Tikal

My trip for Tikal was to leave at 7:30am. I was a bit confused by this because the tour from Los Amigos left at 8am but I soon found out that as I had booked it altogether previously I was on a separate tour from the Los Amigos group.

 

The minibus came to pick me up at 7:40am and we set off for Tikal – on the way collecting some people from the airport. The journey itself took about 1 hour - I slept some of the way and talked to some of the people who were on the bus.

 

The guide who was with us was really great – our group consisted of some people from Costa Rice as well as Americans and Germans – he spoke in both Spanish and English: explaining everything in both languages. He explained how Tikal was only partly excavated – and how there were many more temples which were still under mounds which were also to be excavated.

 

The place itself was similar to a jungle with the temples dotted around the very large area. We were to be walking around the area – taking time to look at the plants and the animals as we went along.

Some of the temples which we saw were partly excavated but some were completely excavated. For most of them we could climb the steps and get to the top. We were told that they were all solid – not like the pyramids in Egypt which were hollow in the middle.

 

The views from the top were really great – depending on how high the pyramid was.

 

 

 

There were 4 main pyramids – all different sizes. We went to them all and spent some time looking at the area around each of them: as we were told, the areas were meant to be the places where people would live, or gather for certain occasions.

 

     

 

 

 

As we walked from place to place, there were monkeys swinging above us and other animals moving around with us!

  

 

 

We also saw a (poisonous) tarantula. The guide took the spider into his hands and I did the same!

 

 

The highest pyramid went above the trees and from there we could see the “canopy” of trees and how a couple of the other pyramids poked up above the canopy.

 

 

Some people go to the park really early to see sunrise from here, but all too often I hear stories of how it’s too cloudy to actually watch the sun rising – I’m sure that the colours are pretty beautiful when it’s sunrise though.

 

By about 2:30pm we were on our way back to the hostel and stopped at a restaurant for lunch. The Brazil vs Germany world cup semi final was on and so we watched the end of the first half….0-5!

 

By the time we got back to the hostel it was after 4pm…and raining. I spent the afternoon in the hostel and in the evening went to watch sunset on the river next to Flores.