Playing with Tarantulas

A Change of Plans

It’s Valentine’s Day. We are at the Los Amigos Hostel at 6am for our tour of the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. They load us onto the bus and then inform us that we can’t get into Tikal because the people who work at the park are staging a protest and blocking the entrance gate.

We are given the choice of driving 1.5 hours to Tikal and seeing if the protest is over or rebooking or trying later in the day.

John and I decide to switch our Tikal tickets for tomorrow and instead go to Yaxha today.

Exploring Flores

It’s still early so we have breakfast at the hotel restaurant and watch the boats, birds and people. Very pleasant.

The island of Flores (which actually has a road  attaching it to the mainland), is very small. We explore the whole thing in just over an hour.

We notice that a lot of the streets on the waterfront are flooded. They say on line that the lake is rising. I notice thousands of tadpoles and little fish in the flooded streets.

We relax on lounging chairs of our hotel, reading our books until it was time to go back to Los Amigos and catch our 12pm tour to the ancient Mayan city of Yaxha.

Yaxha

The ride there is 2.5 hours.

I am really glad we booked a guide. He takes us into the jungle and explains the numerous Mayan buildings. Many of the buildings are still buried under grassy, vegetated hills.

Monkeys and Birds

Our guide points out the spider monkeys playing above us. Voices of the howler monkeys reverberate through the jungle. They sound like loud, growling jungle cats. I take a video of the jungle, a couple of the Mayan Buildings, a relative of the quetzal bird called a tragon. You can also clearly hear the howler monkeys. Click here for the short video.

Often we see and hear parrots flying through the tree tops.

Tarantula Play Time

Our guide finds a baby tarantula that he lets climb on us. Click here to see the video.

Sunset in the Jungle

see many Mayan complexes in our  3.5 hour trek through the area.

We climb one of the Mayan pyramids and watch the sunset over the jungle and lake. Beautiful.

We are back in Flores at our hotel Peten in two hours.