Our trip has officially been Ruined.

Our drive to Tikal was fairly uneventful.  Aside from driving up and down one stretch of road 5 times looking for an unmarked turn onto another fairly main road, we found our way without any issues.  The drive also included our first ferry ride.  It took us a little while to figure that out.  Neither our Google maps, nor our paper maps made it clear we needed to cross a river, so we drove around a town for a bit looking for the road out.  If there was a big ferry, we probably would have seen it sooner but this was a little guy, complete with grass roof over the plastic captains chair. 

A little ways outside of Tikal, I decided I wanted a nice upscale meal.  I figured I earned it.  I had just driven over 400 miles in 4 days.  So we stopped at a pretty classy looking place right on a lake and pulled out all the stops when ordering.  Kaytie can’t decide between lemonade or a chocolate shake?  No problem!  We’ll have both!  We were quite disappointed.  The shakes came out first and I’m fairly certain they were made by mixing cocoa powder and ice in a blender.  It never really got better from there.  Oh well, lesson learned.  Stick to the cheap stuff.  If it’s good, it’s great. And if it sucks, at least we only paid a dollar. 

This face is a pretty good representation of how we all felt.

Kaytie is bravely putting on a happy face for the camera.

When we arrived at Tikal, after paying what seemed like a months worth of income, we pulled in to the camping area. (Which we again had to ourselves, aside from the dude that lives there to collect more money from the campers and mow the huge lawn with a push mower.)  The camping area is pretty cool.  There are a bunch of little grass huts in a big field.  It was perfect for slinging up a hammock. (No spiders this time.)  

We set up our stuff a bit and then realized that we needed to book it or we were going to miss the sunset.  So we grabbed a Nalgene and took off running towards Temple IV, the biggest temple in Tikal.  It’s a good thing we did, or we would have for sure been lost the next morning when we were booking it to Temple 4 to make it in time for the sunrise.  The sunset was unspectacular.  It was a pretty cloudy day so there wasn’t much to see.  But we did meet a couple Spaniards and an Italian who were overlanding from Alaska to Argentina via public transportation.  Aside from a rental car in between Washington and Utah, the entire trip had been on buses, trains and taxis.  It was fun chatting with them and we gave each other some must-visit places.  You know what I recommended.

Back at camp, we weren’t sure if we wanted to do the whole sunrise thing because it had been raining pretty much every night we were in Guatemala.  We didn’t want to wake up at 4:30 just to get rained on in the dark but I set my alarm anyway.  When it went off, I looked out and saw more stars than I have ever seen.  It was incredible.  There was no moon and not a cloud in the sky.  I was completely energized by the sight of it.  I jumped out of bed and tried to get Brett and Kaytie moving.  I was stoked to get inside the park.  If you know me even a little bit, you know that this must have been a Tikal miracle.  I am never the first one up.  Not only am I not an early morning person, I’m barely a person by 11am.  Finally I dragged the lazy bums, Kaytie and Brett, out of bed and we were off.  We paid our ridiculous “fees” to the guards to let us in early and one of them offered to take us to Temple IV.  The sun rises earlier than we realized and the stars were already starting to disappear so rather than wait for our guide to show us the way, we started running.  I’m not sure when we lost him but it was probably the easiest 100Q he had ever made.  We climbed to the top of the temple with plenty of time to spare.  We just sat back and watched the jungle come to life.  The howler monkeys were first to wake up.  They are aptly named.  They almost sound like a large jungle cat or maybe an elephant.  They were everywhere in the trees below us.  Then came all the birds and bugs.  It was a very cool experience to hear the jungle go from almost silence to a symphony of animal sounds in a matter of minutes.  And the views were pretty good too.

After the sunrise we had a quick Nutella and banana breakfast, then we went off to explore the park.  The ruins are so well preserved and excavated that it’s easy to picture them in their day.  I think we even found an ancient drive through window. 

It’s good that Tikal isn’t in the US.  I can imagine it being much less fun.  Sure they had some places that we weren’t allowed to explore but for the most part it was all free for the climbing.  One of my favorite places was called the Bat Castle.  In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was startled when a couple bats wizzed past my head as I stepped inside.

We’ve heard a few times on this trip that there are other unearthed Mayan archeological sites that are even bigger than Tikal.  Crazy.  You could spend days wandering around all the ruins in Tikal but unfortunately our budget didn’t really allow for that.  Luckily there are lots of other amazing places to explore.  Next up: Lake Izabal and a hot springs waterfall.