Tuesday Yaxha, and our ride into Tikal

January 12^th: After having breakfast at the hotel we drove for about 4 hours to Yaxha. 

Breakfast before we head to Peten.

This ruin is about 1 hour southeast of Tikal.  The last 10 kilometers were on a dirt road. 

The dirt road to Yaxha.

Yaxha is located on a ridge overlooking Lake Yaxha. The name of the city derives from the Mayan for "blue-green water"; it is a notable survival of the Classic Mayan period, 300 to 900 AD. The Yaxha kingdom is estimated to have covered an area of 237 square kilometers (92 sq mi) and to have had a peak population of 42,000 in the Late Classic period.  We walked around and on the ruins for a couple of hours.  Not having a reservation at a hotel, we decided to try and get a room in Tikal. 

Ready for Yaxha.

Between ruins at Yaxha.

Residential buildings.

Same residential buildings from a different angle.

 

Dawn and I climbed this one.

This was inside of the temple on top of the pyramid that we climbed.  Temple of the red hands.

View from on top of the temple of the red hands.

This me taking a picture of mom taking a picture of me.

Central Plaza

These trees looked like they had grown together.  There were spider monkeys in the trees above us and they threw branches at us.

Mom in the ball court.

Round walls.

Large masks.

 

Unexcavated temple.

But first we had to find lunch.  As we left Yaxha, we saw a sign for a restaurant down a dirt road.  We are always up for an adventure.  We followed the dirt road around a few bends and came upon a hotel which had an open air restaurant. It turned out to be a good lunch of pizza with Maya spinach and a few other things I have never had on a pizza. 

Our open air restaurant.

Lunch

Lake Yaxha has crocs.

We called the 3 hotels in the park at Tikal and it sounded like they all had room.  We paid our entrance fee and since we were entering the park after 4:00pm our ticket was good for the next day also.  We drove through the park at 45 kilometers per hour.  That is really slow and hard to do.  But we were told that they time you and if you get there too fast you get into trouble.  We saw a number of signs warning of animal crossings, but no animals. 

These are not monkeys but they mostly live in the trees.

First snake crossing sign I have seen.

We saw lots of wild turkeys in the park.

Jaguar crossing.

Deer Crossing.

Upon arriving at the information kiosk, we talked to the guides about different options.  One was to get up at 4:00am and enter the park and climb to the top of one of the temples and watch the sun rise.  The other was to start at 6:00am with a guide.  But the one we settled on was to start at 9:00am when we could hire a truck with benches in the back to drive us to the central plaza. We went to the first hotel that was the cheapest and realized we had called their sister hotel with the same name in Santa Elena and that they only had one room.  We went to the next hotel and they had 3 rooms and although they were the most expensive rooms of our trip they were only $75.00 each.  We paid about $30.00 the other nights.  We had a late lunch and so we didn’t need dinner.