El centro del mundo Maya

We arrived in Guatemala City just as it began to get dark and quickly made our way to the bus station to buy our tickets for the overnight bus to Flores. After a dinner of surprising good Guatemalan Chinese food, we boarded our luxury bus for our eight hour journey to Flores. I tried to stay up to watch ¨Black Hawk Down¨ dubbed in Spanish, but I soon fell into what would be a fitful 7 hour sleep.

We arrived in Flores around five in the morning and decided against going straight to Tikal, desiring more to find a stable bed in which to get a little more rest and a room with a shower. We paid the shuttle to Tikal to take us to a hotel we had chosen and spent a few hours resting in our room. We planned to go to Tikal at 3:00 that afternoon in order to get a pass for the following day as well, so we went in search of something to do for the few hours before we left. I had read in the guide book that there was an animal rescue and rehabilitation center nearby, so we hired a boat to take us to ARCAS, where we recieved a tour and information about the sad realities of animal trafficing, local environmental conservation and fell in love with the monkeys.

We got back to Flores in time for a quick lunch and then to catch our shuttle to Tikal. Tikal is known as the ¨Center of the Mayan World¨ and has become a world heritage site showcasing numerious Mayan temples, only a small percentage of what is believeed to be the world´s largest Mayan ruins. The trip from Flores to Tikal takes about an hour and a half (depending on the driver and the state of your vehicle) and we arrived at Tikal around 4:45 that afternoon. Not wanting to partake in the tour, Steven and I quickly made our way into the park.

The park enterance is roughly an 8 minute walk from the parking lot on a wide, smooth, white clay path. Halfway into our entry walk, we were startled by a sound in the bushes followed by the appearance of a creature that looked somewhat like a racoon, but was definitely not a raccoon. The first creature was followed by a second, then a third, fourth and fifth. I think we counted more than 10 in all as they crossed the path behind us seemingly oblivious to our presence.

Elated at our first wildlife siting, we continued into the park. The excavated ruins of Tikal are spread out over an area of... a rather large area (ok, so I´m bad with numbers...) and we made our way to the Temples I and II, which reside in close proximity to one another separated by a large open grassy area. The mere size of the temples was impressive, the second of which yielded an even more impressive view of the surrounding area. From the tops of the towers you could see for miles - miles of lush green tree tops, occasionally broken by the weathered grey stone of another temple reaching towards the sky. The air was filled with the calls of birds, of which we had never heard the likes and we were treated to sitings of multiple pairs of green parrots and a few other species we were unable to identify.

Besides the towers, Tikal has ¨groups¨ of structures that served other purposes, containing small, cool rooms, sheilded from the heat of the day and maze like walkways leading from room to room. At the second place we stopped, we again heard rustling in the brush and looked to find a family of monkeys, swinging from the branches in the trees nearby.

We continued on from temple to temple, marveling in the size and the sheer age of the structures. We finally came to rest at the top of one of the temples to catch the sunset and to relax from our quick afternoon tour of the park.

As we were walking out of the park, we were treated with the site of another unidentifiable animal, somewhat like an enormous short haired guinea pig.

We had purchased a round trip shuttle ticket, but were surprised to find ourselves sitting in an almost empty parking lot 15 minutes after the last shuttle was to arrive. Fifteen minutes later, after the only other guests, also waiting on our shuttle, had convinced a passing taxi driver to give them a lift, I began to get a little worried. Luckily for us, the overwhelming amibility of the Guatemalan people once again manifested in the concern of a few local people as to our plight and their advice that we catch the last local bus, that luckily for us, had not yet left.
Frustrated with our shuttle service, but thankful to have a ride, we boarded the bus, kicking our way through what seemed like hundreds of empty plastic bottles and aluminim cans on the floor to one of the few seats with intact benches. With our drivers foot to the floor, we returned to Flores in record time.

The following morning we rose at 4:15 in order to catch the 5:00 bus back to Tikal. Again, hurrying into the park, we took our planned route as far away from the crowds as possible in order to increase our chances of a wildlife sighting. After the first 20 minutes of complete silence, save for the blood curdling roars of the howler monkeys in the distance, I was begining to get a little disapointed and began thinking that we might do better to turn back towards those monkeys, when we heard a fluttering in the bushes and looked to see a toucan not far from where we stood.

After our toucan siting, we turned back aways towards the park and began following the roars of a pack of howler monkeys that had begun their calls not too far from where we were. Buyoyed by the thrill of the chase, we picked up our pace. Walking out into a clearing, we found ourselves alone on a group of small ruins, the air around us crackling with the roars of a group of howler monkeys in the trees just above our heads. We spent half an hour or so marveling at our find until they made their way, branch by branch, into the surrounding forest.

We spent the rest of the morning seeing temples we had not seen before and marveling at our second group of toucans. As the temperature rose with the sun, we made our to a local restaurant for breakfast and then spent an hour or so in the on-site museums which house the majority of the detailed structures recovered from the park to protect them from further ravages of time, weather and tourism; as well as some really interesting Mayan artifacts, including an amazingly detailed depiction of Mayan Gods on a small peice of bone and the actual skeleton of a Mayan King found entombed in one of the temples.

After a last quick tour of the outer edges of the park and another monkey siting, we headed back to Flores for lunch and a rest before catching our overnight bus back to Guatemala City.