We rose before dawn today for a sunrise tour of Tikal. The organized tours are the only way to get into the park for the sunrise – it is closed to all other visitors. We and several other tour groups climbed up to the top of Templo IV for some great views. After the sunrise, our tour guide took us around the park to climb the temples and learn about the history of Tikal. We ended up seeing all the same sights that we saw yesterday, but it was nice to get some context this time around.
View of the sunrise from Templo IV
View from Templo IV
Howler monkeys up in the trees
We got to see the howler monkeys that we only heard last night. I took a video of the monkeys up in the trees to capture their unique growling sound:
I also saw a few spider monkeys (monos aranas en Espanol) and toucans.
We had planned to stay in Tikal two nights, but after our leisurely afternoon exploration yesterday and our sunrise tour this morning, we felt like we had done Tikal. Fortunately tours and transportation just seem to fall into your lap in this part of the world. Cesar, our sunrise tour guide, was taking a minibus full of people back to Flores at noon. He told us we could hop on for Q30 (about $4) per person. We figured we’d spend a night in Flores and try to find transit down to Coban (a six- or seven-hour bus ride) tomorrow. It turns out our minibus driver could get us another minibus down to Coban this very afternoon. We didn’t know much about the whole Guatemalan system of minibuses before we got here, but it seems they’re all connected and the operators all know each other.
So now, six hours later, we’re in Coban, we had no problem checking into our hotel a day early, and we’ve got a day trip booked for Semuc Champey tomorrow.