Dear Readers,
When I left you I was in the lovely town of Flores, Guatemala. Flores is nice, but I think the main reason people go there is to do a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, which are about an hour away. The great appeal of Tikal is that these giant Mayan pyramids exist amongst such thick jungle vegetation. There are also accomodation possibilities at Tikal, but not much in the way of restaurants or other activities (so, I´m told), which is maybe why people choose to stay elsewhere.
Anyways, I took the first shuttle leaving from Flores to Tikal, which left at 5 am, in order to get to the park by 6 when it first opens. Supposedly a good reason to do this is to avoid all the crowds, but when I left around midday the park did not seem that much more crowded. A better reason to go early is to avoid some of the midday sun and heat.
As I walked through the park, the early morning fog lent an eerie almost mystical feeling to the ruins. (Although, I have to say that the imagary of Mayan sacrifice from Apocalypto is kind of stuck in my head.) The sun slowly started to burn off the fog, but the jungle remained oddly quiet. Once the fog was gone the cool eerie feeling disappeared, and instead sweltering heat took its place.
Walking around the ruins was interesting. The thought of people, centuries ago, toiling in the dense and humid jungles just to build all of these huge temples is kind of amazing. I think apart from what my own imagination came up with I didn´t get a lot of insight into what these temples are really about. This was entirely my fault for being too cheap to pay for a guide, which I think I can now chaulk up to a lesson learned. The one really cool thing about the ruins here is that you are allowed to climb up most of them. You can´t actually climb the ruin itself, but along the side they have built wooden staircases leading up. Coming from a Western country the fact that you can do this is totally mind blowing. These pyramids are really tall, and it felt like each pyramid I climbed was increasingly taller and the steps more steep. When I got to Pyramid 5 it was like climbing a ladder straight up. I guess they allow people to do this because there is no fear of getting sued here.
As equally interesting as the ruins is the wildlife within the park. I was especially fascinated with the turkeys that mill around the temples of the Gran Plaza. These are not your ordinary turkeys. I think they are related to peacocks, and take after their cousins with their beautiful shimmering plummage.
I also saw some spider monkeys but wasn´t able to get close enough to take any good pictures. =(
After about 5 and a half hours of walking around and seeing almost all the temples (some of them are kilometers away) I was cooked, and I took a shuttle back to Flores.
The rest of the day was spent recovering from the ruins and preparing to make my next move to Lanquin.
Next Time: Spelunking with candles in Semuq Champey
xx,
gwen
Good thing I left my trumpet at home!
View from top of temple 4.
View from twin temple.
A pretty tree.