Flores & Tikal

Placencia to Flores was a simple 3 bus and 2 taxi number. Passing through Belize's capital - Belmopan on the way. Fact to impress your friends: Belmopan is the world's smallest capital (pop: 16,000). At the Belize border I met some other travelling folk and we shared a taxi to Flores for the princely sum of 30 dollars. The journey was fun, as the paved road stopped at the Belizian border and on the Guatemalan side it was an extremely dusty track. We had no aircon so with windows wide open we began to resemble fish-fingers after about 10 minutes. A puncture didn't help matters either.

Battered (literally) we arrived in Flores a couple of hours later. Flores is a cute town, on a peninsula in a lake which ensures drop dead sunrises and magnificent sunsets. But the main reason for coming to Flores is to visit Tikal, a mayan complex close by.

So after a lakeside sunset and accompanying beers with a Canadian vet (Banked story: Moose are dangerous), it was a 5am start to Tikal. The road climbs steadily out of Flores and the vegetation becomes denser. Dropped off the bus, it is a long hike through the rainforest into the complex itself and you begin to wonder if there are really any temples hiding out there. After a bit of detective work and figuring out the signposting, I finally hit the first temple - Temple V. It was really like an iceberg coming out of the mist as you are walking through dense foliage and then this 50m monolith appears in front of you. There are rickety wooden stairs on the side so you can climb up to the top and it really is a test of your faith in Guatemalan carpenters as it creaks and groans but somehow holds together. At the top the view is sensational - rainforest as far as the eye can see with 4 temples tops in various locations peaking out above the canopy.

Palenque was carved out in the middle of a rain forest, Tikal is carved into the rainforest. Absolutely stunning, I spent about 7 hours roaming around, playing Indiana Jones and scurrying up and down temples, jumping over iguanas and avoiding the 6 inch spiders.