Day 20: Flores, Guatemala

Another rainy day but we went to Tikal anyway. We arrived by shuttle around 7:30AM. A guide is not required (they cost extra and go very, very slow…but they do give lots of interesting facts) but it’s good to buy a map for a couple bucks when you purchase your ticket ($20US). It turned out to be even more spectacular than on a sunny day.

The temples were all shrouded in mist and as we stood looking upward, we could feel a light drizzle of rain against our faces. Tikal is much smaller in terms of land-coverage than Copan but its structures are the largest scale Mayan ruins in the world. As one might imagine, it takes a extraordinary amount of time to fully uncover, and restore/reconstruct where needed, ancient ruins. Hence, Tikal is a working excavation site and some parts of partitioned off and tarped over to prevent visitors from disturbing the excavation and/or endangering themselves on unstable areas of the ruins. It’s pretty neat to see these monstrous “hills” which are mostly overgrown with vegetation being painstakingly slowly dug out from beneath (to learn more about the ruins of Tikal click
here for the wiki-link).

Main temple at Tikal

We made our way onto the Grand Plaza before any of the tour groups (who had taken a 15 minute coffee break before even assembling for the tour!) which felt like discovering the place all over again ourselves. Like Copan, it’s very quiet but as we were making our way just out of this little wooded path area into the plaza of the seven temples, out of nowhere we hear this horrible, loud howling sound somewhere behind us! We were expecting a giant sharp-clawed toothy animal to leap out at us any second. But, luckily, it was only a little howler monkey with a big voice. As we wandered in, over, and under the structures next to the seven temples, Lin spotted a pair of toucans in the very top of a tree just overhead.

Toucan at Tikal

Saben looking out from Tikal's largest temple

View from base of Temple V

Lomo Temple I

The tallest structure at Tikal, a magnificent temple, is also thought to be one of the last ones built before the civilization disappeared. There is a monstrous set of stairs, well actually it’s more of a ladder, to climb before you can look over the treetops and see the tops of the 2 big temples in the Grand Plaza. We ate breakfast up there admiring the astonishing view and the rolling mist over the mountains off in the distance.

Crazy stairs to get to the top of Temple V

Us eating breakfast on top of Temple V

Lindsey at Temple V

Being at Tikal and walking in the same places where the Mayans walked thousands of years ago is really hard to get your head around. The time span is so great that it doesn’t seem real, like it was just a fairy tale. But then you see these giant stone structures as evidence of this great lost civilization. Pretty surreal.

Leaf cutter ant clearing the grounds at Tikal

After we made our rounds of the main ruins we decided to go see the astrological calendar and observatory. On the cartoon-esque map we bought at the admission gate, the distance between the main ruins and the observatory is somewhere around 6 or 7 km by jeep. Being a couple of total tight-wads with cash, we decide to go to the observatory…on foot. We thought we could get there in maybe an hour or so. Also being rather hard headed, we set out through a swampy area with a more-mud-and-giant-holes-than-dirt road. As we were trucking along, we start hearing some gentle rustling along side us just in the bushes. Several tourists each year also get lost and sometimes die because they go off the path or get lost in the jungle…or possibly eaten by large animals. Ever so slowly, we turn our heads to the right and somewhat apprehensively peer into the jungle, not sure if we want to see whatever might be there. Nothing. Whew…just keep walking, maybe a bit more nosily so as not to scare any possible wildlife. We come upon a big puddle that covers the road, a spillover from the swamp on one side. After a few minutes of unsuccessful crocodile (their are many in the area) spotting, we forge through the muddy puddle and carry on with wet socks and soppy, now brown shoes. We’ve been walking for about an hour and we aren’t getting anywhere and despite all the fresh tire tracks on the road, we’ve not passed a single other human or car the whole time we’ve been walking. More mysteriously sounds and swampy conditions are quickly convincing us we should probably turn around. Grudgingly admitting defeat, we turn back and consider whether to take a jeep when and if we can find where one can be had and for how much. After a brisk walk we hit the trail head where we left to set out into the swampy, muddy mess of a road. Already tired and a bit annoyed at the map’s lack of accurate scale (we asked at the guard shack later how far it was, turns out the map is not to scale in any way and the observitory is 15K away), we decide to forgo the observatory and feel that we’ve had our fill of Mayan ruins for the day. Saben’s dogs were barking for sure since he had thrown out his insoles after being unable to get all that blasted volcanic dust out of them from Pacaya.

Raccoon looking thing

We headed back to the parking lot and waited for the shuttle to pick us up. While we were waiting for the shuttle a Coatimundi came walking right out of the jungle and walked right up to the shuttle stop looking for food (Photo above). As expected our driver drove very erratically, continuously passing and being passed by the same shuttle bus that left the same time we did. Still raining when we got back to Flores (about an hour ride) so we hung out in the hostel (Los Amigos) enjoying the cool atmosphere and delicious brownies with ice cream and Saben’s much-sought after fresh coconut with a shot of rum. Pretty chill night but we were beat after climbing all over the ruins and through a swamp.

Saben with his Rum and Coconut

You get the idea (sign in bathroom at Los Amigo's)

Travel Tip:

Get there early and skip the tour. We were the only ones on our entire bus that did not take a tour and we had the main complex (the one in every photo you see of Tikal) all to ourselves for more than half an hour. Then we just kept ahead of the tour guides and spent almost 4 hours walking around Tikal without another person in sight which truly gives you a sense of discovery! Do some reading on Tikal before you go so you know what you are looking at but as far as we heard the tours were just random facts that you will not care about later. Also skip buying the map, as you walk down the path towards the main complex there is a huge map on a poster board (the exact same map they sell you only bigger). Take a picture of it with your digital camera and save yourself a few bucks.