Tikal

Day 7: The night's sleep at Los Amigos wasn't bad for hostel dorm beds; good thing we were planning on getting up early because these cute little mini pheasant birds were scuddling around the ground chasing eachother and making strange, really loud squalking noises waking everybody up. After a rediculously good breakfast served at the hostel we took a bus to Tikal and got there around 10:30. The site is huge and deep in protected jungle. As such, the place is teeming with wildlife. Just walking from the parking lot to the ruins we saw a long-nosed raccoon-like creature called a coati, I think. We also saw a number of giant woodpeckers. They looked like Woody the Woodpecker, about the size of hawks but with much bigger, bright red tufted heads. We did our best to plan out a route that would take us to most of the major archeological sites, but before long we realized we had vastly underestimated the sheer size of Tikal, and there was no way we'd be able to see everything. We did manage to see most of the major pyramids, and ate lunch on top of one, overlooking the Grand Plaza. Dispite the great number of excavated temples, ampitheatres, etc., much of Tikal is still yet to be uncovered. One of the four largest pyramids, in fact, is still a good deal buried. Climbing to the top you have to take wooden stairs, and on our way up we came across some howler monkeys hanging out in the trees eating leaves, only a few arms lengths away from where we were on the platform.

The photos will do most of the talking for our visit to Tikal. Around 3:30 we returned to the entrance area to check out the ceramic museum. After an ordeal with our drunken bus driver that I won't get into, we were back to the border by nightfall. When we got back to Belize, we were surprised to meet two new volunteers, Woofers, who had arrived earlier that day and would be staying at the house as well: Simon, from Germany, and Candy, from Australia. Good people.

Pictures from Day 7