Tikal

Tikal is a pretty amazing site. Scattered in the peten jungle are mayan temples and structures of various shapes and sizes. My journey to tikal began at 5 am today. I reached the park around 7. needless to say i had no idea it was a 2 hour commute. hence i missed the sunrise from atop temple number 4. doh! it was still amazing however. I started off seeing temple IV and made my way around the peten jungle catching a glimpse of other mayan temples towering above the forest canopy. Temple 4 which is the highest in the tikal area and the second highest (second only to el tigre iin the el mirador) in the Mayan world is just amazing however some reconstruction and restoration projects are going on. I did get a chance to climb high atop the temple and oh man.... what a view. Looking off in the distance u get an ariel view of nothing but miles and miles of forest canopy. Against the backdrop of forest canopy you can see other temples poking high into the air scattered randomly in the forest. in the distance there are huge hills where mounds of mayan temples remain unexcavated. In the distance, the sounds of howling monkeys gives u the feeling you really are in the jungle. Thankfully, I was the only one on the top when i climbed as memories of a roomate of mine in antigua filled my headed on his experiences on top of temple IV (someone was on their cell phone calling ppl proudly announcing to the world he was "now on temple IV" and even more crazyly one girl was playing her guitar atop the temple....

By 1230 i was done.. haven seen all the temples. It was pretty hot as hell and the mosquitos were unrelenting despit my application of mosquito repelent.

Tonight the menu was pescado or fish. I forgot to specialize my fish order as i normally do "sin cabeza" so the fish came in it{s entirity head an all. This brings me to another addendum to my last post. Another thing I won{t eat is fish that has a head and it{s eyes. I prefer to eat my fish decapitated. Unfortuantely tonight, I didn{t have a partner to eat with so i didn{t get a chance to do my famous anil manuver which is to turn my plate with the head, eyes and mouth facing towards my partner. instead i had to resort to barbary which meant decapitating the fish. the fish was great. it was the local fish of the lake served with rice, vegetables and bread. pretty yummy. i might try to catch a movie tonight as one of the restaruants plays movies at 8 each night. other than that nothing much is happening and I think i am ready to leave flores. Tomm I will take a 6 hour bus trip to Rio dulce, where I will speeded down a jungle lined river via boat to the beach caribbean town of Livingston.