Tikal

Saturday was Cristie´s birthday, and we set off for Tikal in the morning (our 9:00 minibus was only about half an hour late). When we arrived we found the camping area, a grassy field with a series of wall-less thatched huts around the edges. We found the person in charge, a wonderful man named Gonzalo, who strung up hammocks for us, complete with built-in mosquito nets (a very neccessary addition). Sleeping in a hammock surrounded by Guatemalan jungle is a pretty cool experience. The stars were amazing, the bugs serenaded us all night, the howler monkeys started up around 3:00 a.m., and the birds around 4:00 a.m. There were ocellated turkeys wandering around the field in the afternoon -- they´re sort of like turkeys trying to be peacocks. We also saw pisotes, or coatis, funny-looking anteaters with pointy snouts and long monkey-like tails, that climbed trees and ran around on the ground. At one point we came across an entire herd of them - about 30 in all, complete with a bunch of young ones. There was also a funny jungle guinea pig called a sereque (I have no idea if that´s how you spell it) that ran around looking for trash. Its hind end looked like a capybara´s, but its head looked like a giant rat´s. I love seeing new animals. :D

We discovered that the price of admission to the ruins has gone up significantly since the time my guidebook was published (from $6.75 to about $22 per day), but that if we bought tickets after 4:00 p.m., they were good for the rest of the day (until 6:00) and also for the next day. So we visited museums and wandered around and napped for a few hours, then bought our tickets at 4:00 and took our first hike in to see the ruins.

I don´t know that it is possible to convey an impression of the Tikal ruins in words if the reader hasn´t been there. Any photos you may have seen do not do them justice, and words like "impressive" or "amazing" or "magnificent" just seem like understatements. The ruins are all of this and more. We were a bit surprised at the extent to which people are allowed to just climb all over the pyramids, but at the same time, it was incredible to climb up and sit at the tops of the temples and look out over the jungle, seeing the tops of other temples looming up out of the trees, listening to the birds and the howler monkeys. Some of the temples we could just climb straight up the steps -- very very steep steps -- and others had staircases constructed along the sides to get tourists to the top. The staircase up Templo V was almost as steep as a ladder, and had 105 steps. Going up was easy, going down not so fun.

We discovered that a lot of the most interesting places were around the back of the structures, where we found all sorts of chambers and passageways and staircases. One of our favorite places (which we found on Sunday) was the Palacio de las Acanaladuras, where we found a bunch of bats in a number of the chambers. While we were exploring it, a Guatemalan gentleman walked up, and recognized us from our trip to the museum the day before (he had asked if we were sisters, commenting that we had similar noses, and we told him we´re cousins). He told us that the Palacio had been a sort of Mayan monastary, and pointed out the separate chambers at the back for men and women, and told us that there was a space around the back that was used for massage and other healing arts. He told us that he was a traditional Mayan priest, and so he enjoys walking around the ruins. Apparently Saturday had been a major Mayan holiday, and he had been in there performing ceremonies.

We hiked around for 2 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday (not counting the time we spent coming out of the park for lunch, complete with enormous and very welcome glasses of limonada), and still didn´t see everything there was to see. We climbed a LOT of stairs, took a LOT of photos and a few videos (which I will attempt to post on Flickr soon, when I actually have my memory card reader with me at an internet cafe), and met a bunch of nice people. I am really glad that I went to English Week right before this trip, and got my legs nice and strong, because I´m not sore at all today.

There is much more to write about Tikal, but I don´t have my journal with me and I´m running out of time, so it will have to wait. I´ll post photos and videos when I can. :)