Tikal

Steph and I did a day trip to Tikal, getting up at 5:30. The night before we had been allowed to stay in one of the nicer rooms. The main thing I liked about it was the standard outlets for power. The rooms were surprisingly nice, as they could easily sleep 6 people, and had balconies viewing the river.

We had a long drive to Tikal, in Guatamala, with a pass through the border checkpoint and switching cars. The two people we went with weren’t particularly pleasant, and we were glad that they left us mostly alone. I got the feeling that Edgar, the guide, didn’t care for them either. The man of the couple was a know it all who kept trying to tell Edgar about Mayan ruins and what things meant. Edgar was a good sport about it, but handled it by being quite. I would much rather have listened to Edgar giving the tour than the other guy, and we did get some great stories from Edgar when the other couple was off exploring on their own. I was amazed at the temples, but the most amazing construction was the man-made mesa that the entire complex sat on, with water reservoirs in between the mesas. We got a good number of pictures of the wildlife as well and it was amazing to see the temples, housing, and construction. I would have liked more time at Tikal just to wander around and explore everything, since the complex was so expansive we had time to just walk through everything before having to leave.

The wildlife around Tikal was amazing, and we got to see toucans, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, a red breasted falcon, turkeys, humming birds, the ‘royal rat’, and a quadimundi.

The food on the way there and back was decent, with the hot chocolate being amazing for breakfast. I really enjoyed the trip, despite the other couple there.