Guatemala con los Padres 9/12/11

Once again, we woke up nice and early to the sounds of the rainforest. Breakfast didn’t open until 7, so we walked around the grounds of the hotel and saw some awesome plants and wildlife. The pathway was mossy and super slippery, so it was a little dangerous but a good way to wake up the reflexes in the morning.

Our hotel “cabin.” We had the bottom room.

I don’t think you can really see it, but this is mom avoiding the MASSIVE spider and spider web that I almost walked straight into! I hate spiders… and I was not so happy to have had such a close encounter with such a scary looking one.

This is the pool, hotel grounds and lake in the background. Again, I had the urge to go swimming, but had no time and no buddies to do it with.

We had lunch when the restaurant opened at 7. Again, we had a huge meal of fruit and bread and traditional Guatemalan breakfast… eggs, beans, cheese and plantains. At 8, Edwin picked us up with Melvin, our guide for the day who was going to show us the wonders of Tikal.

This is the restaurant where we ate the night before and where we had breakfast.

This is probably the best picture we took on the entire trip. You know you wish you were right next to us, sporting a super cool bug/sun proof hiking shirt, cargo pants, hiking boots, and a bug fan.

We arrived to Tikal about an hour later, and started out tour. The area was surprisingly empty because now is not tourist season, and we liked that a lot!
All the animals we saw:

Oscillated Turkey, this is a male

Crocodile!

Pizote-Koatymundi. It looks like a mix between an anteater and a raccoon.

Spider Monkey. We saw so many of them! We even saw a mother with her baby on her back. This picture does not do it justice… so cool!

Massive ant pile and pictures of the working ants. These little ants carried massive pieces of plants and walked with the forever. Our guide said the ants would walk up to a half kilometer away from the pile. We saw massive superhighways of ants! Inside the pile, the leaves are used to create special tunnel and passageways. Dad said he read in his favorite book of all time, Aztec, that as a form of sacrifice the Mayans would cover people in honey and tie them down on top of the ant pile. No thank you! That’s enough to make me stay out of trouble.

This is a dead termite nest. We saw some massive live ones high up in the trees.

Plants we saw:

This is a ceiba tree, 250 years old and huge and so beautiful!

This is called a bread nut. See the face? This nut is ground to make flour, and apparently has more protein than soy.

Allspice Tree. We were able to taste the leaves, and they tasted very much like allspice. The spice that we cook with actually comes from the flowers from the tree.

This tree, although I can’t remember the exact name, does include the word “chicle” in it. This is the tree that produces the gum for gum! Much of this was exported to Wrigleys company, but I don’t think it is anymore. The wood is extremely durable and used for traditional carvings. This picture shows the slashes that workers would make in order to “bleed” the gum from the tree.

You can see the roots of the tree. The ground is very shallow because a super highway, left from the Mayan times, prevents the roots from growing deep. As a result, they grow outwards.

Ruins/Tikal items we saw:

Relief map of all of Tikal

View from the top of the first ruin we saw. The small grave-looking things represent the 9 doorways to pass through to the underworld (you can’t see all 9 in this picture, but they were there). Mayans also believed in 3 worlds, the underworld, real life, and the upper world.

Me “squishing” tower #2 (I bet this picture is just like every tourist that has the leaning tower of pisa picture, but I couldn’t resist)

Under the greenery is another Mayan ruin. Many of the temples are not uncovered in order to preserve the temples and to maintain the landscape and homes for wildlife. The oldest visible temple is from 800 BC. The oldest one that exists is below another ruin (the Mayans liked to build in layers) and this one is from 600 BC.

Here you can see the three major ruins (we are standing on #4, the tallest one). During the active time of the Mayans, there were no trees, just concrete highways and buildings.

After our tour, we had lunch at a restaurant near the ruins. Then we hopped in the car again to head to Rio Dulce.

I had hear that Rio Dulce was absolutely beautiful, but I think I’ve seen more beautiful places in Guatemala. We had to take a boat to get to our hotel, which was pretty cool. The hotel, named Hotel Tijax, was totally on the water. The “hallways” were just wooden pathways and each room had its own platform. This was probably the buggiest place we stayed in, but it was still awesome, including the bathroom. Luckily, I brought my flashlight for the nighttime, otherwise we would have gone for a good swim… there were no lights and it was extremely dark!

For dinner, I really wanted to try the signature soup from the area, a coconut broth with different seafoods and veggies. I was so looking forward to it! But, that wasn’t available. So I ended up with a basic grilled fish (although I can’t complain because this was now the 4th straight day of eating fish). I also had this really good key lime pie pastry thing.

We were supposed to do a canopy tour of the rainforest the next day. Sadly, a storm two weeks before had ruined the bridges, and as a result we couldn’t do the tour. We were looking for something else to do, and heard about a kayak tour. However, we had to arrange it…. I was on the phone talking to some stranger in Spanish about this kayak tour, trying to get details, while mom was in my other ear asking questions in English. It was not a fun moment! But, we survived and we arranged to have a kayak tour the next morning at 5am, rain or shine.