Wonderful Tikal

My days in Guatemala were counted and I really didn't have much time, enough time. There are just too many things to see in this wonderful country and I didn't like the way how I had to rush through to see at least some.
I moved around on shuttles most of the time, usually I hate shuttles, because they are more expensive and you miss a lot of the essential experience of the country you travel in, but I wanted to get from one place to the other as fast as possible so I had no choice. This next transport I took went from Semuc to Flores, a small town on an island in Peten, the most northern province of the country from where I was going to visit the legendary Maya ruins of Tikal. The trip took about eight hours but I shared the bus with a lot of people I knew from the hostel and former shared shuttles which made the trip more fun, even though it was still very exhausting. I also met new people with whom I shared a dorm in Flores and who wanted to join me for my Tikal trip the next day.
I had to say goodbye to Thalida and Elisa that night, who were on their way to Belize and didn't have time for the ruins. The time we shared together was a lot of fun and I am very happy that I met them, they made my long shuttle rides feel a lot shorter than they were and good company in Semuc.
My new travel mates for the next days were Brenda from Argentina and Garrett from the US, both wonderful people who brought me back to buying my own food and preparing lunches and so on, which was a lot cheaper and also more fun.
We got up at 4 o'clock in the morning to get the first shuttle to the ruins so that we could enjoy them without the crowds but that seemed to be a common thing and our shuttle there was already full with people. It wasn't all too bad though because the park is huge and we roamed it all by ourselves without seeing very many people. The bus to the park took about an hour and the entrance fee was 150 Q (about 20$) which is very expensive for Guatemalan standards but it was an official ticket and definitely worth the money in the end.
It was quite cold in the morning and foggy and it only cleared up when we left the park in the afternoon but it was good that way because when the sun did come out it was almost unbearably hot. Unfortunately it concealed the views from the top of the big temples but you can't have everything, can you?
The park was amazing! We decided against hiring a guide and walked the trail the opposite way than most people do to avoid the crowds and save the best part, the central plaza for the end. The whole area is so incredibly big, I think it was something about 16 sq km, and there are temples and ruins everywhere, some uncovered but some also still underneath a big pile of jungle. The Maya seemed to have built a new set of temples every 20 years to celebrate the end of a ka'tun and leave the old ones where they were which meant that there were a lot of simple temple complexes with two medium sized pyramids facing east to west and two altars in the north and the south, all over the place.
Temple IV seemed very unspectacular at first before we looked up over the tree tops and found the tip of the temple high above us in the clouds. It is the highest building (I think it was 64m) in Tikal and the lower half is still covered with vegetation  but you can climb it and the views from the top are amazing, even on a cloudy day.

The view from temple IV

It was incredible to walk through those grounds and see the huge temples and structures, some of which the Maya had built over 2000 years ago, and still be in the middle of the jungle, almost by yourself. We saw monkeys and bush turkeys, a capybara and hundreds of birds and for long periods of time we didn't see any other humans at all.
We saw the plaza of the seven temples, the lost world (the place with pyramids from a much earlier period, the pre-classic, around 700 BC), the big temple of the south and of course the main plaza with it the massive acropolis and the beautiful and world famous temple of the jaguar.
The main plaza is really beautiful and the views from the high temple are breathtaking. You can see other structures poke out of the surrounding canopy, the temple of the jaguar in its full glory and the plaza where in Tikal's prime more than 100 000 people gathered for celebrations.

Year of construction: 700 BC

Temple V

The temple of the jaguar and the north acropolis on the left

Temple of the jaguar

A picture of me 2000 years ago...

The north acropolis

Brenda, Garrett and I were reading our way through most of the information and I think a guide would have been helpful to understand more of the things we saw but we loved it to be on our own and roam the grounds how we wanted to. Our little group was in great harmony, sometimes slow, sometimes a bit faster we got around the whole park in about 8 hours and I am very happy, that I had those two with me that day. It was very special.
Tired but very happy we left the site at three with the shuttle. We stopped in Santa Elena, a town only separated from Flores by the lake, to get food and organize our next steps. Brenda was going west, Garrett east and I was heading south the following day. It was more than 12 hours after we had left, that we arrived back at our hostel, my legs aching and my head full of those beautiful images I was lucky enough to see.
I am very glad that I decided to come here after all and that I had this great day with those wonderful friends, even though that meant not getting much sleep and being on buses for more than 18 hours.