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Published: June 14th 2010
Today we move on to Tikal National Park, UNESCO World Heritage Site in El Peten. Our flight here was painless and we drove to our lodge in the jungle in the pitch darkness, occasionally seeing a sign warning of snakes flash by from the trees.
Next morning we bounced out of bed ready to explore after being woken EARLY by an amazing noise...a series of whoops, both high and low in an complex jumble of sound. We had no idea whatsoever what sort of beast could have made that noise and thought maybe it was monkeys. We learnt at breakfast that this exotic call was from a rather bulky brown plain-looking bird called the Montezuma Oropendola. We came to love this call throughout our stay. Another unlikely bird call we came to hear was squeak, just like a rodent and after jumping on the bed and looking around we figured out it was actually a humming bird. It was purple in colour and seemed to like hanging out near the front door to our small cottage early in the morning squeaking!
We stayed in the Tikal Inn which is one of three lodges in the National Park. Being inside
the park these do have a monopoly on tourists hence you get much less for your money here but sod it, you're here for the ancient ruins of the Mayan Civilisation, not the mini-bar and air con! The other lodge (the only other one which was open) was the Jaguar Inn which although not quite so pretty looking as the Tikal Inn, had a stash of Starburst sweets and Mars bar and seemed to get electricity for longer in the day, useful for charging hungry cameras and updating blogs!
I can't describe the feeling of walking through the jungle filled with the haunting cries of howler monkeys and the quiet rustle of toucans and parakeets to the towering ancient Mayan temples. It has always been a dream of mine since childhood to visit just such a place and Tikal did not disappoint! When we walked from temple to temple we saw two different kinds of Toucan. First we saw the 'standard' colouring which in real life is almost unbelievable, as if it's a plastic toy until it suddenly flies off! Next we saw one with red, yellow green and black colouring which I christened the 'rasta-toucan' on account of
Guatemala 286
Mayan artefactsthe colours.
The temples had such atmosphere, you could see the faded red paint on some of the designs at the bases of temples. Of course, in the heyday of the Mayan civilisation there was no jungle, the whole area was cleared of foliage and the huge imposing stone temples stood in vast arenas. There are even some theories that the effective deforestation of the El Peten jungle at that time may well have been the reason for the fall of the Mayan empire. Who knows, but I must say that, since the jungle has reclaimed the temples and for some, all you can see is the tip breaking the jungle canopy, the site takes on a whole more magical and hidden quality which is palpable. Some of the vast step-shaped pyramids are still being exacavated, a mound of thick moist mud on one side and an emerging Mayan ruin round the other. There were men working with hand tools, meticulously uncovering yet more ruins.
As we ventured to and climbed the easy ones, Templo I and II we grew in confidence and found ourselves attempting higher and higher feats. Templo IV had an interesting staircase arrangement which
you ended up coming down backwards and Templo V (my personal favourite) was nothing short of a thigh-busting, vertigo-inducing vertical climb. The views were spectacular though and as we climbed it at sunrise we were up at the level of the screaming parrots, sitting on a few square feet of ancient stone. I have no problems with high usually but the view looking down the sleep slope to the ground was almost like an optical illusion. My heart was in my mouth when I stepped on a loose board at one point! ha ha!
Templo VI was further removed and involved a longer walk through the jungle. We unfortunately met with a well organised curtain of mosquitos which caused a bit of impromptu dancing on route.
We wandered around the whole site for hours. We decided to hire a guide for the morning and our amercian guide Roxanne was very knowledgable and after her talks we had no trouble in imagining the gruesome scenes of human sacrifice involving beheading the poor victim on a slab at the top and letting the head roll down the steep stone steps of the temple to the ground to appease the Gods. Unfortunately
they were not appeased as the Mayans mysteriously vanished, but what beautiful architecture they left behind them!
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