Today we woke up early at 5.30 am for us to reach the border to Guatemala, just before it opens. We reached the border at 6 and after lots of bureaucratic things we had to do, we finally managed to reach the third country on this trip, Guatemala. After all of this, we got back onto the bus and drove 2 hours to the archaeological site of Tikal, only stopping to get some cash and buy some local snacks.
When we arrived at Tikal, we were introduced to our guide who would be guiding us through the site, he told us a bit about the Mayan culture and the fact that Tikal was an ancient Mayan city that had been abandoned. We started our hike by going through the forest and reaching a set of 4 pyramids laid out in a cross shape, representing a 20-year cycle of the Mayan calendar. As we continued we went through an area with the same set of pyramids, which were created every 20 years however these weren’t excavated. we continued and reached a partially excavated extremely high pyramid, which we climbed to the top. There we were able to see the tops of other temples peeking through the top of the forest canopy.
As we continued hiking and learning about the Mayan culture, we stopped by holes in the ground that Mayans would use as fridges to store food. we then reached the 2 pyramids which were used as astrology towers to be able to stare at the stars, which we once again climbed to the top and were able to see temples but from a different view.
On our way to the final pyramid we would be climbing we stopped to see a spider monkeys eating berries in a tree as well as a woodpecker, when we did reach the top of the third pyramid, we saw a beautiful courtyard below and another pyramid right in front of us, we went down to the courtyard and got to visit whilst our guide explained some information about the Mayan calendar.
for lunch, we ate at the restaurant near the entrance and even saw some bright colourful birds trying to take some food from the ground. as we finished lunch a few of us went on to do a birdwatching tour of Tikal, we started by walking around near the parking lot and found parrots eating fruits in the tree as well as 2 types of toucans (however I only saw one) and a hawk. We continued walking through the jungle, encountering some jeeps that had been abandoned by the first modern explorers who found the site. as we continued we encountered lots of other birds, including hummingbirds, woodpeckers and an extremely rare bird called the Royal Kingfisher, which made our guide very excited. We also saw a few monkeys high up in the trees. In total on this excursion, we saw 32 different types of birds.
After this, we took a shuttle to go back to our next hostel, which the rest of the group had already reached. There we decided to go eat dinner as we were starving before we could finally take a shower and go to sleep.
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