Flores & Tikal - Week 6
27th to 29th October
After a very sad farewell to Ozzie Kate (were at school together in Xela and have been travelling together since - lataz Kate, see you in London!), we reluctantly left the beautiful Lanquin and had the journey from hell to Flores.
Not expecting any sympathy here but we had a pretty rubbish couple of days! James was poorly and couldn't stop being sick for two days and the bus journey took an horrendous 11 hours altogether from Lanquin to Flores. The bleedin chicken bus wouldn't go more than 35mph on a road so straight you could see for 10km and it was absolutely roasting at 37 degrees. We were then sold a dodgy tour ticket for Tikal that was meant to leave at 3am but the bus never turned up!!
We managed to get to Tikal nevertheless and it was worth all the misery beforehand! Tikal is a Mayan site that is around 2000 years old and the place is amazing. We were there for the sunrise and to hear the jungle 'waking up' with howler monkeys, parrots and toucans. The temple site was huge. A bit of info - At its height Tikal had a population of 10,000 who gradually deforested the whole area to such an extent that they caused the rains in the area to stop, killing them all off - silly Mayans. Our guide told us an interesting fact, in 1950 there was only a two week dry season in the jungle, but again such has been the deforestation to the south that today there is a FIVE month dry season. It looks like history is repeating itself... (guess who wrote this geeky bit?? - yep James!!)
Not expecting any sympathy here but we had a pretty rubbish couple of days! James was poorly and couldn't stop being sick for two days and the bus journey took an horrendous 11 hours altogether from Lanquin to Flores. The bleedin chicken bus wouldn't go more than 35mph on a road so straight you could see for 10km and it was absolutely roasting at 37 degrees. We were then sold a dodgy tour ticket for Tikal that was meant to leave at 3am but the bus never turned up!!
We managed to get to Tikal nevertheless and it was worth all the misery beforehand! Tikal is a Mayan site that is around 2000 years old and the place is amazing. We were there for the sunrise and to hear the jungle 'waking up' with howler monkeys, parrots and toucans. The temple site was huge. A bit of info - At its height Tikal had a population of 10,000 who gradually deforested the whole area to such an extent that they caused the rains in the area to stop, killing them all off - silly Mayans. Our guide told us an interesting fact, in 1950 there was only a two week dry season in the jungle, but again such has been the deforestation to the south that today there is a FIVE month dry season. It looks like history is repeating itself... (guess who wrote this geeky bit?? - yep James!!)
Some of the main temples and sites:
The three largest temples sticking out of the jungle at sunrise.
The obligatory cheesy photo of your authors!!
Books we read: The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve - pretty naff but good ending.
posted by Katie & James at 10:40 PM
2 Comments:
I demand more emails too (good comment Suze!) cos I want to know where to book my flight to for New Year..... come on, get with the programme!
Al
xx
11:59 AM GMT
we had the jounrey from hell to flores too... had a 40min stop in some crappy town too where we couldnt find a bathroom... andrea ended up going in the street behind a building!
6:27 AM GMT
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