Today we went to Tikal. Tikal is an ancient Mayan site in Guatemala. It is considered the second most famous Mayan site, after Chichen Itza. It is a huge complex of temples and other buildings, of which only about 20% have been uncovered. We spent about six hours here, exploring the temples and jungle, and walking around all over the place.
When we got to the site, we took a quick look at the map and then started walking to temple number 6. The first thing that we saw was none other than a coral snake. He was slithering off the path about 15 feet in front of us. I almost stepped on him but Baba gave a helpful
”Stop or you’ll step on a very venomous snake.”
After that we walked for a while longer before getting to our first temple. We had planned to go backwards, starting at 6 and working our way to 1, which was the closest to the entrance of the park. We got to the temple and were pretty stoked. It was a huge mountain of stones, which, before being uncovered by researchers and the staff of the park, had probably looked just like a random hill sticking up out of the ground. It was really cool and looked like it hadn’t been weathered much in the 1,400 years it had been there. We stared at it for a while longer, then kept moving to the next temple.
Temple 5 was cool, but it was in a worse condition than Temple 6. It was much bigger though, and it amazed us a lot. We walked and climbed around there and Syd went up onto the wall of the ruin. He was reluctant to leave because the height scared my parents, but eventually he did. We went to an acropolis, which was a place where some of the Mayans lived. It was only accessible by a narrow tunnel, so as to protect it from invasion. There was supposed to be a statue here with a mask on, but we never found it. After wandering around here, we made our way to Temple 4.
Temple 4 made the previous two temples look like ant hills. It was so tall and so huge, it mildly blew my mind. I sat there and said to myself, I’m really sad that the Mayan culture isn’t as strong as it used to be, because these people were basically building castles, which was also happening in Europe at the time. I thought, people now recognize you as one of the most technologically advanced and influential people of that time and its kind of a bummer that your civilization fell before you could join your knowledge with that of the rest of the world. We marveled at the temple for a few more minutes, then moved on.
After Temple 4 we saw a few smaller temples and went to Mundo Perdido. Mundo Perdido means lost world and it was the first temple we got to climb. We climbed up it and saw the bigger temples sticking up above the trees. It was hot and there was no shade up there, so after a little while, we came down and continued on. We went to Temple 3, had a quick snack, and headed to the central plaza.
At the central plaza, there were the remaining two Temples, as well as another acropolis. We walked around there, went to the Temples, studied the Stelae (large flat stones with characters carved onto them), and started exploring the acropolis. It was large and had many dubious climbs that everyone except Baba passed up on. We explored here for a while then started to head back to our hotel.
Our timing was perfect because just as we left it started to rain. When we got home we decided we deserved a coke and some lunch, or at least a dessert.
1 Response
I think it would feel a little creepy in those temples. Think of all the ancient people who worshipped there and did who knows what. And you finished another adventure with food–the universal remedy!