Sunrise at Tikal

Our map
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After arriving in Tikal the 3 of us rented 3 tents, and unpacked our stuff. If you buy your ticket to the park after 3pm, it's good for the next day as well,  so Dave and I waited until 3 and then bought out tickets for the park. After 3 was definitely the time to go, we had the whole place to ourselves, the tour buses were gone and we only bumped into a few people the whole time. These ruins were the best I've seen yet on this trip. There are approximately 4000 building in the area, and only 15% have been uncovered so far. Since we had to pay extra for a map, I just took a picture of it and we used my camera as a map. We climbed as many temples as we could before it got dark and took lots of pictures while there were no crowds. We were exhausted after a couple of climbs, and once it started to get dark we walked back to our tents.

Temple of the Grand Jaguar
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Dave, Choung, and I played cards in the restaurant for a bit while we revived ourselves with water. We were sooned joined by a beautiful Argentinian girl who didn't speak any english, but that was fine because it gave us a chance to improve our spanish. We spent the night trying to speak spanish and played cards while we ate dinner. The electricity at this place goes out at 9, so we went back to our tents and tried to sleep, we planned on getting up early. We didn't get to sleep very fast though, as we were caught in the middle of a massive storm that lasted about an hour. It didn't rain much, it was all just thunder and lightening, which was really cool to watch from a tent in the jungle.

Best. Sunrise. Ever.

Temple 5 though the jungle
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We woke up at 4am, got dressed and grabbed out flashlights, and walked to the park gate. We joined another group of people and met up with our guide; Louis who led us through the dark on about a 30min hike to temple IV. Once we were at the top of the temple we all just relaxed and watched the sun come up. It was so beautiful, the hills were covered in fog and the peaks of other temples poked through the trees, all faintly lit up by the rising sun. The only thing we could hear were the birds and howler monkeys, which a few girls though were lions because of the noise they made. We all sat there and took lots of pictures, and after the sun had risen we followed our guide through the grounds for a tour of the other temples, ball courts, sacrificial altars, and abandoned cities. We finished out tour at 9:30, and were amazed we had already been up for almost 6 hours. We went back to breakfast, packed up our stuff, and then got a  minibus with 2 Norigean girls we met at Tikal to take us to Flores, our next stop in Guatemala.