Mexico & Guatemala

Part 3:

Guatemala and Belize

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January 19th (day 11): To Guatemala

This was a transit day, from Palenque to Flores in Guatemala, but a rather fun one because it included a boat ride along the border river and we met two Argentinian girls who we hooked up with for the next two days. On the Guatemalan side we had to wait for three hours in a little village where we found a fussballtable, and then made a long bus ride along terrible dust roads that made the bus shake violently for hours. Fun! We spent the night in Flores.

January 20th (day 12): Tikal

We expected Tikal to be the most fascinating and spectacular of all the ancient Mayan cities, and guess what, it completely fulfilled our expectations. Tikal was the highlight of this journey.

Tikal, whose greatest ruler was called Lord Chocolate (Ah Cacau), was one of the two biggest and most powerful Mayan cities during the Classic Period, along with Calakmul (which we visited later). In 695, under Lord Chocolate, Tikal finally defeated Calakmul - and sacrificed its king to the gods, as was custom - but it didn't manage to absorb its empire. Like all central Mayan cities, it was abandoned in the 10th century and was lost in the jungle, not to be rediscovered for many centuries.

Tikal was a huge city with over a 100.000 inhabitants, and many of its big temples (several over 60m high) and palaces survive. Some of them have been cleared of overgrowth, but most haven't and the site as a whole is wild jungle, which makes it very exciting to explore. Many monuments still look exactly like jungle explorers discovered them in the 19th century - i.e. you can barely distinguish them from natural hills. There are decades of excavation work left to do here, and if they don't turn it into a park like Palenque then Tikal will just get more and more wonderful as more monuments are uncovered.

Unfortunately, this was a grey day (while the day before and after were sunny :/) so the photos are not good and don't do Tikal any justice. We started by going to the somewhat remote Templo V which we thought would be a lesser monument, but turned out to be a monster. Climbing it and then for the first time seeing the roof of the jungle, which was like a green sea all around, was a magical moment. Templo IV is the highest monument in Tikal. Except for the top part it has not been cleared yet, which is great as you can see how hard it must have been to find these monuments in the thick jungle. We also encountered a bunch of monkeys in the trees above us and started chasing them. Now monkeys were my favourite animals as a kid, I even had pluche monkeys instead of teddy bears, and it was great to see them in the wild for the first time. I climbed up a small ruined pyramid to get at their height, and later I managed to take a good picture of one jumping from one tree to another right above me, which just made my day. For better and sunnier pictures of Tikal, go here.

January 21th (day 13): Through Belize

This was a pure transit day, and a very tough one. We ended up pusing on until we were in Cancun, being on the road almost none stop from 7:30am to 2:30am at night.

Flores

We woke up at 6:30 in Flores. This little town actually lies on an island in a huge lake, but is connected to the shore by a bridge. I made this pretty picture from a hotel balcony. At 7:30 we took a bus to Belize City. Or so we thought; it actually turned out to be a bus to Tikal, but our driver drove back a bit and dropped us off with a Dutch girl by the road who was waiting for the same bus to Belize City.

Belize City

We'd decided to not spend time in Belize since there is little to see, so in Belize City we just checked out the area around the bus station and hopped on a bus to the border with Mexico. It's a pity we couldn't spare 1 or 2 hours to see the whole city. While waiting for our bus to leave, an old black man rode by on a mountain bike. Now Belize is English speaking, and when he saw some of us smoking sigarettes, he said with a fat Caribbean accent "Don't smoke sigarettes, it's bad for you. Smoke some weed, then you feel goooood". Right on brother! Well, that was my biggest impression of Belize :)

We arrived at the border at 7:30pm, just in time to catch the last bus to Cancun, where we arrived at 2:30 at night. From Cancun we'd make a tour of the Yucatan by car, but that's for the last part of this report.

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