Tikal
With our time in Guatemala ticking to a close, we finally made the trip to the northeast district of the Peten, to visit Tikal, the famous, formidable Mayan ruins deep amidst the jungle.
We reached Tikal by bus -- a four hour ride from Rio Dulce to the pretty island pueblo of Flores, in Lago Petén Itzá, where we spent one night. The next morning we took a microbus the last 80 kilometers to Tikal itself. The ruins of the great ancient city -- it's buildings, causeways, and artifacts -- date from as early as 1000 B.C. through 900 A.D., when the Mayan empire mysteriously declined. The majority of the great temples of Tikal, and many of its richest artifacts (carvings, pottery, jade, and tools) are circa 700 A.D., the height of Mayan civilization, when Tikal's population numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Tikal's beauty is the more remarkable and mysterious because the ruins are still surrounded by miles of thick, wild jungle, and many of the temples remain unexcavated, so that it is still possible to see them just as they were found by "modern" explorers in the mid-19th Century.
We found Tikal surprisingly quiet, with far fewer tourists than expected. We walked for miles each day on serene jungle paths. We rarely met another person, but we saw lots of spider monkeys, howler monkeys, wild parrots, owls, ocellated turkeys, and even a giant toad, about the size of a kitten.
We stayed one night at the Tikal Inn, a hotel within the park grounds, so that we could explore the ruins at dusk and first light, and best see birds and wildlife. The Harpy Eagle (below, left) was incredible to see. This huge, endangered bird stood two and a half to three feet tall. It's prey are monkeys and other large animals, which it hunts on the wing, rarely flying above the jungle canopy.
This awe-inspiring Ceiba tree marks the trail entrance to the ruins.
