Continuation of Tikal

La Casa was pretty great. It was scrupulously clean and I even showered in bare feet (ie, amazing). The restaurant above was quick and delicious, and we enjoyed watching geckos catch their own dinner by the lights. After a satisfying night's rest, we rose at 5 am (yes Rebecca, FIVE AM) to take a 5:30 colectivo (like a shuttle) to Tikal. We passed through several small aldeas (villages), and they were all nearly ephemeral in the pre-dawn light. El Remate's free-ranging chickens and pullets were everywhere, all pretty and speckled, and there were many horses grazing calmly by the roadside. One even trotted across the road in front of us, untethered. I wish we could have stopped for pictures there, but truly, we'd have been stopping every 20 feet.


David searching for tarantulas with a boy, Kai.


Eric with a giant tarantula on him.

We arrived at Tikal a little past 6 am and the sun had unfortunately already risen. Nevertheless, there were very few visitors so we knew there would just be pretty much jungle sounds. We left our heaviest packs with the restaurant on-site and set to hiking. On the way to the first temple, we walked right underneath a noisy flock of...TOUCANS! We must have stood for at least five or more minutes, grinning like fools, watching them play and chatter and watch us right back. Awesome!!

The main temple of Acropolis Sur arose from the jungle as suddenly as a slap. We took pictures of its shocking rise from the trees and hurried into the main clearing, where we were surrounded by more ruins, fields of grass and clover, and an eerie, droning hum. It sounded like a huge, HUGE horde of bees coming fast from really far away. It was extremely surreal, and the hum kind of made me uneasy. It wasn't until after we'd walked around for a bit, admiring, that Eric realized the drone WAS bees. Thousands of bees in the clover all around us, busily collecting nectar and humming so collectively that the sound fooled our ears into thinking it was coming when it was already there. Really, one of the strangest and most unnerving sounds I've ever heard, but strangely appropriate for the ancient and abandoned ruins of Tikal.


Not the best picture, but we'll save the best for later.

We couldn't climb the main temple because it was too delicate, so we climbed the one across from it. It was still a hefty ascent but the view was magnificent. After a brief rest, we explored more of that main plaza. There were all sorts of buildings hidden in the jungle, all with little footpaths leading to more. At the top of one such building, we saw a howler monkey in the low-hanging branches above it, snacking on fruit. We climbed closer and closer, hoping for a good picture, but it kept moving behind foliage that obscured our view. Absentmindedly, I made a soft clicking noise that usually makes squirrels stop and look at me, and instantly the monkey dropped his fruit and advanced toward me on his branch. So of course, instead of waiting for a good pictorial opportunity, we immediately freaked out and ran off the temple! You never can tell with a monkey what it's going to do....we preferred to escape Guatemala sans rabies shots.



After exhausting that plaza, we continued to our next destination, Temple IV. On the trail there, we saw someone who had been in the colectivo with us, watching another howler monkey. That was old news to us by then, we after watching it swing around for a moment, we continued down the path. Then we saw a real coatimundi, right by the trail! As Eric stopped for pictures, I heard a really strange noise behind us, like a crackling fire or the loud, continuous snapping of dead sticks. The other guy was still there, also trying to figure out the sound, when we simultaneously saw a large black bird with a colorful beak, maybe half the size of a toucan's, hopping around...and the sound was coming from IT. I've never heard of a bird call like that, so I thought it must be imitating a sound, and the only bird I know of that can do THAT is a mynah bird. It had the right-looking black body, but the beak was different. I also have no idea if mynahs live in Guatemala. Amazing nonetheless. I will probably never know what the bird was. I told the guy to come over our way because there was a coatimundi, and he didn't know what it was. All three of us got really close but stayed a respectful distance...you know, because it's a wild animal. I did something-- looked away, or leaned over, or something--and when I looked back, the coati had literally walked right up to me. It was less than a foot away, looking at me with mild interest, long nose twitching. Then it continued snuffling on its way, scruffing up the ground for whatever it eats. All along the jungle trails, we continued to see absolutely astounding wildlife, including some kind of incredibly tiny tapir and turkeys with blue heads.

Temple IV was the steepest of all, so Eric and I took turns watching our bags and lunches while the other ascended and descended. You could see several other temples from the top and the surrounding, rolling jungle. Temple V was similar, and helped us see a couple other ruins we'd missed. After taking pictures until our camera battery died, we headed back to the park entrance to catch a colectivo to Santa Elena. This colectivo continuously started and stopped, letting people on and off, and when it was full to brimming, it rocketed full speed ahead to Santa Elena, where we were dropped at the bus terminal. There, I learned there were no buses to Coban as I'd thought, so I booked our passage to Lanquin the next day instead.