We crossed into Guatemala, worried that we would struggle with our spanish after having been in english speaking Belize for two weeks, but the words came back to us and the border crossing went very smoothly.

We drove to the small town of El Remate, which is close to Tikal and caters to tourists heading to see the most famous ruins in Guatemala. We camped at a small hostel across from Lago Peten Itza, and decided to take a shuttle and a guide to Tikal the next morning.

We had already visited several ruins throughout Mexico and Belize, but this was our first time visiting a ruin with a guide. During our tour he would often mention other ancient cities, either friends, enemies, or sometimes both, of the people of Tikal, and having already visited most of the ruins that he mentioned, it added a lot of context to our experience.

At its peak Tikal is believed to have had well over 200 000 inhabitants. Only about 10% (or less) of Tikal has been excavated; most of it still lies covered with soil and trees and plants. The guide talked about how the deforestation of the area and the resulting drought is now considered the reason that the site and so many like it were abandoned, around 900 AD. He went on to say that archeologists have decided that they will not excavate any more of the ruins on the site. When asked why, he said that first, it would cost a lot of money. For example, trees that are currently growing into the structures need to be poisoned and then left for 3 or 4 years to die so that they can slowly pull the dead roots out from among the stones of the temples and pyramids. Second, in order to fully excavate the site, it would require killing thousands of acres of trees….exactly what is believed to have led to the environmental issues that caused the decline of the civilization in the first place. So, it would appear, that archeologists have an ability that is rare among humans…they are able to learn from the past.

 

Here’s one of Derek’s videos…turn up the volume for his narrative.

Our guide was also an ornithologist, and he could name species of birds from their songs and was able to also point out different birds throughout the site.

 

We enjoyed the day at Tikal and met some interesting fellow travellers. Somewhere in one of our conversations we discovered that two travellers from two different hostels paid about half of what we paid for our tour. Not that it was a lot of money, but the principle of the matter irked us. When we returned to our campsite Derek spoke with our host and expressed his concerns. Our host said he would call the operator and see what he could do, he was very upset that there were two prices being offered. The next morning he explained that the guide is on the staff of the other hostel and that that was why they could offer it so cheap….we didn’t believe him, as the two travellers we had talked to had booked the tour with two different hostels, but we were not going to make a big deal about it either…we just wanted him to know that we knew we had been ripped off. So we didn’t get any money back (we knew we wouldn’t), but our host did present us with a nice hand made dream catcher to try and make up for it and we left on good terms….now, to find a spot for the dream catcher, it really is very nice.

Here’s a night video of the crazy frogs singing in the lake next to our camp in El Remate.  Turn up the volume…..

We drove on to a great little hostel that lets you camp in their yard across the lake from the small island of Flores. We spent two nights there, and took a small panga taxi to the island of Flores for breakfast one morning and to stroll the streets.

 

Derek caught an odd sounding howler monkey at our camp near Flores….turn up the volume.  In our experience they don’t usually sound like this….at first we thought it was a dog that had wrecked it’s vocal cords pulling on a leash.

Quite the narrator that Derek.