To Guatemala and Back

Tikal: Not just big temples, lots of temples. Thanks to Matt for this panorama.
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First Impressions of Guatemala

Abandon a city for 1000 years, and people will mistake it for jungle mountains

Unlike Belize, Guatemala is Spanish-speaking, with a Latin American rather than Caribbean feel.  Yes, well it doesn't have a Caribbean coast. Also, it seems like everyone owns a horse. The Peten region of Guatemala is pretty safe, now that the civil war is over and the police have cracked down on violent crime. Still, my Spanish would probably have been too rusty to handle a military checkpoint or complicated bus schedule, so after taking the bus to the border and arguing about what to do next, we arranged a ride in a taxi-van to...well, we'd figure that out on the way. Our first sights of the country were an eye opener: a half-naked couple fondling in the river, a circus elephant tied by the leg to a tree, a giant inflatable chicken, and a pig charging at us in an alley. Still, this is nothing compared the wonders of Tikal, which we would visit the next day.  We stayed at La Casa de Don David in the village of El Remate.  This time, $50 got us an air-conditioned room with three beds, private bath, and a hammock on the patio looking out at Lake Peten Izta. The six mile long lake is a popular place for doing laundry, but we found it pleasant for swimming as well.

We saw stranger things than this on the taxi ride into Guatemala
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Tikal, City of Echoes

The next day took us the ruins of Tikal, the largest city of the classic Maya civilization. Tikal is only half-excavated, so you get a sense for the progress of the jungle in the thousand years since it was abandoned. The gum harvesters who discovered Tikal first thought that its temples were mountains, so thoroughly had they been covered by dirt and vegetation. Because of the jungle, Tikal is a great place for wildlife. We saw packs of raccoon-like coatimundis, flocks of oscillated turkeys, and spider monkeys. Orapendula, large yellow birds, had built hanging nests of Spanish moss in the trees near the acropolis. The scale of construction in Tikal is astounding, dozens of massive buildings resting on enormous platforms, all built with small stones. Tikal is known as the city of echoes—if you clap your hands at the top of a temple (or gave a speech, I suppose) it can be heard clearly throughout the courtyard below. The temples are aligned to mark the progress of the sun, the moon, and Venus across the heavens. The tenth century Maya knew things about astronomy that would not be discovered in Europe until the nineteenth century.  Explaining all this was our guide, Juan Benfeldt. Juan is superb. Dissatisfied with the quality of information available for tour guides in Guatemala, he had done extensive reading and research on his own. He was able to translate pictoglyphs, identify medicinal plants, explain the Mayan calendar, and guide us so as to avoid the crowds. He is also a guitar-player, so we arranged to meet him in Flores for a night of music-making and merriment at the delightful Café Chilero.

The canopy zipline in Tikal was used in an episode of Fear Factor.
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Epilogue

This was a fitting end for a great trip, and Matt’s antics gave Ian and me plenty to talk about on the awful 16 hour bus ride back to Cancun. Matt went back to Caye Caulker for scuba diving by way of another ruin (Caracol, high in the mountains) and the Belize Cultural Museum.  I will share a few of his amazing photos but will not attempt to relate his further adventures.