Tikal

For a quick break from all the animal action, I took an overnight trip with a few friends to see the ancient Mayan ruins at Tikal. The ruins are only about an hour drive away from ARCAS.

We got to the little hotel late in the morning and followed the advice of our friends and switched from the general all day tour and split it up to the sunset and sunrise tour. We had a couple hours to chill and relax and finally at 3:30 met our tour guide. That's when things went sour.

Our tour guide seemed shy and quiet, not the best sign for someone supposed to speak loudly to geeky tourists who want to learn about the historical site. Then we realized that he barely spoke english, which you can imagine put a bit of a damper on the learning process. Worse, in my mind, was that he didn't seem to even want to be there or want to try. Well, I guess the worst part would be that he mentioned about three facts the entire few hours. After I still didn't know why the Mayans came to this location, what their daily life was like, why the empire fell, or anything along those lines.

The "highlight" of the evening had to be when he told us we could climb on this one corner on top of a temple, after which he proceeded to run away as he saw the security guard yell at us and try to confiscate our tickets. I was not please.

A couple of other guests in our group complained when we got back and the residential manager, Roxy, came out to talk to us all. She apologized and said she would personally take out our tour in the morning. And Roxy was incredible; she is a local and an archeologist, so she knows her stuff. One of the best tours I have ever had. Overloads of information, she just knew everything. The only bad part about the tour was the cloudy weather so we really couldn't see a sunrise. But the two tours were like night and day (no pun intended). Thank you Roxy.