Tikal

It's been a long couple of days in Central America. I left Palenque early in the morning on Saturday in order to catch a series of shuttles and boats that took me across the border back into Guatemala. Since I was only in Mexico for 6 days (and not over a week), I didn't have to pay any exit taxes, whereas many people that were in my traveling group had to pay up to $300 pesos just to leave Mexico. One person in the group had run out of money and the immigration official in Mexico refused to stamp an exit stamp on his passport, but when he got to Guatemala, the entrance official just smiled and said, "Welcome to Guatemala."

While I am definitely feeling like I'm losing out of quite a bit of sleep, one very large perk to traveling fast like I am now is covering a lot of ground and really being able to notice the subtle differences in landscape between the regions and countries. The mountainous jungles of southern Chiapas melted away into a hot plain in Guatemala, but once we approached Tikal, that plain transformed into a jungle and I once again found myself in the rainforest.

The hostel I've been staying at isn't in Tikal, it's in a city called Flores, which is located on an island in the middle of a lake roughly one hour from Tikal. The hostel here might be the best I've ever been to, as it is packed with travelers, all of whom enjoy stiff drinks and long conversations--something that is becoming essential while traveling solo down here. Being around so many like-minded people from around the globe is very much inspiring, and hearing about other's travels has been fantastic. It's weird to be at the point where people are asking me advice and taking notes of how I felt about certain places, when I feel as if I've been the rookie for this entire trip. 

I woke up on Sunday at 4:00am to try to catch the sunrise in Tikal, and while I saw it on the drive there, I wasn't disappointed. While I had a great time in Tikal (saw my first monkey in the wild!) and would recommend it to anyone looking to travel down in Central America, the feeling that I got when I first laid eyes on Palenque has taken the cake for Mayan ruin experiences for me down here. However, driving into Guatemala, one of the people on the shuttle asked the driver what caused the formation of some of these very small and frequent hills that doted the countryside. The driver had no idea but he told us that it's very plausible that each of those hills could have a ruin buried beneath it. I couldn't quite imagine what this looked like until we reached Tikal and saw what he was talking about, as archeologists have left many of the ruins in the various states that they found them, showing the transformation from hill to ruin. Very neat.

Today if I get some courage to get out of bed, eat breakfast and hop on a chicken bus, then hopefully I'll make my way over to Rio Dulce and hop on a boat down the Rio to Livingston. Livingston is one of the missing puzzle pieces in this trip that will give me that satisfaction that I "saw" Guatemala. Hopefully I wake up.

Spider Monkey

Ocellated Turkey

Leaf Cutter Ants