The Temples of Tikal

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  Flores, Guatemala
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Today we visited the site of the Tikal Ruins, an ancient and once-powerful Mayan city with many impressively high and spread-out temples. The unique thing about Tikal is the location of the site, deep in the rainforest, and as well the site is more fully excavated than many other sites in Mexico and Belize.

Carly and I opted to sleep in instead of going at 5 a.m. like the rest of the group; we arrived closer to 10 a.m. but still had lots of time to see what we wanted to see. We passed on the option of hiring a guide. After six or seven sets of ruins, we felt we knew enough about the Mayans to appreciate the site on our own. Many archaeology buffs could regail you with stories about Tikal for pages, but I will leave it up to Google and to you to investigate if you are interested. (To be honest, we are both a little bit ruined-out at the moment!)

To summarize, we saw Temple I, II, and III, then climbed up to the top of Temple IV and took some great photos, which you can see posted. We skipped Temple V since it was farthest away and reports from other tourists of the steep ladder in place of stairs served as a sufficient deterrent. We also spotted some weird little raccoony-possumy things called Coati, or Coatimundi, and heard the screams of howler monkeys. 

Other than that, we are taking the afternoon to relax and recuperate before dinner and an ealy-morning start to Rio Dulce (the sweet river).

Not a lot to report!

- Allison

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Estela V (Glyph) on the way to Temple IV	Allison Bravely Stands Atop Temple IV   Comments!	Carly Enjoys the View at Temple IV	Little Guatemalan Girl
Woman Weaving on a Loom	Coatimundi   Comments!

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