Tikal Archives - Laura Zera

Travel: Happy Earth Day to You

I always forget how amazing it feels to connect to the beauty and wonder of our planet until I get outside for a bit, away from the stores and the cars and the people, and then I notice a bug or a leaf or a flower petal, and time comes to a sudden and crashing halt.

I believe that just as humans are wired for connection to each other, we are grounded by our connection to Earth. In honor of Earth Day, here are two pairs of photos from two of my favorite places, plus an audio clip of the howler monkeys doing what they do best, taken from above the treeline, atop Temple IV at Tikal, Guatemala (or, Jurassic Park, as I like to call it), while waiting for sunrise.

Entrance to Arches Nat'l Park, Utah — Entrance to Arches Nat’l Park, Utah

Yellowstone, Wyoming — Yellowstone Nat’l Park, Wyoming

Okay, one more thing. Here’s a portrait that my husband, photographer Francis Zera, took of Earth Day founder Denis Hayes for a magazine cover a few years back.

Happy Earth Day! Which places on this planet are the most grounding for you?

Photo and video credits for this post: me, me, me, me, me, Francis.

Tikal at Dawn

By Laura Zera Leave a Comment

I’m actually in Tela, Honduras today, but here’s my post from my second day at Tikal.

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The gates at Tikal officially open at 6 a.m., however if you book a tour with a guide, or pay 50 quetzals to a guard, you can get through the gates early enough (e.g. 4:45 or 5 a.m.) to do the pitch-black walk to Temple IV, the sunrise temple. On the day that I did this excursion, Jan.31^st, there was a heavy cover of jungle mist. I walked in with my guide, Jairo, and two other backpackers, the lovely Heidi from England and the equally lovely Adrianna from Brazil.

Shortly after we started in, Jairo stopped, listened, and moved us to the side. Fo’ shizzle, those dang monkeys were trying to pee on our heads. Good thing that he was alert to it, as I later met an Israeli couple who had thought maybe it was raining a little bit in the morning… I had to break the news to them that they’d had a golden shower. It took us about 30 minutes to walk to Temple IV, I think. Sunrise was at 5:45 a.m. and we got there in plenty of time to climb the 200 steps and then sit in quiet awe at the top.

It was eerie and spooky and really, really cool. The silence was punctuated by the primal screams of the howler monkeys, and the odd bit of conversation (Adrianna remarked about the people next to us, “they must be Argentinian. They never stop talking.” It made me wonder if there are any two bordering countries that don’t think uncomplimentary thoughts about their next-door neighbor!).

Dawn came and went, but we didn’t see any sun. The jungle mist lifted enough to give us momentary glimpses of the other pyramids rising up out of the trees, and then settled back in around them. It was still a magical experience, although my photos don’t do the scene any justice (those that aren’t a foggy blur). Francis asked me if I’d brought my tripod in with me, to which I replied, “oh yeaaaaaah, triiiiipod.”

Jairo took us around to several other sites, showing us Mayan refrigerators, drawing in the dirt the way that temples were built to align with the solstice sun, and explaining which elements of the Mayan civilization downfall theory that he most supported. One part of his explanation that I found interesting was regarding deforestation. He said that the Mayans didn’t dig pit toilets; instead, they would mix their waste with limestone and rainwater to fertilize their crops. The population grew, and so they cut down more trees to plant crops. The deforestation led to a decrease in rainfall, which led to a disproportionate amount of human waste in their fertilizer. Disease spread. Wars complicated matters. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 11^th century AD, there were only a few Mayan settlements scattered around Lake Peten Itza.

The next mission of the day was to get to Belize. I found a tourist bus that was heading to Flores and it dropped me at the junction for Melchor, the Guatemalan border town. Once there, I stood on the side of the road and waited for something to come by that was going in my direction. It was then that I realized just how much I love the feeling of being on the road, waiting for unknown transport to arrive at an unknown time, and having that joyful “hurray” moment when something stops for me and I hoist my bags up and jump in.

On this particular occasion, the collectivo (mini-bus) that stopped had a front seat that was empty and waiting for me – a rare occurrence. We bumped along the road to Melchor, of which some stretches were smooth and others were barely paved. At one point, I let out a yelp as a humongous and clearly hard-shelled bug flew in the window and committed suicide on my right arm before rebounding to my left shoulder and then down to the driver’s feet. At one of our stops, I marveled at how a dog checked behind the bus for traffic as he approached the road, and then looked both ways again before crossing in front of us. Smart like street dog, not like pampered pug o’ mine.

The border crossing was smooth – walk walk walk, stamp passport, pay $2.50 USD to leave country, walk walk walk, stamp passport, enter new country. I also changed a few bucks along the way and was surprised to see the Queen on Belize’s money. Girlfriend sure gets around. I knew that the Brits had been there for a spell, but hadn’t realized the long-standing significance of their occupation.

A taxi took me to Benque Viejo (it’s not far, but was too much to handle in the heat with my pack), where I got the (school) bus to San Ignacio. Belize gave me my second surprise as I looked around the bus. The diversity of people was far greater than Guatemala. There were some Garifuna, some Creole, some Latino, and some interesting and beautiful mixes of all of the above.

Once in San Ignacio, I efficiently secured a room one block from the bus stop at the Hi-Et Guesthouse (not sure if it was named after the famous hotel chain), run by Cyril Simmons, his wife Beatrice, his son Winston, and his two Pomeranians, Princess and Duke. Cyril was 65 if he was a day, and he had these super cool glasses with circular magnification in the center of the lenses that made his eyes look about three times bigger than they were. A very sweet man, Cyril was.

I knew that Belize was more expensive than Guatemala and Honduras, and the room set me back $20 USD. It has a private bathroom, but a cold shower. I like to think that all of the cold showers that I’ve been having have at least been preserving the longevity of the dye in my hair.

My final stop of the day was Mr. Greedy’s Bar and Restaurant. I was drawn there by the free wi-fi, but the atmosphere didn’t disappoint, either. I made a few friends, sent a few emails, had a meal, and then headed back to the Hi-Et, where I was able to eavesdrop on the phone conversations of a woman in the building next door. Even though she was speaking in Creole, I could tell that they were full of all the drama of a woman scorned. Indignation translates in any language.

Tikal (Almost as cool a name as Lake Titicaca. Almost.)

By Laura Zera Leave a Comment

As I write this post, I am sitting on my second-floor balcony of Pal’s Guesthouse in Dangriga, Belize. Gazing out, my eyes are met by the tops of the palm trees on the beach below against a black and starry sky. The waves are crashing up against the shore in a soothing and regular rhythm. I am wearing shorts. Thank you, Continental, for the air mile reward points that got me here, and thank you, Francis, for taking care of our two little furry monsters while I’m away.

Back to Jan. 30^th. I had a plan to leave Flores sometime around 9 or 10 a.m. on public transportation (usually a repurposed Blue Bird school bus from the U.S.) bound for Tikal. May, the English-Swede backpacker who I’d met the day before, had bought a return-trip ticket on one of the tourist minibuses for 9 am, so we headed toward her bus stop in the morning to grab a bite to eat. We dined on some fine sandwiches of stale white bread, processed cheese slices, and sulfate-rich ham. The little white cat at my feet looked like she needed the food more than I did, so I shared the last bits with her. My Nescafé curdled from the powdered milk, but I choked it down anyway, worried that if I didn’t, I’d end up with a pounding caffeine headache. It seems like this is yet another developing country that exports all of its good coffee and lives on instant crap back home.

May buzzed off to catch her bus, and I went back to my room to grab my bags and check out. When I paused at Los Amigos to catch a moment of wi-fi, I saw her sitting in the lounge. Although she’d been sold a ticket for a 9 a.m. bus, there was none. A bus left at 10 a.m. I sympathized with her predicament, and then grabbed a tuk tuk to the Santa Elena bus terminal. I was immediately told that there were no public buses running on Sunday, and that it would cost me 50 quetzales for a ticket on the tourist minibus (the same price that it would have cost me if I’d left from Flores). Hmph. May and I both got screwed. At least it was just a little bit screwed.

I was excited to arrive at the Mayan ruins of Tikal. I’d made the decision to book a room at one of the three hotels in the park – the Jaguar Inn – so that I could be up there for a sunset and a sunrise. Late afternoon and early morning are the times of the day when the birds and monkeys are most active, and I’d heard that the howler monkeys were completely outrageous. I also booked a sunrise tour. Since I knew nothing about this mysterious Mayan civilization, and spoke no Spanish, I felt that the investment in an English-speaking guide would do a great deal to enhance my experience.

To get a ticket that was good for two days, the rule is that you have to enter the park after 3 pm, so that’s what I did. It still gave me three hours to make my way to some of the ruins that I knew the tour wasn’t going to cover. Admission was 150 quetzales, or about 20 U.S. dollars. One of the guards tried to explain something to me about paying 100 on the first day, and then 50 to him for the second day, and I wondered how his little bit of bribery was going to get me past the next ticket control booth up the road, but I didn’t have to think about it for too long because when I told him that I’d already booked a tour, he shrugged and backed away.

The first thing that I saw when I entered the park was a warning sign. Howler and spider monkeys like to make their presence (and territory) known by defecating on your head, so, hey, watch out! The next thing that I saw was a herd (herd? school? cartel?) of pizotes – small-ish animals (from the raccoon family) with long noses and cat’s tails. Completely unbothered by the people around them, they were walking back and forth across the path, using their noses to dig for grubs. The third thing that I saw was May. With all of the hugeness of Tikal, there she was! She was on her way out, having come up just for the day.

I got to the three-way fork in the road, and when the tour group behind me went to the right, I went to the left. Thus, my first 30 minutes in Tikal were alone and uninterrupted. It was magical. Walking down the path with the jungle canopy over my head, I became alert to different sights and sounds. I saw birds on the ground, and monkeys overhead (not defecating, luckily). I stopped at a couple of sites in the west side of the park, and then walked into the central plaza. It is indeed a take-your-breath-away kind of place. The temples and pyramids rise up out of the jungle, reclaiming their place after many years of being covered by grass, moss and trees. Many of them were built in the 8^th century B.C., and stand 35 to 47 meters tall. Standing in the plaza, you can close your eyes (or not) and completely imagine how it would have been a bustling and busy place, especially since at the height of the settlement at Tikal, the population was close to 100,000 people.

Equally fascinating (to me, anyway) were the birds in a tree in the center of the courtyard. Black with yellow tails, they flew from branch to branch, bumping into the huge seed pods that hung on the tree. Their landings were fluttery and noisy, and the seeds inside the pods would rattle. Everything would settle down, and then they’d fly to another branch. They weren’t that big, but when they flew over my head, I could hear the friction sound of the air against their wings – I can’t even make the right combination of letters to imitate what it sounded like. And then there was their call. Long, multi-tonal, and with little twists and turns, kind of like when Freddie Mercury sings Bohemian Rhapsody. I never realized how fascinated I am by birds until this trip, maybe because there are so many varieties, and they’re just really cooooool.

A couple more stops at a couple more places, and then I had to beat it out of the park. I didn’t want to be in there alone when the sun went down, and bad camper that I am, I had left my headlamp in my room. Gates officially close at 6 pm, and I came out at about ten minutes before, so felt like I’d done pretty well for a first go on my own. And tomorrow (Jan.31), the sunrise tour, at 4:30! As Francis said to me when I told him about this, “who are you, and what have you done with my wife?!”