Trip To Tikal

This weekend I took a trip into Guatemala to visit the Mayan ruins at Tikal. One of the UVM girls in our group managed to get a hold of her friend who was backpacking with a buddy through Central America for the past few weeks. They stopped by the Inn last Thursday and decided to head to Tikal this weekend. I jumped at the opportunity to go and learn from these two sojourners about traveling Latin America. I definitely picked up a few tricks of the trade as we made our way to our destination with several twists along the way that landed us in a few places we didn't intend on visiting.

The city of Flores was one of them. A little island city in the middle of a lake, it was a pretty tourist spot full of interesting shops and interesting people. I found the best view of and from the cheap hotel we stayed at. At seven dollars a night with warmish, private showers and real beds, it was a steal!

The city itself was pretty as well...






We managed to talk down a tour guide and get a good price on a tour of Tikal that included a 3:30am bus ride into the park to catch the sunrise from atop the tallest temple in the site. The walk into the park was spectacular since it was still dark and you could hear the calls of monkeys and buzz and chirp of insects as the silhouettes of enourmous ruins emerged just off the paths.

The sunrise itself was more of a gradual illumination since there was an overcast sky and lots of fog. But the sounds of the howler monkeys roaring and screaming throughout the jungle bellow was unimaginable! It was something straight out of Lost World, like hundreds of warring dinosaurs strechted accross the horizon.





After sunrise we had a tour of the site in the daylight and got a chance to explore for a few hours once the tour guide had showed us all of the major ruins. While the entrance to the park was probably more secure than the Guatemalan border, there were no guards and hardly any enforeced regulation inside the site, so we were able to walk onto many of the ruins and temples and get some epic pictures!

The size of these solid, limestone structures is truly immense!

Since the archeological site is in the middle of a National Park we also got a chance to see a number of neat birds and mammals. I saw two varieties of Toucans. Although a little far for a decent picture, they looked spectacular and very peculiar in flight since their beak is as long as their body. I also saw some spider monkeys and a couple big, black Howler monkeys. I had read that Howler monkeys tend to pee on people when they see them, so I stayed out from underneath these two, which turned out to be a good idea as a couple people in our tour group were treated with a warm shower that morning!

It was an amazing trip, and I am developing some travel savvy for when I will be on my own between the program I am currently in and when I need to be in Honduras for the Sugar Project. It's gonna be a blast!