More temples in Tikal

New Years Morning's view of Flores
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New Years morning in Santa Elena

We went to bed by 10pm but set our watches to be woken up at midnight.  But either one of us had the energy to get up for it.  So hopefully, there were not fireworks in Flores and we didn't miss much.  We did see a lot of firecrackers in the streets the next day though... so there much of been some fun during New Years.

Tikal temples in the day and in the dark

Ken watching over Flores
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We spent the morning of New Years taking pictures of Flores from our hotel in Santa Elena as well.  Then, we took a shuttle back to Tikal to see sunset on the Mayan temples.

New Years Sunset on a Mayan Temple

This time our shuttle was a mere 45 minutes late (we should be use to it by now, but it still gets to me).    But this time, we got a highly-sought-after room at Tikal Inn.

We got there just in time for sunset.  We were told the best place to go was Mundo Perdido (the Lost World) temple as it faces West. But someone (ok, it was Ken) who had the brilliant idea that we should try the other temples, so we tried going up 2 other pretty high temples before realizing that none of them allowed visitors to stand facing West.  And each temple is at about 15 minutes apart. 

Sunset from Mundo Perdido
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We did get distracted once by the group of ant eaters that we saw.  That was very cool as they are completely not bothered by humans and walks almost right up to you.

Somehow we finally got to Mundo Perdido and caught the last 5 minutes of sunset.  It was absolutely worth it as Ken's pictures will show.

At the top of Mundo Perdido, there was a guard with a really big gun that ensures all actually come down from the temple after sunset.   Interestingly, he asked us if we were interested in a sunrise tour the next morning or a jungle at night our.   We knew everyone had "side businesses and deals" but we didn't expect guards with big guns to have it too.. So now, nothing should surprise us in Guatemala.

Stars behind the temple (Ken's pic)
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One thing we realized as we were climbing up trying temples to catch the sunset, we realized that we will probably have to walk in the jungle in the dark back to the hotel.  We brought flashlights but we could get lost.  I could see the headlines now... "tourists get lost while walking back from the Lost World"... hmm... too ironic for my taste.  There was a family of 9 that used their video recorder's battery and light to walk back but we realized fairly quickly that they weren't the people we should follow back to the hotel.  We met a fellow American on our dark trek back and luckily there were really good exit signs along the path.  But besides the sunset, we realized it was all worth it as Ken took took one of our favorite pictures on that hike back - a temple underneath the starlight.

Fog covered the sunrise
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We went back to Tikal Inn to have dinner.  We met some fellow travelers and shared our experiences.  From others, we now know to remove Belize City from our future travel plans.  We turned in early in preparation for our early sunrise tour the next day.

Sunrise at Tikal

We took it pretty easy on our third day.  We got up at 4:30am to go on the sunrise tour.   Hey, we're Type A traveler.  :-) We've become less and less afraid of walking in the Tikal jungle due to the experience the night before.  It also helped that there were 15 other people on this sunrise tour.

Spider monkeys - almost pooping on us! :-)
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Unfortunately we were disappointed.  The fog hid the sunrise although we knew there was a good chance that it could happen.  But it wasn't a complete loss at all!  Seeing the top of temples peaking out from the fog soothed with our disappointment a little bit. 

We initially stuck around to finish the 2 hour biological tour but the guide was telling us the same archelogical information instead and sometimes the information would conflict with what the previous day's guide told us.  Plus, the guide had b.o. so getting close to him to hear what he was saying was not worth it.  We left the tour.

Ant eater
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Seeing the spider monkeys really made us feel better.  The morning is the best time to spot animals in the jungle and were we lucky.  The spider monkeys almost pooped on us and that's how we got some great photos of these monkeys using Ken's telephoto lens.  And who knew such a small monkey had such a large bladder! ;-)  We didn't just see 1 but a whole family of them with babies too.

Ready to leave

After that we took it easy.  We had breakfast and took a nap bfore going to see the Group VI temple.  We went to lunch right ater that.   We thought we had things figured out until we (ok, it was just Ken) almost missed our bus back to the Santa Elena airport because the bus actually arrived on time.   We haven't experienced a bus or any vehicle being on-time since we've been to Guatemala.  Just when we thought we had things figured out...