Mayan Ruins in Tikal

The shuttle ride to the town of Flores ranks as one of the worst of the trip. However in retrospect I have been unusually lucky with my bus rides in general. I was jammed in a small seat at the back with very little leg room. I also wasn´t feeling too well after over-indulging in the Mexican buffet the previous night. Matters were not improved as the roads were decidedly bumpy. 8 hours of this was not fun.

Anyway we got into the small island town of Flores and checked into Los Amigos hostel. The place was large and quite bustly. The staff were friendly and I was happy with my spacious dorm room. Riverdance and Irina had been there a few days prior and complained of some weird biting bug that gave them a bad skin reaction. I questioned some of the staff who reassured me that all was fine. Stig (Norway) and I walked around the little island town which was fairly quaint and quiet. We did this until our bellies reminded us that it was feeding time. The restaurant at Los Amigos is purely vegetarian fare but was very very tasty and provided large portions. I had a large pesto pasta with cashew nuts.

Looking out onto the Flores lake

The little island town of Flores

Beers at Los Amigos

We booked the Tikal tour for the following morning. It started at 5am so an early sleep was called for. My alarm blasted me out of dreamland at 4:30am and I joined the rest of the mornings grumpy Tikal tourists at the nearby bus stop. An hour drive put us at the entrance to the park where we had sandwiches and coffee and were greeted by our guide Boris. He was well spoken and knew a great deal about the local flora, fauna and history of Tikal. The first big highlight was when he beckoned over a friend to show us his pet tarantula. I got it to walk on my hand which was super cool!

Tikal depicted on a scale model

Tarantula - sweet

Cute and cuddly

There was a light drizzle in the morning so Boris took us first to some Mayan living quarters and then to Temple 5 where we hiked up and took a view of the surrounding jungle. The pyramid shaped temple popped up just above the treeline and we could see the other taller temples poking out in the distance too. The climb up was almost on a vertical staircase that was damp and slippery from the rain... not exactly a safe stroll up and even more dodgy coming down!

Temple 5

View from on top of Temple 5. Temple 4 is in the distance

Boris pointed out several tucans (my first authentic spottings of the entire trip!) and large weaver birds. He also showed us several species of plant that are used in everyday life. I chewed a leaf of the all-spice plant which was gross and made my mouth numbish. We moved onto the temple plaza area where a great deal of sacrifices and rituals used to take place. The small altars on the ground were shockingly used for babies! Stig and I wandered around taking lots of pictures and imagining scenes from the movie Apocalypto where human sacrifices had their hearts cut out and hurled down the temple steps. The Mayans sounded like really charming folk.

Parrots

Some kind of wild turkey

The Grand Plaza

Me at the top of a temple

The temples are laid out in a fashion so that the sun temple faces the rising sun whereas the acropolis and some other temples face the sunset which represents the underworld. Finally the remaining temples face north and south respectively to form the cardinal alignments. There was even an astrological pyramid where the Mayans studied the stars and formed their unique calendar.

The last site we visited was temple 4, the highest one by quite a way. We sat up top and admired the vast stretching jungle in all directions. We also saw many Howler and Spider monkeys moving through the trees. They appeared to be having a bit of inter species warfare with the Spider monkeys trying to attack a baby Howler monkey. There was much frantic jumping around in the trees above us.

Meditating (not really) on top of Temple 4

Baby altars

Howler monkey in the tree above us

As we still had a bit of time left in the tour, Boris took us on a short jungle walk which wasn´t particularly interesting as we saw little wildlife. We trudged on for an hour getting very sweaty and tired in the process. Back at the tourist centre we took the bus back to Flores and promptly fell asleep. I woke up later to enjoy a huge vegetable burrito at the restaurant.

Machetes: Good as a deterrent for muggings

From Tikal I had a few options. I wasn´t particularly interested in visiting Belize as my primary interest there would be to do the "Blue Hole" scuba diving adventure which costs a whopping $200. I found out that the country is expensive and there wasn´t too much to do besides diving. For this reason I decided to skip it and move straight through to Tulum in Mexico... passing through Belize on the way!