I’m sitting in my bed at the Dona Goya hostel right now, enjoying one of the pleasures of the modern world: WI FI!!! Oh boy! I definitely want to take this chance to write a bit about our trip today to one of the marvels of the ancient world – Tikal.
We left at 10:00 – sort of a late start since most people try to make it to the ruins before sunrise. We like our sleep, and after the days of traveling and feeling a bit sick, I think we deserved it! The minibus (not again!) that took us the hour it was supposed to take to get to Tikal itself ended up taking 2, so we got in around lunchtime. We got a couple of nasty burgers and went on through to the ruins a bit after noon.
The first sight of the Temple of the Jaguar actually did make me exclaim, so it really is a pretty impressive thing to see. The whole complex is laid out over a couple of miles, but the main attraction is the site where the Temple of the Jaguar (the big one) and some other smaller temples are. We warmed up with some pics around there and moved on throughout, getting a little braver as we went.
These temples are really old. I had no idea that their start date range is from 200-500 AD. I think having been to Macchu Pichu I expected that these ruins would be of a similar vintage (13th century) but I was wrong. Many of them are too tall to climb, but several temples have steep wooden staircases set up. My legs were totally aching about half way up any of them. The view wasn’t worth the climb on a few occasions, but one vista (look, I’m learning Spanish!) of a temple top peeking through the green jungle was really beautiful.
One of the crowning achievements of our Tikal photoshoot was this photo (now that I look at it it’s really only OK) taken with a vulture soaring above one of the temples. It took a heck of a long time to get the right shot. We tried hollering, clapping, etc. to try to get the bird to take off since some of his friends had made the leap too quickly for us to get the photo. So here it is in all its glory:
We didn’t see any monkeys (spider monkeys are natives) but we did get a pretty cool surprise seeing the long tail of a coati (a central american raccoon) rising up out of some undergrowth. We snuck closer and got a good look at the little guy before he scuttled off.
After another crowded minibus ride back to the hostel we jumped in the Flores Lake to cool off. We had seen a Pizza Hut (!!) on our way back into town, so naturally, we got a ride out there for dinner. Yum!
