Guatemala - 2010

Day 13 - August 1 - Tikal 2 in the morning

If you go to Tikal remember to take a flashlight with you. Many of the paths are easy to see in the moonlight (though the tourist seem to think that they are going to die if they turn off their "torches"). But the smaller paths that go thru the jungle are black as night and have roots criss-crossing the path. Even I needed a light for this part. The flashlight is also useful because the inns use generator power and you don't realize how much we rely on the lights in the street or around us. Most of the time we use this bleeding light to see. Without any lights whatsoever, it is BLACK!

 

Here we are at Temple IV waiting for the sun to rise.

As the sun rises, you hear the sounds of the jungle waking up. And the other temples rise out of the fog.

Click for larger view.

Even though we got to see this beautiful sunrise, soon after the fog overtook the view and closed in the jungle, again. The workers at the Tikal Inn said it was the first good sunrise in 9 days.

While we were waiting on the sunrise, there were three young ladies to the right of us. Here is a picture of what we thought was an epic fail as Rich approaches one of the ladies.

Click for larger view.

Give Rich credit - here we are spending the rest of the morning with the ladies. We wanted to go faster than the rest of the crowd so we pushed forward.

Here are the ladies from Los Angeles:
(L to R) Kat (Kathrina); Dri (Adriana); Lauren.

Click for closer view.

Here is a troupe of Coatis (a relative of the racoon). (More info here.) A troupe is comprised of females and youngsters. When the males are old enough, they are kicked out and live out their lives solitary.

An epiphyte (info here). Epiphytes are not parasites. They only use the tree as a habitat. It actually derives its air, moisture, and nutrients from the air.

Unfortunately, grafitti is common throughout the world.

A dead cicada we found on the path. I appreciate the ladies for their picture.

A map of the park.

After leaving Temple IV we went straight to Temple V. It has the steepest ladder of all of the climbable temples.

More proof of the steepness.

And I'm a bit scared of heights. I just held on and tried to concentrate on climbing.

At the top of the temple we found ants carrying this very large beetle. They even carried it up a stair.

Click for closer view.

The pyramid in the daylight. This is the one Rich, Phil, Ruel, and I climbed the night before.

Click for larger view.

After Temple V we hurried to the Palacio de las Acanaladuras (I think it was residences for the upper class). As the first ones here for the day we were treated to lots of monkeys. The howler monkeys are larger and you really can't see them, since they are camoflauged, but they are very loud. The spider monkeys, though, were jumping from tree to tree.

Click picture for closer view of a spider monkey.

Click here for a video to hear the howler monkeys.

A relative of the turkey, indigenous to Guatemala.

The girls were staying at the other inn (the Jaguar). Rich asked them to come over to our inn for breakfast. They said they would be over in an hour.

After taking showers Rich and Phil said they were hungry, so they went and ate breakfast. I kept reminding them about their pending breakfast "date". So, I didn't eat, knowing the ladies wouldn't be very impressed if noone ate with them or was even there to eat with.

Right on time, the ladies showed up and were very thankful that I was to join them. After a while Rich came back and tried to make up for his lack of manners. I encouraged the ladies to bug him about this as much as possible. At one point they called me "Papa Bear" for taking care of the young boys. Turns out that the ladies are in their mid20's to early 30's and the "boys" are 20 and under.

The front desk crew. The lady on the left is the English tour guide.

The dinning room crew. Hubert is the waiter.

After breakfast we were told there were crocodile ponds and a mirador (looking tower) the opposite direction of the park (left). Were weren't able to get this picture of hundreds of butterflies on the road.

Here's the path to the crocodile pond.

Turned out the pond only had mosquitos and thousands of them. Unfortunately, we had run out of bug spray.

Here's the mirador. I expected it to be large wooden structure, like a tower. Instead we walked down a path in the woods and came across a sign that said: "only four people. No children."

It turned out to be a tree house, of sorts. It was as steep as Temple V, but not as straight.

Click picture for larger view.

At least the mosquitos didn't follow us up. Unfortunately, we didn't know how many people it could really hold. "Four people": is that Guatemalans? or Gringos?

I would have stayed longer and looked for birds or other wildlife, but Rich was uncomfortable and went down rather quickly. Because of the mosquitos no one was going to wait at the bottom of the tree, so when you hit the ground you started back for the inn.

After a few more hot hours we took the shuttle to back to Flores. Flores is an island city. Here is the bridge that crossed over to Santa Elena.

Here is the "beach", which is just a sea wall. The island you can see has a museum, which we were told was not very good if you've already been to Tikal.

 

Walking along the seawall we actually ran back into the girls.

 

They had been talking to an older gentleman who gives boat tours, so we split the cost: Q20 each (about $3).

 

Here's Dri poising. I think they do this a lot.

Like I could let that go.

Here is the boat owner. He told us that the lake rises and falls over the centuries. I asked if we could go closer to the reeds in the center of the lake to look for birds, but he said we would run aground. Turns out one of the islands was a house with fields and animals. Another was a hospital.

Looking back at Flores.

At one point this boat left a small fishing village.
Why they don't sit down, I don't know.

After the boat tour we walked around to find dinner. Of course, I wanted them to try Jaimaica. The first Jaimaca the lady brought out was terrible. Turned out to have alcohol in it. After looking at their menu for a bit more time, I found real Jaimaica, which they liked a lot.

Phil and I had burgers and fries. It was one of my favorite burgers in a while. Two of the girls had a curry dish. Rich had a fish dish.

Kat (far right) ended up not liking her dish and kept asking for fries. So, I gave her the rest of my fries, knowing I really didn't need any more than the big burger. She asked if I wanted the rest of her curry dish. I leaned over to Phil and told him about Kat. He and Rich finished off the curry and Phil gave the rest of his fries.

I was also happy that there was wi-fi. So I checked email and input emails.

After leaving the ladies we needed to get to Santa Elena to wait for the bus. We jammed the three of us and our bags in a tuctuc for Q5 each.

Turned out that we didn't need to get to the bus station so soon.

Of course, the rest of the night was trying to sleep on the bus on the way back to Antigua.