I just returned from Tikal, which is easily one of the most amazing places I have visited on this trip: You are literally in the middle of the djungel, around you nothing but rainforest, all you hear are animal noises like you have never heard before and and then, all of a sudden, you see teh top of a pyramid tower over the trees.

In it's prime Tikal (AD 900 - 300) was not only a place of worship but also a massive city. Archaeologists think that up to 100,000 people have lived there. And what a sight that must have been! Even the few remains that have been excavated and restored fill you with awe. Imagine living in this place in all it's splendour! I'm sure you'll get a taste of it when you look at the photos.

Howling Monkeys

What the photos cannot convey however are the sounds. As you walk through the jungle - and very often you are quite alone doing that, since there are far less tourists there than I had expected - you are surrounded by a cacophony of animal noises. Seriously, I have never heard something like this before. And they are loud! The best are of course the howler monkeys. They aren't big animals, but they make noise that makes your hair rise. They just sound like tormented souls or evil spirits or something else that is big and ugly and is gonna kill you. If I was camping out in the djungel and heard these sounds and didn't know what it was - I would shit myself! As it was, the girls I was in Tikal with, almost shit themselves even though they did know what it was. At first they simply couldn't believe that a monkey could make hideous noises like this; it simply had to be a Jaguar. Yes, there are Jaguars around and if you are lucky you can see one while you visit the temples. But unfortunately we weren't that lucky. We didn't even see a Tukan which almost everyone sees who visits Tikal. Oh, well.

The package

I went to Tikal with my Canadian friend Kelsey. The package (flight, the transfers, 1 night in a hotel incl. breakfast and lunch, a guide and parkfees for one day) cost us 159 USD. Most places in Antigua sell this package for 190 USD so we were quite glad to have found a cheaper place. Was it worth the money? Yes, I think so. Leaving Antigua at 4 am was a bit of a challenge, but by now I'm actually quite used to getting up early. After all the busses to Guate, that are passing by right in fornt of my house, are pretty good at waking me up at 6 am anyhow. And what difference do another two hours really make? You could make the trip slightly cheaper, though. The plane-ticket costs 84 USD, the transfers to and from Guate and to and from Flores another 30 USD. And if you are willing to sleep in a hammock, you can stay in the National Park for only five bucks a night. So yes, you can make the trip cheaper, but not by a whole lot (the package included two meals as well). Having said that - the Tikal Inn (that was included in the package) is definitely not worth the money they are asking for if you show up as a regular guest.

The trip

Kelsey is really great fun to travel with - even though she is crying a lot - and I just had the best time ever with her. I mean, she's great. And then I got even more lucky because we met a very nice Swiss girl on the plane, Olivia, as well as Sarah, a Dutch girl who is going to the same Spanish-schools as me. Together we made a really nice little group and explored the ruins together.

And the sky opened...

The weather was quite nice when we arrived but even before we left Antigua we had been warned to bring rain-ponchos, dry-season or not. Unfortuantely though we didn't have them with us when we sat in a restaurant at night to have dinner. And that's when the sky opened. I mean, it was pouring like I've never seen it befor. And it was pitch black outside. At first we hoped that the rain might stop after an hour or so but it just went on and on and on so that we were eventually forced to make a run for our hotel. We coudl just as well have walked slowly since we were absolutely drenched after the first 50 meters. And since it was dark, we got lost as well. Olivia and me accidentally ran into the totaly wrong direction while Sarah and Kelsey stumpled into a water filled ditch. Oh, what we had. Later that night Olivia, Kelsey and me played some UNO in our room. It was a very good night. Oh - and Kelsey didn't manage to get over the fact that the shower actually had a shower-door and that the room had a fan! Ah, the little pleasures. It would have been even nicer if the shower had been hot, but I suppose you can't ask for everything.

Sunset? Sunrise?

Unfortuantely it was very cloudy during our whole time in Tikal so that we didn't get to see any spectacular sunsets or sunrises. But entering the jungle in the dark and seeing how the light slowly creeps in was still pretty cool. Kelsey fel on the way and got really dirty, but she didn't hurt herself. And at least she didn't fall down the stairs that lad up to the temples, as another woman did. People have died this way.

Sucio!

Speaking of "dirty". While I hung out with Kelsey, Patrick, Maria and Fleur in Tikal the word "sucio" (dirty) became one of our favourite expresssions. There isn't any real rational to it, it's just one of those things that happen if people spend to much time together talking shit. Anyhow, Kelsey and me spun it one step further since we figured that "Sucio" actually sounds a whole lot like a boys name. And so we decided that the perfect names for three boys would be: Sucio, Limpio and Listo (Dirty, Clean and Ready). And we wer cracking up at no end whenever we called the fictional kids for dinner: "Sucio! Limpio! Listo! La CEEEENA!"

Granted, this might be one of the things that are only funny for the people who have been there. But believe me, it was - and is - incredibly funny.

Birds and Sunrise in Flores

Originally we had planned to stay two days in Tikal. But then we changed our plans at the last minute and decided to spend a day in Flores, the town nearest to Tikal. Flores is situated on a really idyllic island in the middle of a big lake and we quickly found a clean, reasonably priced guesthouse with hammock on top of the roof ("Dona Gona" or sth. like that). Give me hammock and I'm happy. Flores itself is quite pretty but nothing really special. Spending an afternoon and a morning there is fun, but more would be pushing it. The weird thing that we experienced in Flores were the birds. At some point we seriously felt in the Alfred Hitchcock movie! There must have been hundreds of birds who wre sitting on the neighboring roofs and trees, seemingly watching us. It was creepy. But of course they didn't do anything.

That night I fell asleep in an instance. I think Kelsey was a bit disappointed since she wanted to explore Flores but I literally fell asleep talking to her. Well, shit happens. The next morning we finally had our sunrise. We got up at 5:30 walked to the shore and had a really, really pretty sunrise. After that we simply had to make our way back to Guatemala City, which was largely unproblematic, except for us being stuck for two hours at the airport. That wait was a major pain in the ass sine we spent it sitting in the shuttle but at the end of the day the only thing that mattered was that we got there.

That night was Marias and Kelsey last night in Guatemala. It was good even though it wasn't excessive. I'll miss them - but they already threatened to come to Munich for Oktoberfest in September!