Tikal

Definitely a highlight of the whole Central America trip. We woke at 3am in order to climb Temple IV (highest one) in time to see first daylight wake up the jungle. It was pretty cool to hear the howler monkeys and papagayos make their first calls of the day. The place where we watched first light was about 40m shy of the top, which was covered with scaffolding for restoration, so I took the opportunity to duck some ropes, climb some ladders, and scamper up some sketchy exposed scaffolding to the highest point for miles around. It was really awesome! I would like to note that it was closed for safety reasons and not because my presence would cause any undue damage to the temple structure.

In short, the whole place is amazing! We stayed until 5pm, which was well after the majority of the other tourists had departed, so we had the place to ourselves in the late afternoon. We saw coati and grey fox, plus numerous really cool bird species. I am fascinated by Mayan astronomy and math and my imagination ran amok trying to imagine what the place was like 2000 years ago.

While we were exploring the temples, just Mel and I, we were spotted by a tour group. One of the tourists inquired of her guide in a loud republican accent, ¨Who are they?¨And upon finding out that we were simply people, ¨It´s amazing that you can just walk around here like it´s your own back-yard.¨ I find this perspective both humorous and also really interesting. It is pretty wicked that you can just wander around such an archaeological gem at will, It is also quite American to consider that all such access should be restricted.