How tikal'd we were

Our two days at La Lancha have been very different.

Our first day started early with a 6am departure for Tikal, one of the most powerful and dominant cities of the classic Maya period. It was a huge site, set in jungle, and only re-discovered over the last century. 


Antonio our guide, was very knowledgeable and filled our heads with lots of names, facts, figures and dates - some of which stuck!  His forte however, was to get us around the temples, palaces and pyramids whilst managing to avoid large groups (although the benefit of our early start made this less of a problem). 

The literal highlight were the six temples, all in different stages of being unearthed from the jungle. 

The tallest at 70m was temple 4 which we were able to climb using a very solid wooden staircase of 180 steps.  At the top, we were on our own to enjoy the terrific views of the whole site.

RM on the way up to Temple 4

Antonio then took us through jungle trails showing us many aspects of Mayan life that supported the 100,000 inhabitants of the city.

This ranged from underground food storage, reservoirs and the political and religious way of life.

Thankfully, only a small percentage of the site has been sufficiently uncovered, otherwise our trip would have taken far more than the four hours that we spent there.

Marching down long Mayan roads and climbing up and down all the various buildings, was very wearing on our poor old knees.  We finished the tour with a look around the thankfully small, but interesting museum of artifacts.

A tiny RM at the huge Temple 5 which you are no longer able to climb due to the rickety staircase.

Our final day in Guatemala was spent started when we hiked back down the steep hill to the jetty to catch a boat that we had booked to take us across the lake to Flores, the biggest town in the area.  The water was very still and the crossing was only 45 minutes to be dropped off on the malecon. 

HJ with the shape of the sland picked out of the plaster on a local house

Flores is actually a small island connected by man made causeway to the mainland. It is very colonial and picturesque topped as usual by cathedral and town square.  We strolled right around the malecon, browsed in the gift shops and eventually found a nice place for lunch which overlooked the lake.

HJ on the Malecon at Flores

The crossing back was a different story.  After a few minutes, our lady skipper slowed the boat and made up and down motions with her hands.  We nodded saying si, si but not quite understanding.  It soon became apparent as we hit the first swell and we then spent the next hour bouncing back to our jetty where we alighted and walked knock kneed back to our room.

Tomorrow we move on to Mexico, our last country although one we've visited before.