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Published: February 21st 2008
We took a guided tour of a semi-remote Mayan complex called Yaxha.
It was two hours from San Andres in a little red minibus driven by a sweet old couple.
We were guided by a cheerful fellow from San Andres named Naftaly.
After rambling over a severely bumpy road and through the front gates, we parked near the banks of a long, narrow lake.
Almost no one was around - just a few Guatemalans who worked there - as it was all day.
Naftaly, Brittany, and I strolled to the base of a long, broad stairway in the side of the hill climbing up from the lake.
This was the ceremonial entrance to the whole place.
Although the stairs were new, the sensation we had treading this hallow ground as the shrieks of howler monkeys increased and the jungle crept in around us was an ageless one.
For the next three or four hours we walked and talked, and looked and listened - and we climbed.
We climbed sturdy but steep wooden staircases to the summits of un-excavated towering mounds - whether they were intentionally buried as the Mayan civilization waned in an attempt to preserve the holy shrines is debatable, but the obvious role of Mother Nature over a millennium is not.
Except for unnaturally steep sides, they looked as if they had always been there - tall, leaning trees and thick, dark-green ground covered them from base to apex.
Upon reaching the top of the first mound we were able to gaze through stringy hanging moss and wiry vines to see the long lake back south and, a quarter-mile to the north - like an off-white stone corona atop the head of a crouching green giant of the jungle - the north acropolis stood out in the sunlight.
It wasn´t doing anything special, just sitting there, but its mere presence in my psyche caused a shift, an awakening that pictures or television specials could never initiate.
Standing there in the quiet breeze, we were forced to believe with our own eyes (and later with feet and
Naftaly with a scorpion... fun!
Met a guy who was carrying this around in his sombrero. Not domesticated.hands) that these anomalies truly exist.
We soaked up the feeling in silence for a few minutes before descending back below the canopy.
Throughout the day we encountered three major complexes with three buildings each (3 3s).
We scrambled all over them and took lots of photos.
The stone was coarse and it was difficult to tell just what color it was.
We were led through jungle paths and came jarringly close to howler monkeys who sounded more scary than they were.
We saw toucans and armies of red ants.
There were intricately carved hieroglyphs on a couple of large, ancient obelisks.
The designs mainly revolved around life and death, through the mouths of symbolic snakes, and many patterns of three.
We were lucky to have our knowledgeable guide who deciphered some of the complicated pictures for us.
Naftaly also took us behind a few wooden guardrails to look more closely at Mayan graffiti in two of the buildings.
In the north acropolis he showed us an ancient red hand print on the wall and told us people called it the Temple of the Red Hand.
One thing that struck us was how difficult it seemed to be to get the artifacts protected.
The carved obelisks were cracked and under thatched roofs behind a strand of rope.
Naftaly took us to a spot in the forest with some large stones that had been used to teach Mayan children to carve - sadly, they were covered only with ripped plastic.
By the end we were so impressed by such a personal experience with the ruins of Mayan culture that we didn´t want to taint it by visiting the far more touristed (and larger) site of Tikal... for now.
Since our original reason for coming to the Peten region was to visit Tikal, you can see how our plans have beautifully and spontaneously evolved throughout the last two weeks (it´s only been two weeks?!).
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