Tackling Tikal

our first stop of the morning was the grand plaza

Journal Entry
February 23, 2006
El Remate, Guatemala

Today was a MASSIVE day! We woke up at about 5am in order to get ready and catch the 5:30am minibus to the Mayan ruins at Tikal. Early mornings have become easier for me in the last year, thanks to work, bit it still doesn't make it easy. Especially not after a night of sleep that was intermittent at best with about 2 hours being the longest interval I was able to acheive. Regardless, we set off for a day climbing massive, and incredibly impressive, temples and pyramids. Getting an early start is pretty much vital as there is a lot of ground to cover and all tour groups start arriving about 9-10am. It's always nice to have time in a sacred place before it's invaded by tourists.

In order to see all but one of the structures, one must spend 7-8 hours and walk about 15 Kms, not including the many ascensions up about 6 of the massive temples and pyramids. On little sleep, or not, it takes a serious effort to cover the area, and you can't rule out the effect of the hot Guatemalan sun! We all went through A LOT of water and only made one bathroom stop. Needless to say that upon our return home all clothing was covered in sweat and placed directly into laundry bags.

It seemed that throughout the day, whenever I would check my watch, it was about 2 hours earlier than I expected it to be. The highlights of my day were climbing the giant pyramid (the view was outstanding) at Mundo Perdido and of course the monos. We saw other wildlife as well but you know how I love those cheeky monkeys. Another highlight easily, came at the end of our sweaty day when we all 3 decided it was time to play monkeys ourselves (easy task for me, I know) and headed to the park's entrance gates to swing through the jungle on a canopy tour. It's a good thing I did this a few years ago because, unlike then, we didn't get much of a lesson beforehand. We deduced that this was because we had shown up just after another group did their first line and they wanted us to join them, as we did.

Riding down the first line it all came back to me and I felt right back at home swinging through the trees. Even the two leaders asked me, spearate from one another, if I had done this before...and where. Canopy tours are exactly the kind of thing I'm gonna end up blowing my budget on I'm sure. But the monkey in me just can't help myself!

Tomorrow we bid adieu to Ron at the god awful hour of 4:30am as he will make his way back into Mexico. Then after a few more hours sleep, hopefully, as the rooster down the street starts doing his thing at about 4:45am, Rick and I will make our way to Coban, via Santa Elena. Looks like we'll spend the night in Coban before heading to Antigua, in order to keep the travel days shorter and possibly discover something else that was unplanned. El Remate was an originally unplanned discovery and so thank you Patio darling for the suggestion. I really like it here, as you knew I would! It's just my kind of town, plenty of things and places to make tourists/backpackers happy, without being overrun with them. I look forward to swapping stories with you when I get home.

As for my more immediate future, I'm looking forward to settling into Antigua at my host family's home for a couple weeks and, if all goes well, vastly improving my spanish!

Hasta Luego!