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Published: February 16th 2011
Mayan ruins are amazing! I spent 5 days hiking to and from El Mirador in Northern Guatemala. I started in FLores wich is a small little island town on the edge of a lake. Flores is total chill, I spent my days swimming in the lake and reading in hammocks. On my second day day there I left for a 5 day adventure to see the tallest Mayan Pyramid yet discovered(72 meters tall!). With 3 friends ( 2 Dutch and 1 German) that I met in Lanquin we headed to FLores to arrange out trip. THe tour operator said we needed at least 6 people to get a lower price to we picked up 2 Austrilans and were ready to go the next morning. While waiting for our bus we found that there was another group of 7 ( 6 French and 1 Italian) going with us. What a mix of languages being spoken between us! We drove 3 hours north to a little pueblo called Carmelita where we met our guide and got the mules loaded up. The first day with our super-maga guide Alex we hiked for about 5 hours to Tintal We saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys,
Welcome to the jungle, now let me hear you scream!
Mules loaded, smiles on our faces, about to enter the jungle for 5 fabu days!snakes, and birds. As camp was being set up we hiked to a temple at Tintal to watch the sunset, WOW! THen the next day we hiked another 7 hours to El Mirador where we saw the tallest Mayan pyramid! At El Mirador the views from the temple were unbelievable! These sites are only accesible by foot so not super crowded with tourists which was a welcome change. By the end of the second day, my feet were on fire and the backs of my feet were covered with giant blisters, wish i had good hiking shoes instead of cheap tennies that dont fit right, but oh well! As you all know I tend to walk/hike a bit slow, the blisters made me even slower which was not a bad thing as I got some good solo time in the jungle surrounded by pure beauty and bliss. The next two days were like a walking meditation for me! When we got back to Flores, I spend the next day at the lake and then got one of the most amazing massages I've ever had in my life, on a bed in a tree house type room on the top of
the hostel with the lake breezes blowing through the wall-less room!
Woke up very early the next day to catch a 4:30 AM bus to Tikal! Tikal is a large Mayan ruin, incredible! Much of it is still unexcavated but there is so much that has been! Temples, pyramids, tombs, ball courts, houses.......WOW! Sitting on a ledge of a temple, getting irie with a friend after the tour, it was easy to try to envision Tikal as it once was; a large and powerful Mayan community! After that I spent the rest of the day on the lake. The evening before I got an email from a friend about a reggae show in Belize for Bob Marley's birthday. Well Flores is only a few hours from Belize so of course I hoped on a bus the next day to check out the festie!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Is that the white lightning spider?