MONDAY, MARCH 27 - TIKAL --

We woke up early-ish on Monday so we could get on the road to Tikal at a reasonable hour. By the time we had dressed and were ready to go, Molly and Sally were still asleep. We knocked on their door and roused them, then headed off to find supplies for the road. We had borrowed a cooler from the rental car agency, so we were looking for fruit, drinks, etc. to put in it. We walked away from the center of town towards the "supermarket" listed in the guidebook. There were maybe around ten people waiting outside, some of them dressed in school uniforms... It seemed the store wasn't open yet. I think it was around 8 am, James says maybe it was 7:30. Just as we were about to turn around, giving up hope on the store, it opened. So we continued on and went into the store. It was more like a mini-mart than a supermarket, with very little in the way of produce, so we picked up some beers, juice and yogurt there. Then James had to make a pitstop (I thought he had to take a dump, but it turned out to be one of several unsuccessful ring-making attempts. That's right -- he was trying to MAKE me an engagement ring. But more on that later). So I continued the shopping, stopping at another minimart for ice and at a roadside stand in the center of town for fruit. The fruit was super yummy -- fresh pineapple, bananas, papaya and watermelon. So, everyone met up and we set off around 8:30. We got to the border around 9.

Crossing the border into Guatemala was quite an interesting experience. There were many currency exchange people hanging out on both sides of the border (and even in the center of town in San Ignacio, we came to realize eventually), identifiable by their receipt books that they carried. Other than that, they just looked like guys loitering around. So when one of them started to assist us in the convoluted process of crossing the border with our rental car, we didn't even realize at first that he was a money dude. I just thought he was an official of some sort from one of the countries. I guess I didn't think about it too much, actually. Anyway, he was a really nice guy to kept ushering us from one desk to the next, telling us what to do next -- "Now you go to the cashier and pay them $40 Belize." (which is $20 US) "Now you give the receipt to this person." Etc etc. Getting a car across the border is quite a hassle, with many steps, including spraying the outside bottom half with insecticide. But it actually didn't take too long, maybe a half hour all told. When we were done, we headed into Guatemala. We crossed a river immediately, and on the other side was a little guard house. There was no sign, so we continued on, but it turned out, on our return, that we were supposed to stop there and pay another fee. Hmm, kinda iffy. Anyway, we continued on into the Guatemalan town on the border, and I immediately made a wrong turn. There was no sign, so I took the road that looked better -- the road that went straight immediately became a dirt road, whereas the road to the right was paved. I took the right-hand road, which turned out to go through the town. It was a little town, which felt a little like driving through the Mission, but with the occasional goat or something. Country-Mission. Eventually the road petered out, so James asked some guys in Spanish about the road to Tikal. We had pretty much figured that it had to be the other road, and they confirmed it. So we went back through town, with the locals staring at us the whole way -- fun! It's always interesting to see people's reactions to you. They seemed pretty curious about us. Maybe the fact that James is just so damn white...!

The first 20 or so miles of the road were dirt. The countryside was beautiful -- much more like America than I expected. Mostly farmland, and not all that tropical seeming. But all of the trees, etc. were very different from the ones we are used to here. The large ciba trees were especially cool -- they were/are sacred to the Maya, who considered them the axis of the earth, a connection between heaven and the underworld. Or something like that. They are very large and majestic, and frequently stand alone in the fields cleared of other trees and brush. We came across a funny looking cow along the road, and a herd of goats smack dab in the middle of the road, seemingly roaming around on their own. This was also true of the cats and dogs in Belize and Guatemala -- they frequently roamed free, even when they had collars and were obviously owned by someone. But I digress.

Eventually the road became paved, and we continued through villages until we reached the town of El Remate on the shore of a lake. The town and lake were so picturesque, we stopped to take a couple of pix and I decided to get a soda. I wasn't sure how to ask for a diet coke, so I decided to get an orange soda -- I was pretty sure I could manage that with my little bit of spanish I had picked up from the online course I took. With moral support from James, I asked the ladies at a little store, "Hay sodas?" They said si, so I said, "Naranja?" They told us the price and we paid. A very smooth transaction!

We climbed a hill and left the town and lake behind. After maybe another half and hour, we came to the gate of the Tikal park. There were a bunch of men standing around who managed to convey the fact that we should park and pay. The girls and I waited while James went up the hill to the entrance booth to pay. As we were waiting, we got out to stretch our legs and the guys standing around pointed out some monkeys in the trees. That was very cool. After this short delay, we piled back into the car and one of the men tried to explain to us (in Spanish) that we should keep our speed below 50 kph. James said he thought that he said something about 5 km til the real park entrance, but Sally and I thought he was saying something about speed, esp as he was pointing at the tachometer as he was saying it. That was funny -- I thought James was supposed to be the Spanish speaker! But he's apparently not so good at the understanding part.

The speed limit was in order to protect the wildlife, of which we saw exactly none. But we did see lots of signs with various monkeys, snakes, and ROUSes on them. What's an ROUS, you say? Well, you have to see "The Princess Bride" to understand that reference.

We arrived at the little town-like area just outside the ruins and parked. We had lunch on the patio of the Jaguar Hotel, which is a real American-backpacker type place. The toilets were all backed up, and Molly and Sally were desperate, so they used the urinal instead -- they probably are not thrilled that I am sharing that info. Part of the Jaguar Hotel was a hammock area, where the backpackers could rent a hammock for around $5 a night -- they were really crammed in there, though. We all agreed that we couldn't sleep like that. We waited so long to be served, we thought maybe we had misunderstood and were supposed to order at the counter. Eventually, after lunch (I had a very interesting "spanish omelet" which was very dense and cheesy) we stopped at an outdoor store/kiosk and James and Molly bought hats for about $7.

Entering the park, we walked through the forest for about 15 minutes. It was hard to imagine that hundreds of thousands of Mayans lived in this area at one time -- it was so wild. The first structure that we came upon was a housing development. At the time I was glad that we stumbled on this outlying structure first -- we were able to climb all over it and explore it's nooks and crannies. I kept thinking about what a different experience it would've been in the US -- much less freedom, much more structured and boring. We were even able to climb up onto the roof! There was some guilt, however, that we were perhaps damaging the structure by climbing all over it. But oh well, what can you do?

We moved on to the main plaza area, which had the major temples, I and II. I has been closed to visitors since a couple of people fell to their deaths, I read in the guidebook, so we climbed Temple II via the wooden stairs erected on the outside of the temple. It was around noon at this point, and quite warm, but not unbearable. I'm sure you wouldn't want to climb anything at noon in May, for example -- I hear it gets really bad then. From the top of Temple II, James thought some stairs in the plaza were tracks -- the perspective was so wacky, being so high and looking almost straight down on the plaza. When we got down, he realized that the "tracks" he thought he was looking at were really just three or four steps that ran the width of the plaza.

Next we climbed around the structures on the north side of the plaza, then moved on to Temple IV, the tallest temple which is set a bit back from the rest. On our way to IV we met some people coming back who said there were howler monkeys near the top of IV. James made some kind of joke, which they completely missed, and they said that the monkeys sounded like lions. We never heard them make a sound, unfortunately. But the view from IV was great. Apparently that view was used by Lucas in "Return of the Jedi," as a view of the Ewok world. You could see over the canopy for miles, with the tops of the other large structures just peeking through.

The last structure we climbed was the pyramid. It was getting late, and we had to be back at the border before dark, so we had decided we needed to leave the park by 4 pm. I was getting tired, and Molly decided not to climb the pyramid, but James, Sally and I toughed it out. This structure was the only one we climbed that didn't have wooden stairs, so we had to climb the extra-large steps directly. There was a Guatemalan man who was already at the top, and he struck up a conversation with James when he got to the top. He had apparently been a migrant worker in many parts of the US, and had recently moved back to Guatemala. Again, it was neat that some of the tourists were locals, and not just Americans like us.

Sally had me take a couple pix of her, then headed down. The Guatemalan man also headed down, and James made as if to follow. I called to him, saying, "Hey, we're alone... Wait a second." Um, hint hint? We kissed and enjoyed the view for a second, but it obviously wasn't "the moment." Hmm, I wondered. Is he really going to ask me to marry him on this trip? I was pretty sure that he was, but after that moment passed on top of the pyramid, I had a bit of doubt. I decided that if he hadn't said anything by Friday, I would bring it up, maybe even ask him to marry me. Hey, I'm a modern woman! No need to wait, right?

So, we were on our way out of the park. We passed by Temple V, which was pretty neat -- they had originally thought it was the youngest, but it turned out to be the oldest. All of the temples dated from around 500 to 800 AD. We ran into two women near Temple V that Molly and Sally had talked to at the border -- they had rented a car that they were not able to take across the border without realizing, and had to take a minibus/taxi from the border to the park. We would end up running into these same women again a couple of times on the trip, oddly enough.

As we were exiting the park, James saw on a map that there was a tree that you could climb near the Jaguar Inn, and he decided he wanted to climb it. The rest of us were tired of climbing, and I wanted to see the Crocodile Lake, which was near the tree, so we headed in the same direction. After getting directions from the Inn, he picked up the car -- it turned out that both the tree and the lake were a 20 minute walk down the road. So we all piled in and headed down the little dirt road, further into the park. The lake was closed off for some sort of breeding program (birds?), so we all headed down the trail to the tree. When we got there, it was another rickety wooden staircase, but much iffier than the stairs on the temples. It was a little scary, but James and I managed to climb it and get another view across the canopy. We climbed back down, went back to the car, and set off back to Belize.

The ride back was basically uneventful. We managed to get back to the border by around 5 pm, well before dark, which was a relief. We were not set upon by banditos. In fact, we saw less people on the way back than we did on the way out. Maybe everyone was having dinner. Actually, I forgot to mention that on the way out we passed many schools, all of which seemed to be at recess. What's up with that?

OK, I still have to talk about Monday night in San Ignacio, but I'm getting tired. This is a long entry! So I'll save that for the next posting.