Tikal

This post is a tad bit out of date....just catching up with some photos!  

First of all, I was relieved to find that our hotel in Tikal was really really nice.  I was still sick, mostly just wanted to be home, and definitely didn't have it in me to stay in any roach motel.  We had booked a night at the Tikal Inn before we left Antigua because we wanted to stay close to the park.  Although this hotel was pricier than some of the other nearby options, it included breakfast & dinner, was super clean, and had a great pool.  I was really grateful for all of this because Kelsey and Larissa were basically on their own.  The first afternoon, I couldn't even get myself out of bed to go see the park, but they easily and safely walked around until sunset.  And at dinner, they were able to go to the hotel restaurant and eat without while I moaned and read novels in my bed.  

As an aside, I was really proud of both of the girls by this point in our travels.  They both seemed so much more confident and poised than when we began.  I attribute some of this to the lack of teen interaction.  That may sound surprising, and while they weren't thrilled to be without friends and peers, I really think that being away from the self obsessed teen culture of middle school and having to interact with young adults, older travelers, and even little kids helped them to mature significantly.  They both coped very well when I was sick, learned to make good judgement calls, and behaved all in all in a way that made me proud.  Looking back, if we had accomplished nothing else during our travels, I am satisfied with this achievement.  And of course, we also got to see a lot of fun sites, learn some Spanish, do some volunteer work....and get all of the "normal" school work done also.   I can appreciate why some people home school their children - so much time is wasted at regular school that if one is even slightly motivated, a lot more can be done at home!  Okay, so enough of that tangent.  Here's a pic of the pool at the Tikal Inn:

Some critters near the pool:

The second day, I managed to get myself out of bed long enough for a couple of short walks in the park.  There was no way I was going to travel all that way and NOT see the ruins!  And I was very very glad that I did.  Tikal impressed me more than I thought it would.  I'm fgenerally not a huge fan of ruins, but these were definitely special and worth seeing.

Tikal was most definitely not tidy or organized or informative with respect to its signage or anything else about it. And that´s  what I really enjoyed about it. Its twisting paths through the jungle were somewhat difficult to navigate but that was part of the charm for me. Wandering through the jungle, we listened to exotic bird calls, monkeys rustling in the branches above, and weird insect chirps. It smelled musty and the hot tropical air weighed upon us. Suddenly, we turned a corner and rising above the jungle canopy was the top of a 2700 year old temple, still covered with trees and vines and moss. It seems as if the excavation crews here must spend as much time keeping the ruins excavated as they spent excavating them in the first place. I imagine it`s a constant battle! It all felt so alive to me - I could really imagine how Mayans hundreds and thousands of years ago may have felt in this same place. Actually, I think I can imagine that, but then I remember that archeologists think Tikal had up to 90,000 inhabitants at one time so I´m pretty sure my experience among the ruins on a weekday was much more relaxing than theirs in the middle of the bustling city was! I loved how it felt wild and mystical; not like the sterile feeling that most museums evoke.