Tikal, Guatemala

A 4:30am wake up call to catch a ride from Antigua to the airport to get on a one hour flight to Las Flores in the northern part of the country was a fun start to an adventurous day. On the way to the airport we saw an SUV totally riddled with bullet holes and our driver informed us that shootings are pretty common in the city due to gang fighting. Seeing a vehicle looking like it just got attacked by Al Capone was pretty frightening, actually-- as if being in a a 3rd world country with the idea of being sort of un-safe wasn't enough.

Anyway. The day in Tikal was pretty awesome- as in awe-inspiring! Take 3,000 year old Mayan ruins surrounded by jungle, howling monkeys, and weird raccoon thingys, add in an almost-fluent-in-English tour guide, mix with five Americans who aren't used to climbing six flights of ladders or holding tarantulas found on the ground and you have a memorable day. (yes, I did hold a tarantula-- it felt like pipe cleaner walking on my arms and hands)

Some of my favorite moments are of climbing up rickety wood staircases to get to the top of the various temples and then get to see the rest of Tikal from a bird's eye perspective. Climbing up to the top of Temple IV was like climbing vertical ladders. I couldn't look down as I stepped and stepped and pulled and pulled to get to the top.

Some of the things that surprised me were:
- you can hear conversations on the ground when you're at the top of a temple
-you can hear conversations from the top of a temple when you're standing on the ground
- all the hills in the Tikal area are ruins that haven't been uncovered yet
- there are over 4,000 ruins still to be excavated
- no one actually lived in Tikal-- it's a sacred Mayan site where people went to worship and make sacrifices
- there were road crossing signs on the road to the park for jaguars, boa constrictors, monkeys, wild turkeys, raccoon things
- it takes hundreds of people to keep up the ruins that are excavated because the jungle is always ready to take them back

- the Mayans built water canals between all the buildings
- all the temples are built in pairs of 2-- one on the East and one on the West and there are usually buildings on the North and South as well to form a little complex
- Mayans still use Tikal as a place for ceremonies
- people from all over the world visit Tikal (we met people from all over Europe during our time there)