We’ve had so many highlights already in the four weeks we’ve been travelling but today we are fulfilling a long-held ambition of mine to visit Tikal, one of the biggest and most important sites of lost civilisations in the whole world. It’s a good job that we’ve been looking forward to it so much as it helps cope with the alarm call just after 5am, and before six we’re all loaded up and on the minibus to the Guatemalan border, to get ahead of the other tours also due to cross over this morning.
Everything goes smoothly, handing over $20US as an exit fee to leave Belize and carrying all our bags across the border, where we’re greeted with a stamp in our passports and a cherry “Bienvenidos a Guatemala”. A bus is waiting for us and Roger, the driver, loads all our bags onto his roof rack and we set off over the bridge straddling the Mopan river, which acts as a natural barrier between the two countries.
It’s 8am when we stop for breakfast at a little roadside restaurant called El Portal de Yaxha, feasting on tortillas, eggs and coffee. And then on we drive through lush forests with mist rising in the humid morning air. Aquilino explains that Guatemala received its name from the Aztecs, and it means “place of trees” in Nawahtul. However he would prefer it to be called Guatemaya as over 50% of the population is of Maya descent and there are 22 different Maya languages spoken in the country.
Despite that it’s still the Europeans and Americans who control the country with the vast majority of power and influence residing in a dozen vastly wealthy families of Spanish descent, alongside huge American corporations who have the monopoly on the country’s two major ports and the lucrative fruit and vegetable exports they ship to feed western populations.
In fact in the recent general elections a very popular indigenous leader was barred from standing and sadly the country, which has vast natural resources and for many years was extremely stable and prosperous, is still recovering from one of the longest civil wars in Latin America, which only ended in 1996. Chronic poverty is widespread throughout the country due largely to political mismanagement and external exploitation.
However there’s room for optimism as young Guatemalans are keen to get educated, overturn corruption and reject the drug cartels and bring their country back to its former glories. One of the best ways of doing that is through tourism, and Aquilino describes how even as a child during the civil war he had a dream to become a tour guide.
We are now driving through El Peten state where some of the greatest and most important Mayan sites are. It’s also where Aquilino was born and grew up, knowing the ancient history of his country and its great beauty, but surrounded by fighting. We pass by the beautiful lagoon Sal Peten where Aquilino used to swim as a child and soon come to a little village called Ixlu (“muddy place”) and stop outside the concrete house he was born in.
His 89 year old grandfather, who still lives there, comes out to wave hello to us all, along with a couple of his aunties. Aquilino recounts how the Contra rebels all used to hide in the villages and forests in the area and as a child the government would frequently attack and bomb indiscriminately around here.
He grew up knowing where to run to and how to find shelter, and as a teenager twice managed to escape from the back of vans where the guerrillas were attempting to kidnap him and force him into fighting for them. Somehow he survived and his little village was spared while family members died and all the neighbouring villages were attacked, with one very close by bombed into complete obliteration.
Through it all young Aquilino clung to his hope to be a tour guide, got a place at the local university and at the age of 23 learnt to speak English. He cherishes the freedom his three young children have and is proud of the people they’re growing up to be, with hopefully a bright future ahead for them. However it’s the past that Aquilino is here to show us and he’s also very proud of his Mayan ancestors and their roots in El Peten state.
El Peten is part of the Maya Biosphere which extends into Belize and southern Mexico and in addition to Tikal, El Peten has the remains of El Mirador, which some historians believe was the very first city of the Americas around 1500BC, predating Teotihuacan in Mexico. El Peten also includes the island of Flores, which we will visit tomorrow where Aquilino now lives and which was the site of the last independent Maya state, which held out against the Spanish until 1697 so in many ways El Peten tells the entire history of the Maya civilisation.
We enter the gates of the Tikal archaeological site and continue driving for 17 kilometres before reaching the car park and entrance hall. Aquilino takes us to a 3D model of what has been uncovered so far and details the more than four hour walk we’ll do to take in all the major sites, and - once various people have had their passports inked with a souvenir stamp of Tikal - away we go.
Sadly, we were originally due to be camping on the site with the potential to see lots of the wildlife that inhabits the jungle biosphere including nocturnal animals such as pumas, ocelots, jaguars and more but the facilities have become run down due to Covid so it’s no longer an option.
However there’s all sorts of birds and animals on display and within minutes we see capybaras, spider monkeys and beautifully coloured wild turkeys roaming around. But the most impressive piece of nature we encounter first is a huge sabor tree, sacred to the Maya and the National tree of Guatemala. It’s enormous and its branches are covered with furry orchid plants growing up in the canopy.
Aquilino is a brilliant guide leading us along the jungle paths to see all the uncovered ruins and the restored grand pyramids, temples, tombs and palaces, starting with what’s called the Acropolis, and revealing that the entire site we’re now walking around, in amongst lush and rich jungle, is actually all sitting on top of buried Maya buildings.
Tikal itself was first established in 600BC, lasting for some 1300 years and the site is unimaginably vast, with only a tiny fraction uncovered. With new LADAR technology which can scan the ground, it is now estimated that it comprised over 50,000 buildings with well over a million people living in the area. In fact research suggests that the Yucatán peninsula was far more densely populated and developed than Europe was during the dark ages following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
What is now jungle was actually fully deforested and developed by the Maya with grand plazas, streets, homes, shops, official buildings and general city life. The eventual abandonment of the entire city in 900AD has never been fully explained but is likely to be associated with drought, possibly exacerbated by the deforestation that had occurred. Ironically the Maya knew the city as Xatamutl, meaning ‘place you can find water’, and it only became known as Tikal when the Austrian explorer Teobert Maler during its excavations realised how the buildings had been designed to create specific acoustics and named it ‘place of voices’ or Tikal in the local modern Maya tongue.
Stelae and other written evidence uncovered at the site reveals it suddenly started developing beyond a Maya village in 9AD and from that date, until it was abandoned 900 years later, it had 33 rulers, all of whom are named in the records. However it was the 26th ruler Jasaw Chan Kawlil who transformed Tikal into the grand city of stone which is being slowly revealed. He was buried under the hugely impressive Temple of the Great Jaguar while his wife had the Temple of the Mask opposite dedicated to her, and between them lies the Necropolis housing royal tombs.
We also visit the Seven Temple Plaza and the Mundial Perdido or Lost World plaza which far predates Kawlil’s great structures. The Lost World was the heart of Tikal from its first settlement until 600AD, and for the final 300 years of that period it was controlled by the empire of Teotihuacan over 1000kms north. The rulers of Teotihuacan had invaded Xatamutl in 300AD, killed 22 members of the royal family, and installed their own regime. Aquilino shows us where the remains of the executed royal family were found.
We end our trip by climbing the two biggest pyramids, The Observatory and Temple No.4, which have wooden stairs constructed to ascend up past the un-excavated lower reaches to the platforms on the top. Temple 4 is very recognisable as it was used by George Lucas as a location in the very first Star Wars movie and the views from the top of both structures is astounding. We are rewarded with panoramic vistas of the whole jungle stretching in all directions.
Leaving the splendour of Tikal we drive to the nearby village of El Remate to stay the night in a very basic hotel called Las Gardenias, which takes the place of the campsite in the jungle. It’s on Lake Peten Itzá - or in local Maya, the Island of the Shaman of the Waters - and is a gorgeous spot for a sunset swim. However when I ask the local boatman if there are crocodiles in the lake he says “Si, es un poco peligroso!” and warns us to stay close to the little pontoon. So it’s with a little wariness that a few of us go for a dip as the sun starts to set. However the crocodiles stay away and it’s a stunningly beautiful end to the day; one that will live long in the memory.
As a highlight of the trip, this one is going to be very hard to beat!
