Steve and Mom visit Tikal and Yaxhá

---

Since my mom was coming a few days ahead of my sister and her family, we decided to head up to Petén together. It was the first time that we've ever traveled just the two of us and I think it was awesome. I had just been to Tikal a few weeks earlier with my family and our visiting friends so I thought that I was mostly going to show my mom around. Well it turned out to be a very different trip and we had a great time.

For starters, I know my mom is game for anything so when we got off the plane, I asked the driver to take a little detour from our planned itinerary. Instead of going directly to our hotel near the Tikal ruins(to hang out for the afternoon by the pool), I asked him to take us to Yaxhá, a completely different ruin about 90 minutes further. We negotiated a fair price and he delivered us there and turned us loose to walk around for a couple of hours on our own.

Yaxhá doesn't get all of the press that Tikal does but mom and I really loved the time there. It seemed a little less "developed" and the sense of what life might have been like there was easier to imagine with fewer tourists around. Mom walked around one corner and said "I can just imagine kids playing here" and sure enough that turned out to be a family housing site.

The ruins at Yaxhá are still accessible so I was able to scamper to the top of one of them (over 10 stories) using the original staircase. There were workers cleaning the ruins and they chatted me up in Spanish a bit, making sure that I knew that Yaxhá is actually cooler than Tikal because one of the temples is higher above sea level than any at Tikal. Yaxhá also has some amazing vistas of the lakes that break up the endless jungle. And, the monkeys were amazing. Both howlers and spider monkeys were very visible and the howlers were making an impressive racket. If you've ever visited the T-Rex exhibit at the science center and listened to the soundtracks they dreamed up to suggest a T-Rex roar, you can imagine what I'm talking about.

Then, take that sound and amplify it across miles of dense jungle...

Wouldn't want them for neighbors but an impressive backdrop to the beauty of the ruins.

After Yaxhá we got some lunch and a beer around 4pm (again, my mom is a good sport) and sacked out early. The next morning we used a different guide than we'd had earlier to show us around Tikal. The birds were out and the weather was awesome so we had a great time.

One highlight was watching a Mayan ceremony on the grounds of the Grand Plaza of the North Acropolis. This wasn't a "made for tourists" ceremony. These folks were worshipping in ways that went back to the times the site was built. There was fire, offerings of alcohol, corn and other articles, all managed by a priest. The right for Mayans to worship at Tikal was one of the outcomes of the peace treaty at the end of the civil war in 1996. For decades, it had been stopped and now it is possible again.

If time permits, taking the side trip to Yaxha is well worth the extra effort when you're in the area to see Tikal. And bring your mom along for good company!

---

Comments

[Monica]

Hi Mary!
That looks like so much fun! Thanks for taking the time to write about your adventures and show us photos!