It’s Christmas Day, it must be Guatemala

We’re leaving for Guatemala this morning, only two places are open so we have breakfast in one and coffee in another. Breakfast at a street stall is a very tasty burrito of cheese and beans, Florence has extra eggs with hers. Coffee is dark and strong, we chat to a local while we drink it, he teaches us a few words of Mayan – unfortunately his vocabulary doesn’t extend to Happy Christmas, we give him a task to learn it later in the day when he’s having lunch with his family.

We’re on our way by 9:00, it’s a short drive to the border and a very uneventful crossing. We have to pay a small fee to leave Belize and a small fee to enter Guatemala.

It’s an hour drive to our lunch stop, the land is very green with cultivation, it’s low-lying with a lot of water around.

Lunch is functional, nice salad and fruit juice, not so good cheese sandwiches. This isn’t our best Christmas lunch.

Phone our respective families, it’s good to talk to them all after nearly a month away, hard not to mention the sunshine, blue sky and temperature when they’re enjoying grey skies and rain – ‘but at least it’s mild’.

After lunch we’re on our way to Tikal, one of the largest Mayan sites in the region.
Tikal was at its peak between 200AD and 850AD although it started much earlier than this, probably from Mayans migrating from highland areas in the North when crops failed there for a number of years.

We start the visit with a walk through the jungle, we come across some vehicles left behind by an archaeological survey in the early 1970s. These are being slowly claimed by the jungle, rusting and adopting the green of the jungle.

Other sites we’ve visited had the feel of a town, Tikal is much larger, the major structures are further apart and although only 10% is excavated so far there are many more large plazas and buildings.

We climb the tallest temple – the archaeologists call it Temple IV – it’s about 230 feet high, even then the top only just reaches above the jungle canopy. A few other structures poke through the trees but it’s mainly a sea of green jungle as far as we can see. It’s the ideal place for our Christmas postcard image.

Next is my favourite part of the site, El Mundo Perdido – The Lost World. This is a group of smaller buildings which have been partially uncovered but mainly left to the jungle, there are trees and ferns of all shapes and sizes around them and the sun only breaks through in small patches highlighting parts of the stone.

We pass more temples and plazas until we reach the main square. This has the iconic Temple of the Grand Jaguar at one end, the other sides are made up of more temples and other structures – generally noble houses or administrative. From the top of one of them we watch the sun set into the jungle.

We only had two and a half hours to explore, we could have spent days – maybe next time.

We’re camping just outside the site tonight, not sure why as there is a hotel nearby. We go to the hotel restaurant for a Christmas Margarita and a tasty salad. And we drink close to a litre of water each.