Ruined

The ruins at Tikal were easily as impressive as I´d been led to believe. After an hour drive through jungle we arrived, were treated to the obligatory signs about no littering, no guns, no hunting, and watch out for the howler monkeys who like to defecate on the heads of tourists from the treetops, and paid the somewhat exorbitant entry fee. Tikal is a vast compound of ruins and temples, some fully restored, some in the process, and some still mostly buried. Gone are the days of full access where you could climb and enter temples at will but there´s still plenty of opportunity to explore and monkey around on your own. I guess part of the reasoning was to preserve the ruins, but I suspect the handful of tourists who managed to fall to their deaths from atop the ruins played a part too. For being so generally short the Maya built the temple steps for seemingly a race of long-legged giants...they must have had some well defined calves. As usual I skipped the guide, preferring instead to sidle up to groups with guides and catch a snippet or two of the history.




















It´s really quite impressive what you can get accomplished with hundreds of years, an absolute ruling theocracy, and a huge supply of slave labor. I´m sure there´s something I could learn from their obvious work ethic but I suppose there´s no motivator like the fear of a not so swift and painful death. It´s hot, humid and buggy out there in the jungle and looking up at these massive structures, many of them built on top of hillsides, I found myself grateful not to have been around to be conscripted in helping to build them. Kind of cool to imagine the swarms of activity, bronzed kings in magnificent headdresses resembling jaguars, holding still-beating human hearts and looking down from ahigh on the masses of peasants bowing reverently. Like I said, I only caught bits and pieces of the history stuff, though I have seen Apocalypto. Seriously though, you really do get a feeling of being in the presence of History, capital H, and it´s hard not to imagine some of the more macabre practices of the Maya when looking at their sacrificial altars. I must say though that it´s kind of annoying that so many people, when faced with these awesome structures rich in history, instead of simply appreciating it feel the inexplicable need to do something inane like carve ¨Jack hearts Lucy¨ into the wall. ¨You think what the Mayans built and passed down to posterity is impressive?! Yeah well look what I can do too!¨Thanks for the contribution assholes.










Spent a quality a5 hours wandering around and on top of the ruins and I believe I saw pretty much all there was to be seen. Stopped for lunch in the ¨Great Plaza¨looking up at the huge Jaguar Temple and had to fight off a few raccoon relative creatures who have lost all fear of humans and were intent on clawing their way into my backpack. All in all it was definitely something I wouldn´t have wanted to miss. I´ll be checking out some ruins in Mexico in the near future, it will be interesting to see how they compare. Well, not much more to say on that, I´ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Off to Mexico tomorrow!