Finding, photographing, researching, and publishing these tasistal areas was a learning experience. I would like to share all of this with government agencies, universities, forestry and wildlife organizations, and students. So we now have four reports for you.
My personal style is as a photo essay, so each report is primarily photographs of the Acoelorrhaphe wrightii palms, locally known as tasiste palm. And area where they grow en masse, with up to a million palms in a small packed area, is called a tasistal.
Tasistal Arroyo Petexbatun, photos from ground level part I
Tasistal Arroyo Petexbatun, drone photos part II
Tasistal Arroyo Faisan, photos from ground level part I
Tasistal Arroyo Faisan, drone photos part II
I hope that ecologists, geologists, archaeologists, botanists, and zoologists will be curious and want to visit these tasistal ecosystems. What was growing here 2000 years ago when the Maya cities of Aguateca and Petexbatun were not far away (up in the hills a few kilometers away)?
This series of photographs of ecosystems of Izabal and Peten is available in two formats, 6MB and 27MB. You can post this, share it, use in in your classrooms presentations (no permission required).
The Spanish original (with video and voice) is already available below. The PowerPoint (in .pdf format, above) is updated with additional written text.
Several weeks ago we visited one of the factories of the international printer manufacturer EFI VUTEk to test the print quality of their newest super-wide roll-to-roll UV-curing inkjet printers (especially the efi VUTEk D3r).
To judge the capability of this UV-curing ink technology to be able to producing a diverse range of colors we use designs from the MayanToons division of FLAAR Mesoamerica (a division of FLAAR and FLAAR-REPORTS).
These prints show the native mammals of the Neotropical rain forest of Guatemala and adjacent countries. One of our goals is to encourage people to protect the endangered species and to preserve the rain forests.
This school is for the settlement of Plan Grande Tatin, of the Municipio of Livingston, Departamento of Izabal, Guatemala, Central America. To reach here requires a 4-wheel drive pickup truck for an hour or so.
All the people here speak Q’eqchi’ Mayan language, so we go with one of our in-house Q’eqchi’ Mayan staff. We also have staff that speak Kaqchiquel Mayan and other staff that speak Pokomchi Mayan. There are about 21 Mayan languages in Guatemala, plus Xinca and Garifuna.
We are now preparing our next generation educational material to add Garifuna, as this is one of the languages spoken in the town of Livingston: people here speak Spanish, Garifuna and/or Q’eqchi’ Mayan.
The students also like to learn English, so we include English in the captions on our infographic posters that we prepare for the schools.
This is the print on the efi VUTEK D3r super-wide (3.2 meter wide) printer in the factory.
Normally we go to printer and visual communication trade shows around the world (for over 20 years). But it helps to visit the factory and do print samples in the demo room to really judge the quality of a printer and its ink.
We (FLAAR from USA and FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala) have been donating educational material to schools of Q’eqchi’ Mayan students in remote areas of Guatemala over the recent three years. We will now prepare additional material in Garifuna language, one of the three languages spoken in the Municipio of Livingston (Spanish, Q’eqchi’ Mayan, and Garifuna).
We visited the school in the village of Plan Grande Tatin in early March (an hour in 4-wheel drive pickup truck from the town of Livingston). On this first visit the school teachers, the parents, and the village elders asked if we could help (the primary school teacher was no longer available and they need a new individual to be assigned as soon as possible). So I decided that at least we should return to the school and donate basic educational material; so we drove back in 4WD pickup truck several days later and we donated the samples that we happened to have with us.
Dr Nicholas Hellmuth, FLAAR, donating ABC learning aids to Qeqchi Mayan school Plan Grande Tatin, Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala, Central America.
The natural beauty of the surrounding rain forest is clearly visible behind the local house in the background.
These letters are printed on rigid material to survive in the schools for several years. We thank Mutoh USA for printing these and donating them to FLAAR so we could donate them to Mayan schools in remote areas of Guatemala.
The school kids had a lot of smiles as they ran around to put the letters in alphabetical order.
In 20 years of doing print samples at wide-format inkjet factories and demo rooms around the world, all the media and substrates have been white. Here in the EFI VUTEk factory they also did print samples on solid black PVC and solid red material. When you go to a printer/signage trade show you can see all the other solid colors that are available options. The benefit of UV-curing in is that you can print on all these vinyl materials.
So I show the red and black samples here. Plus a print on transparent material (the D5r and D3r can have both clear and white ink available for your designs; the white is obviously essential for printing on transparent material).
The designs are from the MayanToons division of FLAAR Mesoamerica which is a division of FLAAR. FLAAR-REPORTS is also a division of FLAAR Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica is the word for the areas of the Americas influenced by the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacan, and Toltec civilizations for thousands of years. Our main office is in Guatemala, on the ancient trade routes of all these civilizations in past millennia.
MayanToons prepares educational material for local schools in rural areas up in the mountains and in the rain forests. All the print samples we will take to these schools and donate to them. We thank Hanan Yosefi and Tomer Ohavi for the invitation to visit the factory and demo room; we thank the printer operator Liron Cohen for doing the prints.
Rather than accept a PR release from a manufacturer, the more realistic way to know whether a product is good, or not, is to make the effort to do a print test (preferably with your own files).
So at PRINTING United 2019 and also at SGIA 2018 we did test prints on a Konica Minolta Accurio Wide 200 printer (with transport-belt for roll-to-roll; can also do thick and rigid materials).
I must admit I learned a lot about these printers during this process. This is why, for over 20 years, my evaluation style is not to write about a product we have not seen in-person.
So here are two different FLAAR-REPORTS, each showing all the print results, analyzed in our office by Dr Nicholas (Hellmuth) and Jose Melgar (UV-curing printer Review Editor). After the prints are done at the expos, I fly them back to the office. After we study them, we donate the prints to local schools in rural areas of Guatemala, to national parks in the jungle areas of Central America, and to non-profit organizations.
