Belize - Tikal, Guatemala

Remember I talked briefly about the dirt roads in Belize? Well, let's just say there are lots of them. And they are bumpy. And when I say bumpy, I mean bumpy. The lack of good suspension in the cars might also have made it even bumpier.

Let's also say that bumpy roads are not my friends. The one on the way to Tikal was especially evil. We had to stop twice and even after I moved to the front seat, I still lost my breakfast. Ugh. It was gross. I felt like I had ingested an entire bottle of ____________ (insert your favorite liquor here). My head was swimming, the world was spinning. It was just not good. Luckily, after we stopped the second time, I felt much better and made it through the rest of the day. Here is the road:The trip to Tikal was a 3 hour adventure. You have to cross the border into Guatemala and change cars. There are military men with machine guns and lots of wanted posters. Every day we had marvelous guides for our tours and our guide for Tikal was no exception. Marco explained everything from what the city would have looked like (no trees or grass- everything would have been paved and painted bright red or blue) to why the Maya left the city (overpopulation).

The discovery of Tikal was a major event. When you look out at Belize and Guatemala, you see lots of tall hills (mountains?). On top of every one there could be a temple or some sort of structure. It is amazing to think about. Here is what a ruin looks like before it is excavated:Temple IV is the tallest structure in Tikal. You can see that not all of it has been uncovered. They are also still doing work on the stairs leading up to the bottom. We climbed all the way to the top of Temple IV and saw this:Pretty amazing, right?! Here is the hubby at the top of Temple IV. Here is a close up of the temple you see on the far left of the picture from Temple IV. This is the King's temple. Directly opposite it is the Queen's temple. The Maya actually built four structures when they built a new temple- one for each direction (N,S,E,W). This makes for a lot of buildings. They estimate over 4,000structures in Tikal alone. When a new king would take over, instead of ripping down old temples, he would have a new temple built right over the old. How did they do all of this? Slavery. Sad, but true.
And in case you are wondering if the Maya did actually sacrifice people...here is a sacrificial stone. You can see a little bit of the red color on the top of the stone. That comes from a dye they made using Impatients.

And one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip: The Great Plaza. In this shot, I am standing on a big building that was used for housing. You can see the King's temple on the right and a building they used for administrative purposes in the distance. Chris and I climbed up and down most of the ruins you'll see except for the King's temple. People were not allowed to climb that or the Queen's temple. It was exceedingly hot the day we traveled to Tikal -probably upper 90's - eclipsed only by the day we went to Caracol when it got up to 102. And remember, there was no air conditioning at the resort. It definately made me appreciate air conditioning. Chris always wonders how people could have lived in Houston before air conditioning. Well, we experienced what it would feel like, that is for sure. I don't know how anything got done. It was too hot to work!

Next installment: Caracol