Six colorful countries, warm-hearted people, legendary cultures, untouched tropical rainforests with over 800 different bird species, scenic delicacies, dreamlike, palm-fringed sandy beaches, mystical Mayan temples and stelae, historic colonial buildings, coffee, cocoa, bananas, pineapples, sugar cane, corn and other plantations of various staple foods as well as several UNESCO World Heritage Sites - Mesoamerica offers you all this and more.

Where does the term Mesoamerica come from and what does it mean?

The term "Mesoamerica", which means "Central America" in Greek, was first used by the German ethnologist Paul Kirchhoff (1900-1972). The word refers to a settlement landscape and the cultural region of Mesoamerican civilization, which extended from central Mexico via Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to the north of Costa Rica during the pre-Columbian period, i.e. before the Spanish discovered the region in the 15th and 16th centuries.