Monkey madness

Trip Start Nov 08, 2006
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Trip End Feb 20, 2007


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Flag of Guatemala  ,
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

After a highly uneventful night in Santa Elena, another ¨gateway town¨, we went to Tikal, the site of some very fine Mayan ruins in Guatemala. Stayed in some hammocks at a place just near the gate of the ruins, with the intentions of getting up at at an ungodly hour to see the sunrise from the top of one of the temples (a plan which two bottles of tequilla was later to thwart). Spent the afternoon and evening mixing highly average cocktails and wandering around muddy fields at in the dark in search of food. We were eventually locked out of the space where all our belongings were, making for a rather cold and uncomfortable night (also I kept waking up really dizzy from the tequilla, then panicking because I thought I was falling out of the hammock and kicking the German girl in the hammock next to me).
Eventually made it to the ruins at a much more godly hour than anticipated, which were definately worth it. They're different from other ruins because the manicured lawns thing I was complaining about at Palenque doesn't apply here- all the ruins are in the middle of dense jungle, spread out over a large area, so you do lots of walking through beautiful scenery
by the lake at el rematen near tikal
by the lake at el rematen near tikal
. It is also a bird watchers paradise, which is not something I thought I was especially into but have you ever seen an actual woodpecker before? How about a toucan? They were fucking cool.
The highlight for me was climbing up to the top of one the the pyramids, where you had 360 views of Guatemalan jungle, with the tops of other temple and pyramid ruins sticking out above the canopy all around you. I took my shoes off and settled in up there in the sun for a hour or so- no sounds except for birds and howler monkeys (and the odd German reading out loud from their guidebook, grrr).
In these cases the pictures do way more justice than my words ever could, so I'll make an effort to post some good ones.
 
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