Transported into the ancient Mayan world

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Trip Start Nov 27, 2009 Previous
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  Tikal National Park, Guatemala
Friday, May 14, 2010

Tikal was without a doubt one of the most impressive places we visited, possibly because we never knew anything about it before arriving. We decided to spend the night and camp at one of the hotels in the nature reserve right next to the gates of the ancient city. This was a great decision and made the whole experience every better as we basically had the ruins all too ourselves in the late afternoon and early morning. The number of colourful birds was simply astounding as was the amazing volume and variety of their calls. We managed to get a glimpse of a toucan flitting amongst the trees as well as spider and howler monkeys. We didn't pay the bribe to get into the ruins at sunrise, but it turned out to be cloudy so we didn’t miss anything and even going in as the gates opened it was an amazing experience to feel like the only people amongst the Mayan ruins.

We wandered around the ruins for hours and it was so easy to imagine being the first people to rediscover the buildings after they were lost in the thick jungle for hundreds of years. The area that the city covered was huge and the pyramids and temples were massive and so impressive. We climbed up some of the temples to look over the treetops at the other tall, ancient buildings soaring 70m into the air and just peaking through the foliage. The whole experience is almost indescribable and left us in awe at the ability of the ancient Mayans to produce the amazing buildings of Tikal.

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A huge Cieba tree in the jungle around the ruins	The surrounding jungle was thick and full of life	Many stairs up to the top	Some ruins are only partially uncovered
The amazing Mayan pyramids in Tikal	The Great Plaza and the surrounding temples	The site was almost empty in the late afternoon	Temple II in the Great Plaza
Looking down at the Great Plaza	Waiting for the sunset amongst the ruins	The Great Plaza	Temple II
Temple IV through the trees	The tops of the temples sticking out of the jungle	Very intricate carvings on the rocks	Looking across the jungle from one of the temples
On top of Temple IV	Sitting on the temple steps	Looking up at the trees	The ruins tucked amongst the jungle
The Lost World	Looking through one of the temple windows	Our first toucan	Looking across to the Great Plaza
Very, very steep steps up the temple	Temple V

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