavian) to honor the local god, Mandulas. It is the largest freestanding Nubian temple. The Christians closed it in the third century. Tribal people occupied it, decorating it with petroglyphs. The other temple here is from the New Kingdom and has a pleasant tribute scene. Petroglyphs of humans, elephants and giraffes rescued from Lake Nassar are displayed here.
You will also visit the Temple of Isis, usually called the temple of Philae after the island on which it stood until it was moved. It is a very intriguing temple, finely decorated by its builders, but later used by tribal peoples who added to the original art with petroglyphs of animals, a mounted swordsman and large ships.
Finally at Aswan we visit the granite quarry that provided materials for 3,000 years for temples, tombs, statues and other monuments as far away as the Delta. It is famous for the Unfinished Obelisk that would have been the largest in Egypt had it not broken. It provides evidence of the quarrying techniques once used.
Also in this area two years ago, an alert member of our group found a panel of petroglyphs depicting people and ostriches that we could not find mentioned in any guidebooks. You have to be in a certain place to see it. Cruise Ship B L D
Day 12. Sat. Dec. 12. On our way back to Luxor we’ll drive to the seldom-visited site El Kab, a very old, pre-dynastic site. Our goal will be a series of 18th Dynasty tombs that includes one of a general who served in Mesopotamia under Thutmosis III often called “the Napoleon of Egypt”. It tells his story about saving Thutmosis from being killed by an elephant. Cruise ship. B L D
Day 13. Sun. Dec 13. Abydos. We disembark and drive from Luxor through Middle Egypt, an opportunity available to few travelers. We arrive at the 19th Dynasty Temple of Seti I completed by his son, Ramses II and grandson, Meremptah. This important ancient pilgrimage site is the archaic site that was the place of the tombs or cenotaphs of the earliest pharaohs and thought to be the burial site of Osiris. It is famous for its Kings List starting from those buried here to its builders (except Hatshepsut and the Amarna heretic kings). We will then visit the Temple of Dendara, a sanctuary of Hathhor and one of the latest and most beautiful temples with fascinating and attractive and aesthetic elements including a painted ceiling being revealed by ongoing cleaning. This is a cast of the famous circular Zodiak (now in the Louvre). A large frieze on the back exterior wall depicts Cleopatra VII showing her introducing her son by Julius Caesar to the gods. Etap Minya Hotel B
Day 14. Mon. Dec. 14. Today we visit El Amarna, the city founded by Akhenaten, the “Heretic King” and his queen, Nefertiti, “the Beautiful One”. We will be visiting the Royal Tomb, some courtiers’ tombs and the meager remains of one of the mud brick palaces.
At Tuna El Gabel we’ll view one of the boundary stelae that exhibits the royal couple adoring the solar disc. For once, the art displays the intimate lives of the pharaoh and his family. Akhenaton ushered in an era of monotheism that could not endure. Afterwards we’ll visit the beautiful and unique tomb of the family of Petosiris, built in the form of a temple with mixed Greek and Egyptian style figures. Etap Minya Hotel B
Day 15. Tues. Dec. 15. Today we continue 23 kilometers north to El Minya where we visit the available tombs of Beni Hassan famous for their scenes of daily life. These exquisite tombs were built by powerful governors during the Middle Kingdom when the power of pharaoh was in decline. We’ll visit Snofru’s pyramid at Maidum and view a nearby huge mastaba. Etap Minya Hotel B.
Day 16. Wed. Dec. 16. We travel west across the desert to El Fayum to visit Karanis, a Greco-Roman temple dedicated to local gods, Petesuchos and Pnepheros and the pyramids of Hawara (Amenhotep III, father of Akhenaton) and El-Lahwan, where a natural rock formed the setting of the pyramid showing the core method of construction. We travel to Cairo. Mena House B
Day 17. Thurs. Dec 17. We drive to Dashur to see early pyramids and return to Cairo to enjoy an early Farewell Dinner at the fabled Kahn El-Khalili Bazaar with shops. Mena House B D
Day 18. Fri. Dec 18. We depart Egypt early on a Lufthansa 585 at 5:15 AM arriving O’Hare at 1:15 PM via Frankfurt, enabling everyone with connections or long drives to arrive home this day without having to stay overnight at some city along the way.
Extensions are possible,
Early Booking with Deposit before August 15 per person double occupancy $3,783
Prices per person in double occupancy After August15: $3,992
Single supplement $868.00 Abu Simbel Optional: $200.00
Deposit $1158.00 This is the group airfare including all fees and taxes. It will probably prevent additional fuel surcharges. Due with application. Lufthansa is a code share airline with United Airlines.
