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Published: October 6th 2013
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One of the more intact temples
You can just imagine the temple priests ascending and the stairs dripping in human sacrifice blood. If you're a fan of stone passageways, secret corridors, temple entrances hidden behind waterfalls, and counter-weighted floor plates that trigger traps and open doors ... go play tomb raider. But if you want to see real Mayan temples used by real Mayan folks for real purposes, then Tikal is one of the largest remaining Mayan sites today. Much of its remains are very much in their original state, some temples still only partially unearthed and covered in undergrowth. The draw card for Tikal was the advertised
authenticity of a real Indiana Jones experience.
So we were slightly disappointed when we arrived at Tikal early morning to be greeted by a nicely cut pathway with clear tourist signage. Okay, so it was a tad naïve to expect otherwise, given its Guatemala's number one tourist destination. But the heart can hope right?
We started off at a number of squat and rather uninteresting partially unearthed temples. Unearthed sounded 'intriguing and exciting' when reading up it on the web ... but in reality, they just looked like partially uncovered sloping walls. However, things got better as we progressed, with each subsequent temple becoming bigger and more impressive. Eventually, we came to a
Freaky pink trees
I love those trees...but they do give me the heebie-jeebies for some reason. Up close they look like big bunches of pink cotton wool and I have a dreadful fear that those are going to fly up my noise, drop some seeds and then I'd have a little pink tree growing out of my nose. I guess one too many times where my teacher told me as a kid not to eat orange seeds unless I wanted an orange tree growing in my tummy. few temples of some significant stature (from memory, the creatively named Temple III and Temple IV). One of these had some seriously steep stairs to climb, and the other required ascending a ladder for the full height. Normally would have been easy, but I had a fat little 2-year old strapped to me plus a backpack, which made the ascent all the more challenging but also more satisfying. The views from the top were a sight. You could see the tops of various temples peaking up above the tree canopy - an undiscovered lost world spread across a vast plain of green. At that time of year, some vibrant orange flowers were in full bloom as well which made the scenery all the more breathtaking. My shoddy camera work does little justice here.
After gawking at the horizon for as long as possible (mainly to put-off the ascent of the next set of steep stairs), we headed over the the piece de resistance of Tikal, the main courtyard. This is the one reason to come to Tikal. Its an overabundance of temple goodness set in the midst of a sprawling acropolis. Till then, Tikal had been nice but no
Typical Mayan carvings
One of the few carvings...and not that great either. Apparently some of the other Mayan sites have more interesting ones. But we saw enough of these at the museum anyway. big deal. That main courtyard rectified that in a flash. Our guide gave us free time to wonder through the acropolis. I spent an hour poking my head into narrow passageways, clambering up walls, going 'just a little bit more' to discover what was around the next corner. The acropolis is full of tomb-raider-esque scenery around every corner. Loved it! I had to fight the urge to push big blocks of stone around and push my hand into little rock holes to unlock secret doors.
It was kind of amazing imaging how a thousand years ago this wasn't covered in trees but was acres and acres of a sprawling city with large courts and the home of 100,000 people. Yet at the same time severely disturbing to imagine the human sacrifice that went on here. Mayan's loved marking big ceremonies with mass killings and done in seriously grotesque ways. One depicted in one of the temples in Tikal (though we didn't get to see it) shows a common approach of Arrow sacrifice, where they paint a white marker on the sacrificial victim and then ritually dance around the victim shooting arrows. Another one was the more traditional rip-your-heart-out at
Courtyard area
This was the most interesting and impressive part of Tikal. Alas this picture only captures a small fraction of the large area of courtyards, temples, houses, columns and generally well-preserved rocky goodness. the top of a temple and let the blood drip down. But apparently the level of sacrifice was nowhere near as bad as some of the other central american cultures.
After our fill of Mayan ancientness, we headed back to town. We spent the afternoon back in Flores wandering the streets looking to engage with the locals. Flores is a pretty little town to wander about with pastel color-washed walls on every street and pretty flowers in every window. Alas, my wife was more interested in her latest find, the wonders of yucca (similar to manioc or cassava) - a starchy vegetable which when served fried as chips, or boiled with salt is now her most favorite food ever.
That night we had a slight dilemma when we got back to the hotel. The hotel staff had very cleverly folded our towels into the shape of a dog and used two chocolates as the eyes. That totally freaked our poor little 2 year old out, who was utterly convinced a dog was living in the room. Even after dismantling the dog and sitting on him to prove he wasn't real, she still didn't seem convinced that there was
Exploring the courtyards
The courtyard areas had loads of well kept moderately interesting little areas. Though I wish our helpful tour guide explained what these actually were. no way that towel could reform itself into its poochy self again. A story for our daughter's baby book.
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