Tikal

 From Flores, we took a trip to the ruins of Tikal. We camped there for about 30 quetzales a person, about 4 US dollars per person, per night. Since we got there after 3 pm we were able to get enterance into the park that day for free. We had read a little bit about theft at the ruins, so we were a little hesitant to leave our stuff behind, but there was a guard that let us lock our stuff up in his storage room. We went in with about 3 hours of sun left. It was astonishing how big the ruins and temples were... we were blown away! And the park its self is enormous too! We were just walking around, enjoying the beauty and the racoons that came out for their dinner (trash left behind from tourists...) when a security guard came up and told us that if we wanted, for 100 quetzales per person( about 12 US dollars), he would take us somewhere really special. We had heard rumors about this special place; something about seeing the sunset from the highest temple. We decided to go for it. The gaurd hurried us over to temple 4 and we climbed what seemed to be 500 stairs. When we got there, we thought we had been scammed because there were about 30 tourists sitting there to watch the sunset... we totally could have gotten there with no gaurd. But then he takes us around to the back of the temple, has us climb the scaling to a 20 foot ladder which leads to another 20 foot ladder! Rachel was absolutely terrified climbing up there, Darren, on the other hand, could have done it one handed... Anyway, it was incredible how high we were!! The place where we first went with all the tourists was probably 130 feet up, above the canopy of the jungle, and where we climbed to was about 100 feet above that! It was pretty scary, but so amazing to be that high, see the other temples peeking out from the trees, and to know that we were some of the few people in the world to see it from that angle was AWESOME!!!!

It was starting to get dark so we headed down the daunting ladders, scaling, and headed back to our campsite in the dark. The gaurd told us that for 200 quetzales we could sleep on top of temple 4 or in the gran plaza, but we declined because our camp site was already set up (and we didn´t want to roll over and fall to our death up there...) Lesson learned: in Guatemala, you can do whatever you want, no matter how dangerous or illegal, for a small fee. :) But that is not even the only thing that our 100 quetzales got us! We were also able to enter the park 2 hour before it opened to the public (at 4am) to hike to temple 4 to watch the sunrise! So the alarm goes off at 3:45 am, we get our headlamps, and head into the jungle to see the sunrise. The trip up was dark and a bit scary, especially because Darren swears that he saw a huge pair of eyes gleam from his headlight, but we made it there none the less... It was too foggy to see the sunrise, but being there, above the canopy while the animals were waking up was something neither of us will ever forget! It sounded like we were in Jurassic Park, the howler monkeys sound exactly like the t-rex´s from the movie. We will post a video later so you can all get an idea of what it sounded like, but it was absolutely amazing!

Then we went back to camp and splurged on breakfast that we split (our one meal outside of peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches the whole trip to Tikal) and we went back into the park for more sightseeing. It was really amazing to see how big the place was and how big everything is. And what is even cooler is that most of the site has not even been excavated, majority is still burried under moss, grass, and trees! All in all, it was a very exciting, very interesting trip!