We said good bye to Nikki and Gerry after breakfast this morning and started our drive west to cross the Guatemalan border. This actually has been the most stressful thing on my mind for this trip to cross the border without knowing too much Spanish. It turned out fine. There were small kids all over who volunteered to help tourists to negotiate this process for a tip. Although I had read up lots already on the exact process, I still let the kid go ahead. It's actually quite involved if you want to drive a rental car across the border. We are technically importing a car into the country. There was fumigation of the vehicle, stamping the passport, importing the car and paying for it, exchanging local currency at the border (and haggle with the exchange rate). All told, it took about an hour to go through the whole thing. And then there was the police road check. Not knowing any Spanish actually worked in our favor as they didn't know how to extort us even if they want to. We were just waved through after they pretended to check the documents. I was a bit worried about this drive as the tour books suggested caution not to stop if someone throws up some random obstacles to stop you (robbery follows). There was none of this. All looked safe at the end as there were many small villages and people in between big towns. We arrived at Tikal closed to 2 pm.
Here in this part of Guatemala, we felt that everyone is trying to take advantage of you, including the official looking park workers who offered themselves as guides and sell park map for $3 USD. I suspect the map should be free to start with. After all obstacles, we finally arrived at our hotel inside the park at 2:30 pm. We started our walk to the huge park just when everyone was walking out. This is the advantage of staying inside the park as we can stay later till it closed at 6 pm after everyone left.
We hit the most important highlights first starting at the Grand Plaza. We could climb up to some of the buildings but not all. Some temples are restored but many are just left in original state (i.e., covered in trees and vegetation). We saw many spider monkeys running on top of the trees and heard the howler monkeys from the distance, not to mention the numerous birds flying about.
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| A Ceiba tree - the Mayan believed it has magic power |
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| Temple I |
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| Grand Plaza |
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| Grand Plaza |
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| We can walk up some of the temples |
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| Pretty steep walkway. Good exercise! |
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| Good view down to the Grand Plaza |
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| View from Grand Pyramid to Temple III and Grand Plaza |
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| Good Evening to Tikal! |
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| Sunset view of Temple IV |
We walked to the furthest point of the park and climbed up Temple IV. Here they said is the view in one of the scene from Star Wars - A New Dawn. It was perfect weather for watching sunset this evening. Magical! I have to hurry to finish posting this blog to beat the power off deadline. Here inside the park, electricity is from generator so there is curfew from 10p-5a. Good thing to force us to sleep early for tomorrow's plan to see the park at dawn.
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| This is the scene where George Lucas films Star Wars - A New Dawn! |
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| Sunset at Tikal |
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| Just after sunset |
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| Tikal afte sunset |
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| Grand Plaza after sunset |
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| Temple I at dusk |
That Ceiba tree is so distinctive.
ReplyDeleteIt is Mayan's tree of life. The top represents heaven, middle the earth, and the roots under world. Each part also has distinct number of gods.
ReplyDelete