This Place Is In Ruins!

After breakfast, we headed out to the main attraction of this area of Guatemala, Tikal. Julio was our guide, and Juan our driver. Until this morning, I didn’t realize how far La Lancha is from everything – it is quite a ways down the road from the turn off at Ixlu; I’m not sure how I missed this yesterday. Along the way to Tikal, we passed through several small villages, and along the sides of the roads horses, cows, chickens and pigs.

Tikal consists of 5 main temples, several pyramids complexes and many other buildings. But you can’t see them all at once; you walk through shaded jungle paths and each plaza area is almost like a Surprise. The complex itself is huge and the buildings are imposing. We climbed several of the temples, include Temple 4, which provided a wonderful view of the other temples rising over the tropical forest below. Just as fascinating were the buildings that have not been excavated; some you would never know existed because the trees and the vegetation have completely covered them; others are visible only as a few stones in between monstrous tree trunks.

Almost as amazing is the wildlife in Tikal. We came upon spider monkeys swinging from tree to tree, a coatimundi, toucans and turkeys, and even an interesting little yellow caterpillar that even Julio had never seen before. And the trees – cedar and mahogany and red gumbo limbo, each one towering overhead and with roots so tangled and huge that they brought to mind a kind of medieval fantasy world; I almost expected Bilbo Baggins to pop up and join us.

And our weather luck continued, because it wasn’t until just as we finished lunch that the afternoon rains began, which meant that we had the afternoon to laze on our porch, take in the beauty of the lake, and relax. Which is, needless to say, killing me.

written by  shoshtrvls on August 26, 2009 from Tikal, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Belize, Guatemala and Honduras (2009)
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