Tikal

We hitched a morning ride over the Guatemalan border to Tikal with Mayawalk, the same outfit that took us to the ATM. We got into Tikal early enough that we were able to spend several hours exploring the park before dark (we had originally expected that we wouldn’t enter the park until tomorrow). We’ve also signed up for a sunrise tour tomorrow morning (4:45am!).

Every temple in the park can be climbed, and many of them involve rickety wooden staircases. We took advantage and got some fantastic views of the park. Kenny had a lot of fun photographing toucans, monkeys, and other wildlife, but the photos only came out so-so. We blame the equipment. ;)

Just as the sun was setting, I heard a loud growling noise. When I asked Kenny what he thought it was, he answered, “I don’t know, my stomach?” But then we heard it again, and again, from several different directions. We had heard that there were jaguars in the area, and started to grow concerned. The growls certainly sounded like they could have been uttered by very large cats. Eventually the growls became so frequent that we figured either (a) we were about to become jaguar prey or (b) we must be mistaken in our jaguar hypothesis. We found another tourist and asked her if she knew what the growling was. She laughed, and told us that they were not jaguars, but that she had made the same mistake we had. After consulting with her companion for the correct English name, she announced that the growls around us were coming from howler monkeys. You’d have to hear the sound to believe it, but we were shocked that a monkey could make such a sound. We looked up in the trees to see if we could spot any on our walk back to our hotel, but unfortunately they were very well hidden.

Our first temple sighting after entering the park

Kenny climbing on a temple

Me and Kenny and one of the Gran Plaza temples

In the Gran Plaza

Templo V involved a very high rickety ladder.

The view from Templo V