Wednesday is an official rest day for the Guatemala Village Health team, and a group of the most adventurous souls (nine of us, 6 gringos and 3 Guatemaltecos, myself included) decided to pile into the van and drive 3+ hours from Rio Dulce out to the National Park of Tikal. We left on Tuesday night, and stayed in a small hotel right outside the park. Early Wednesday morning, we drove in to the park entrance.
Tikal is one of the most important sites of Mayan ruins in Central America. (I’m now switching into tour guide mode, so if you don’t care about history but just want picturesque descriptions of trees with spider monkeys, feel free to skip ahead now). It was inhabited as early as 800 BC, although most of the structures we saw were from about 400 AD until about 900 AD, when the city was abandoned for mysterious reasons. Our local guide told us that it was very lucky that the jungle had grown up and around the city to hide the structures, because it was protected from the Spanish conquistadors when they rode through destroying everything. Now the Spanish government is helping with the excavation project, so apparently they’re trying to play nice now. But many many of the 400 or so structures in the city are still covered by huge mounds of dirt and trees. The excavation process is very slow — first all the trees on a particular mound of interest have to be cut down, and then you have to wait a period of at least two years before you start trying to remove the roots, so that they will have loosened up around the structures underneath. I do not have enough patience to be an archeologist, that’s for sure!
The whole park is definitely still very jungle-y. We started out walking for about 10 minutes under huge shady trees. We stopped for a minute to admire the National Tree of Guatemala, which has huge roots that (apparently) line up with the cardinal directions. I did not have a compass with me to verify this, but it sounds neat! The branches of the tree is covered with “air-plants”, or reddish Bromeliads, so it looks like the branches are growing a shaggy overcoat of red fur.
The first stone pyramid we saw was unimpressive compared to some of the later ones, but I didn’t know that yet so it was still exciting. In front of it were a line of large vertical stone plinths, which our guide explained line up with the rising sun on important days of the year — the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and a couple of other dates of importance that I don’t remember. Our guide told us that Mayan descendents still come into the park on those particular dates to pray and offer sacrifices in front of the stones — hopefully not human ones anymore.
Then we went trekking, Jurassic-Park style, through the jungle to see a series of increasingly more impressive pyramids and temples. We climbed some of the taller ones, which gave a fabulous view of a carpet of unspoiled forest with enormous stone monuments rising above. One of my favorite places was right at the end of the tour, in the “central plaza” of the Tikal structures. The most important temples, Temple I and Temple II, are at opposite ends of this plaza. A very revered ruler is buried underneath Temple I, and it is thought that he was probably had some Mexican blood because the skeleton found underneath was almost 6 feet tall, which would have been mutantly large for a native Mayan. On the other sides of the plaza were a burial monument where many rulers were buried, and the remains of a large palace that at one time had 300 stone beds for the royalty. Stone beds, huh – you’d think they could have done a little better by their higher classes than just stone! The neat thing is that the ruins are excavated and still left open, so you can clamber up and poke around into stone chambers, behind walls and plinths – you feel like you are discovering things rather than being shuffled along a beaten tour path.
Another perk of the tour was the wildlife – many many species of birds (mostly heard, not seen), both spider and howler monkeys (saw spider monkeys, heard the howlers), little gray foxes, and some wild turkeys!
We were dumped out at the requisite tourist mall at the edge of the park, and all agreed it was well worth the experience. It is amazing that the structures are still in such good condition – I suppose being buried under a couple tons of dirt helped preserve things. They are truly impressive feats of architecture and mathematics, and I’m curious to do a little more reading about what is known regarding pre-Columbian Mayan civilization now.
And yes, on the way back, we stopped at a Pizza Hut. Mediocre pizza never tasted so good =). A trip well worth the effort!
