Tikal Mayan Ruins

So we set off to Guatemala at about 6:30…yea that is starting to be the common time for getting up anyway…remember the comment about getting light at 6:00 and dark at 6:00…oh and every living think in the jungle wakes up and makes noise…the 2.5 hour trip from Duplooys to the Tikal was pretty much bone jarring the whole way. Oh, before I go any further just to explain, Tikal is the largest Mayan Ruin site, with 6 large temples and numerous (thousands) of smaller palaces and marketplaces. The site itself covers about 23 square miles…yea…fricken huge. I am pretty sure we hiked about 6 or 7 miles around this place…did I say it was huge. Anyway, back to the story of the day…so we smoked thru the boarder pretty quick after sending our tour guide Fermin (Oh yea, another super friendly and knowledgeable guide from Duplooys) off into Guatemala with our passports and $$ without us…a little un-nerving to say the least. But in the end, he returned and we brushed passed the lines of students and backpackers lined up at immigration (I would have included a picture here, but the signs were pretty strait forward…”RESTRICTED AREA, NO PICTURES”…so I abided. So the first thing you notice as you cross the boarder in to Guatemala is that the road is dirt and gravel and is full of pot holes…super suck, talk about suspension buster…wow! Kinda funny that the main road from Guatemala to Belize is dirt…just weird. As we drove we started to notice several stark contrasts between the two countries. First, as you drive thru Guatemala, there seems to be no jungle or forest, only pastures with trees spotted around…and only a couple cows…even more odd, all this pasture for a couple cows?? It was really sad to see all of the forest either already destroyed or on it’s last legs…Fermin informed us that Belize has been very forward thinking about setting aside land and imposing restrictions on the creation of pasture vs. maintaining the forest (Quick little side note…Dulooys does not serve any red meat due to the fact they would have to support pastures to get it…pretty cool we thought).

And the second contrast was the people. While at about the same income level, they seemed or maybe looked to be more poor than their Belizean cousins…I cannot really explain it, it was just something you noticed as you looked into their faces…I know what you are saying “very, very touching Brown, now get back to the stories”, so I will. So after about 2 hours of driving, we stopped and picked up our Guatemalan guide…guess his name…do it, I bet you can figure it out…that’s right…Louis! So we called him Louis #4…kinda rolls off the tongue don’t you think? From there we hit Tikal…it was amazing. From out of the jungle comes this amazingly complex and intricate city made completely of Limestone…I would imagine it rivals Egypt in both scale (entire site) and complexity. Louis told us a million and one things, but I can remember maybe like two, so I would really recommend you check out Wikipedia or some other source, because the details are incredible. We hiked up most of the large temples that could…they were high, some like 60 meters, rising right out of the jungle canopy.

We had some good wildlife experiences, including some howler monkeys, Kuati (like raccoons), Tarantula (ask Jori about this one), Turkey (no not Dave), and some other crazy bugs.

After like 5 hours of hiking around we headed back to our little jungle retreat…oh yea, don’t forget the crappy road…when all you want is a quick little shut eye in the car…crappy roads don’t help…I am sending a note to the Guatemalan government to complain damn it! “Are you afraid of my Guatamalan-ness!” - Name the Quote…

So after getting back at about 6:00 pm (yea 12 hours of driving and hiking), we pretty much had some dinner and crashed…long day in the jungle=excellent sleep…it has been written thus it should be…
Cheers! RB