Tikal, Guatemala

April 20th, 2004

You rise at 5am to the sound of golden turkeys and parrots squabbling their morning gossip and wonder where you’ve woken up. The smells of the Guatemalan jungle pervades your bungalow and you realize that you’re about to experience the greatest site of Mayan ruins yet excavated.
Tikal, a 16 square kilometer complex of over 3,000 separate Mayan constructions and 200 stone monuments dating back to pre-Christian times, awaits you a short walk from your jungle accommodation. The electricity has just come on again and you have about 5 hours to plug in whatever gizmo you may need to recharge until the next blackout. Grabbing a bottle of water and some insect repellent you hit the trail, entering the park at 6am when it opens. You show up a tad early so you look up into the canopy and admire the howler monkeys having their morning meal of exotic fruits and nuts, ostensibly dropping the husks and large shells inadvertently close to where you’re standing.
Tikal lies approximately 300km due North of Guatemala City. The nearest airport is just outside the beautiful island city of Flores, about 1 hour drive away from Parque Tikal. A typical flight from Cancun to Flores runs about 230US including departure taxes. Roundtrip flights are offered 3-4 days a week on Aviateca, a partner of Taca Airlines. On the way to Tikal the visitor passes by the beautiful Lake Peten Itza and some grassy lowlands before entering into the jungle of the national park. 3 choices of lodging can be found inside the park ranging from 37 USD for a basic room to 75 USD for your own bungalow, both including tropical breakfast and dinner. Electricity is available only at certain times so plan to arrive with a full battery pack for your camera.
A suggested itinerary is to start at Templo V in the morning to view the spectacular panorama of the main plaza with a tangential cast of sunlight illuminating the sides of the Templos I and II through the morning mist. Next, explore the intriguing surrounding complexes and the remote North Acropolis before heading back to your lodge for brunch and a brief siesta. In the afternoon, enjoy the splendor of the Grand Plaza before heading on to Templo IV, the highest structure in Tikal. Atop this massive temple, catch the afternoon rays painting the tops of the other pyramids, poking their heads high above the jungle canopy in a radiant display of architecture entwined within nature. Plan to bring comfortable shoes and ample water as the entire day can amount easily to 18km on foot.
Explore the seemingly endless abundance of pyramids and temples in the context of a vibrant jungle, alive with 285 species of birds including hawks, parrots, blue and white herons and golden turkeys. The forest also sports a wide variety of animals such as jaguar, ocelot, puma and monkeys. There are two types of poisonous snakes in Tikal including the coral snake and the legendary fer-de-lance, often depicted in the numerous stelae depicting Mayan stories in the form of relief carving. The canopy is composed of a symbiotic intermingling of trees growing up to 150 feet, varieties include cedars, ceibas, mahoganies and the zapotes (the sap of which is used to make chewing gum) as well as an abundance of various palms and tropical flora.
The origins of the structures at Tikal have been dated to the Pre-Christian era, although the accepted dates for the civilization in its prime are thought to be from 250AD to 900AD. These dates have been put into question several times and may be subject to change as new discoveries emerge showing that most if not all of the pyramids at this site are built upon older structures. The site shows evidence of at least 1,100 years of ceaseless construction to build what we now enjoy as one of the most striking relics of an era so shrouded in mystery, of a civilization wiped out and their history forever buried in the catastrophe that was the invasion of the Spaniards and their subsequent conquest and subjugation of the Maya. Perhaps we will never know how such an advanced civilization arose from the early settlers of the region, Asians who crossed the Bering Straight 10,000 years ago to Alaska and eventually migrated down to the Yucatan Peninsula and the Peten nearly 7,500 years later.
The relative occlusion of Mayan history is in part a great loss, yet perhaps concurrently our greatest impetus for a collective attempt to understand a people with customs of ritual human sacrifice and technology that still baffles historians and engineers. It is this unabashed curiosity that evokes a desire for the visitor to preserve Tikal for the purpose of our edification. The unique beauty of the region and its contents elucidates our need to understand it.

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