6th Oct. 2016
We are excited about today as we are off to Tikal to see the Mayan ruins. Four years ago we were in Mexico visiting Chichen Itza and learned a lot about the history from a local guide. We have a guide again today and hope to improve our knowledge and tie it in with what we learned four years ago. Tikal is older, larger and much less touristy.
We head off promptly at 8am after breakfast and head around Lago de Petén Itzá, the third biggest lake in Guatemala and settle down for the one hour drive. We head through a few villages before entering jungle which just got denser as we proceeded, real Indiana Jones country. Even after we parked up, we still had a fifteen minute walk along a limestone path through the dense jungle. This really is in the middle of nowhere up in the jungle.
The site was discovered in 1848 and exploration and restoration work is still ongoing. The buildings date from 500BC to 900AD, much older than Chichen Itza. The Tikal reserve covers some 575 square km and thousands of ruined buildings. The central part contains some 3000 buildings in a 16 square km area but luckily we did not study them all. It still took us four hours of wandering to see only the main structures.
There are five main temples and the highest some 70m high. We were able to climb over some of the outer buildings but the main ones were off limits, which is good for preservation. I was also impressed how wooden stairs had been built at the back of Temple 2 for tourists to climb and see the amazing view over the Grand Plaza without destroying the stone steps at the front. We spend half an hour just wandering around the Grand Plaza in awe of the construction and sheer size of the Temples either end.
As well as the grand plaza there are several other plazas comprising of temples on the east and west side for life and death following the path of the sun. In the north was a building for the heavens, typically where a king was buried and to the south was a building to the underworld. For a time a new plaza was built every twenty years. Interspersed with these Plazas are palaces for various Kings. All this has been learnt from the excavations and the hieroglyphics on various stones which have been translated, and as far as I can work out hypothesis and speculation to fill the gaps!
There were so many amazing sights that kept coming it is difficult to remember them all but at least the photos help. A few I must mention, firstly the reason for the title of the blog, which was that when wandering down the jungle paths the mounds are not hills but further structures hidden beneath the jungle which had grown over them. When found the whole site was buried below the overgrown plants and trees and some remain like this to show you what it was like.
Secondly at the far end of the site, just as the heat and all the walking was getting to us was Temple IV standing some 70m tall. The climb up yet more wooden stairs was pointed out to us by Hugo Freddie our guide, as he waited in the shade at the foot of the Temple. Exhausted, we made it to the top and the view was incredible, looking out for miles over the tops of the trees and also seeing the tips of three other temples peeping out above the tree line.
Spurred on by this sight we were excited to see what was called The Lost World which was the earliest part of the settlement built in 800 BC and in a slightly different style to the rest. Then came one of my favourite areas, Plaza de Los 7 Temples named after guess what, the seven temples lining the East side of the area.
By now it was gone the Hornsey official lunch time and my pedometer beeped 10,000 steps, we had walked some 7km our guide told us. On our way back we saw a spider money swinging overhead in the trees. You can see why it has this name! Luckily we had preordered lunch when we arrived so grilled chicken, rice and fresh cooked veg was waiting for us in one of the on site restaurants. What an amazing place, not too touristy – even though we saw the two Israeli girls we had previously met when crossing into Guatemala from Mexico.
After lunch we had a quick trip into Flores, which we discovered was a small town on an island in the lake joined to the main land by a causeway. Very pretty and if we were doing the trip again we would have stayed in either Flores to explore the town or in Tikal to visit the site at sunrise or sunset. Our hotel is pretty enough but quite isolated being some 8km out of town on the lakeside and at times, we have felt like a captive audience for the hotel (and been charged accordingly).