Tikal and other Mayan Ruins

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  Tikal National Park, Guatemala
Saturday, August 30, 2008

Scott:

So since the last blog we left Belize for Guatemala, left Guatemala for Mexico and only just yesterday did we get back into Guatemala. It would make more sense on a map, i think. I´m gonna go and upload some photos, Claire.... 

Claire: Good effort Scott. He lasted 15 minutes which means it took him 15 minutes to write the 3 lines above :-)

We´ve been very lazy recently and instead of doing all the journeys by bus, have been booking ourselves onto shuttles which basically cart around a load of frazzled and probably hungover tourists from one destination to the next. Our excuse is that we were always negotiating borders and they´re not easy - tihnk of lots of smelly lorries, street vendors blocking your every move, little men in hats screaming at you to change your pesos/dollars/quetzals/pounds with them and not with their colleague to the left, panic about whether you're meant to be answering ´si´or ´no´to a question you don´t understand, and so on and so on - so it made more sense to go in a shuttle where there is a driver with you all the time helping you

Huge pyramids at Tikal

.

Our first stay in Guatemala only lasted two days because we were just popping into Peten (the northern bit of Guatemala that sticks out between Belize and Mexico) to see Tikal and the nearby town of Flores. Flores is a little town on an island in a lake, joined to the mainland by a bridge. It is very charming if a little touristy, but we found a bar with stunning sunset views and 2 for 1 mojitos and beers between 4 and 7, and we managed to stay somewhere actually within budget for the first time since we left Honduras. Even if it did mean staying somewhere where the toilets leaked all over the bedroom floor...

Tikal was much more impressive in its size and setting than Copan, although Copan is admittedly more famous for its art and sculpture than its overall grandeur. We took a 3am bus (yes, 3am!) from Flores, getting to the site at about 4:30. We then walked in the dark to the very back of the site and climbed temple 4 and waited for sunrise. It was very misty so not a great sunrise BUT we did get to see some spyder monkeys in the trees in front of us and another small mammal than none of us can remember the name of right now. Tikal is in the middle of the jungle, so as we explored the site we were constantly confronted by various animals. The howler monkeys put on an awesome show and we watched two groups screaming at each other at the borders of each of their territories

View from Temple IV

. They didnt shut up all morning. The spyder monkeys were a lot quieter and quicker and cuter, and we even saw some babies clumsily making their way from branch to branch. We also came across a huge black tarantula, something I'd been looking for every time we went into the jungle, and our guide told us he was perfectly safe so we picked him up. He was quite slow and placid, so much more savoury than the cockroaches that are forever lurking in our toilet rolls and showers.

From Tikal we headed up to Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. The town of Palenque isn´t anything to write home about so I won´t. We stayed instead at the entrance to Palenque national park, in the middle of the jungle where they´ve built a series of sweet little cabins and an awesome bar/restaurant of all things. We wre there for two nights and both nights had live music (there were these men who could play every instrument under the sun including lots of recorder-like things so i was very content) and on the second night we were even treated to some flame throwers. You just dont expect this in the middle of the jungle, but we werent complaining. Another awesome thing was that it cooled down in the night so for the first time in months we were able to get some sleep.

After doing 3 ruins with a guide, we decided to try taking on Palenque on our own

Tarantula!

. We had learnt all the facts about ball courts, the way the pyramids were built, the mayan population structure, etc etc, so we bought a little book and Scott became the guide for the day, filling us in on all the specific information about this particular site. Palenque was different from Tikal in that it was in manicured gardens instead of dense rainforest, and was also a lot whiter and brighter than the others. You could also climb these pyramids and get some great panoramas of the surrounding area.

From Palenque we moved onto San Cristobal de las Casas in western Chiapas. Han´s going to tell you about this though so I´ll call it a day.

In other news, Scott and I booked our flights home - touch down is 3rd December at 10:40am in Heathrow. Boooooooooo!! We thought we had booked our flights to LA from Panama as well but I just got an email that the card didnt work or something. Anyway, thats good news because we wanted to change them anyway so we got to USA before the election.

We´re back in Guatemala now after our impromtu jaunt into Mexico and glad to back in proper Central America. Mexico was too full of tourists heading upto Cancun, but we did have an excellent time there.

Right. that´s all .See you later xxxx

PS. Fern, what about Naomi? I like that name.

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Looking out over Tikal

Monkeys!!

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