Sharon and i had been riding various buses for about 12 hrs and through the groggy haze in my head, i was really, really hoping i was going to like Tikal. about the only good thing about taking an overnight bus is that we arrived at the park at 6:30 in the morning and had the whole day ahead of us to explore the ruins. we checked into our "hotel room", which consisted of two hammocks slung under an open pavilion, depostied our packs in the restaurant of the Jaguar Inn, then proceeded to venture into the jungle to discover the Mayan ruins.
i must say that the first temple we saw was a bit uninspiring. not to say that it wasnīt impressive, because it was. a pyramid of giant stone steps leading to an alter at the top about 100 ft high is certainly impressive and interesting. just not take-you-breath-away interesting, and i wasnīt quite sure that it warrented our 13 hrs red-eye bus ride. but there was still lots more to see, and i had lots of hope that the best was still to come. besides, the jungle was beautiful (it was the first green landscape i had seen since coming to guatemala) and it was full of birds, insects, a weirdo animal that looked like a cross between a ring tailed lemer and a racoon and (rumor had it) howler monkies!!
sharon , my ever enthusiastic friend and dedicated tour guide, gave a walking tour of the ruins, no small feat considering the difficulty of walking through a rain forest while reading from the guide book! we tried to slink aling, unobtrusively behind a professionally guided tour to get the scoop on all the ruins and artifacts, but gave up that sneeky idea when we discovered the tour was in german!
our next stop was the creativly named Temple VI. now this was an amazing sight, perhaps even worth a 26 hr bus ride!! it was the tallest temple in tikal (and i wish i could impress you all with both my memory and the height of the temple, but i canīt remember the actuall height!) letīs just say it was really, really tall, and it reached far above the canopy of the jungle. there was a maze of rickey wooden steps leading to the top, and the view from the peak was AMAZING!! there was nothing for miles around but a green carpet of tree tops, and 4 other tempes were visible poking up through the trees.
more exploring and a quick nap in our hammocks took up the rest of the afternoon, the it was time to head back to temple VI for the much anticipated sunset, thoug from the looks of the coulds we didīt know if it would be a sucessful venture or not. about half way walking back to the temple, the clouds let loose with a downpour. we were soaked through, but undeterred from seeing our sunset, and still optimistic that it would clear up :)
the sun made a valient attempt to break through the cloud bank, but the best we got were a few angelsīladders (sun rays) poking through and we decided to head back to dinner and our hammocks.
day 2 was equally amazing. we still had about half the park to visit. we started out eating breakfast at Group G (another mind-numbing name). this ruin had been some sort of habitation for the nobel class rather than a temple. we also went to the grand plaza which was the center of the city of tika during its functioning days. there were two impressive temples facing each other, habitations, ball courts (where, ironically, the WINNER of the match would have the honor of being sacrificed!!) and many well preserved carvings. there were also howler monkies in the trees while we were there. the name does not do them justice, though i guess you can begin to get a vague idea of what they sounded like. they are really more like full grown, king-of-the-jungle lions roaring up in the trees. and itīs loud!!
true to farm, the rainy season caught up with us again as we were heading back to the hotel to catch our ride out of tikal. we provided quite the entertainment and diversion for all the people in the restaurant as we slopped mud and rainwater through the middle of the dining room (as gracefully as possible, of course) on a mission to get to our dry clothes in our packs!
and of course our travel experience wouldnīt be complete without concluding it with a harrowing bus ride back to civilization with a more-than-half crazed bus driver. needles to say, i was glad to reach the bus station intact and wit some great memories and pictures of the tikal ruins.
|  | 
|
