Wednesday, Tikal and road to Sayaxche

January 13^th:  We went to breakfast at 7:30am and then to a museum of artifacts found at Tikal.

Our hotel for our stay at Tikal.

Morning visitors at our hotel pool.

Another morning visitor.

Our entrance fee to the park did not include the museum, but we had an hour to kill so we all paid the additional entrance fee for the museum.

Artifacts from Tikal.

Artifacts from Tikal.

Artifacts from Tikal.

Jade necklace.

Mom hanging out with the turkeys.

We met up with our guide, Alberto, and piled onto the back of the truck and rode into the jungle for about a 10 minute trip. 

Our ride in and out of Tikal.

We arrived at the backside of one of the major temples at the acropolis.  

We got dropped off looking up at the back side of this temple.

The back side of the first temple we saw.

Tikal blew us away-- the ruins were so much larger and more impressive than anything we had seen.  We climbed to the top of temple 4, where a scene from one of the Star Wars films was shot.  We really had a bird’s eye view of the surrounding area.  We spent the morning walking around the different ruins and finished our visit off with another museum. 

This is one of the residential complexes.

More of the residential complex.

Temple 5 as seen from the residential complex.

Looking at the main plaza from the residential complex.

Sally didn't want to climb up all the stairs. So she is waiting for us on the plaza.

Mom caught me resting again on the steps to the residential complex.

This is the front side of the first temple we saw.

These are alters in front of the temples.

Another one of the temples can't remember which one.

The base of the national tree.  I think it is the Cieba tree.

The top of the national tree.

Temple 4 through the trees.  This is the one we climbed it is the tallest in Tikal.

We made it to the top of temple 4,  our guide is on the right.

View from the top of Temple 4.

View from the top of Temple 4.

These buildings had windows.  This is very rare for Maya architecture.  Do you like the mask on the facia.

Mom pointing out something very important.

Mom enjoying the many wonders of Tikal.  You can get an idea of the size of this temple by looking at the size of the people near the stairs in front of the temple.


Video Tikal main plaza.

I am resting on the ball court after walking for the last 4 hours.

This one was included in the entrance fee of the first museum.  We decided to drive to Flores for lunch. 

Model of Tikal.

One of the stela in the museum at Tikal.

When we arrived it was raining, so we backtracked to a restaurant we had passed maybe 10 miles before Flores.  After our lunch we decided we would try and drive to Sayaxche, a small river town close to the ruins at Ceibal.  We called ahead and found a hotel that had 3 rooms.  We arrived just before the sun set.  We had to be ferried across the river. 

We arrived just in time to catch the ferry.

This truck had to pull all the forward in order for the ferry to get off the bank. Afterward he moved more to the center of the ferry.

View of the dock where the ferry let us off.

At the hotel the girl that attended us said she could arrange for a boat and a guide for our trip to Ceibal the next day.  The guide came over to the hotel and we got it all arranged.  We would leave at 8:00am.