Tikal

After Belize, the next logical destination was therefore Guatemala and following my guidebook, I passed the border to end up in a small village called El Remate. This village has nothing really to offer except a quiet environment and astonishing views of the lake of Petén. But it is also located close to Tikal, probably one of the most famous Mayan cities in Central America.

So the next morning after dropping my backpack in El Remate, I decided to book a tour departing at 3.30am to see the sunrise from one of the main temples in Tikal. Tikal has not been fully restored and cleared yet (only 20% we were told by our guide) but it is definitely the most impressive site I have seen so far... Unfortunately that day, the clouds invited themselves and I could not see the magnificent sunrise in all its glory as we were promised. However I could witness the whole forest and its wildlife waking up (monkeys especially) and this is still worth the extra money paid to enter the park at 4am before the official opening at 6am.

One could easily spend a day or two going around each ruin, each pyramid and besides you do not get disturbed by the cohorts of tourists like in Chichén Itzá for example. There are other people in the park but it is so vast that you can easily stroll around by yourself and feel like you are the only one in the place.

In the middle of the video, I suddenly stopped (2'13'') and tried to focus the camera on a massive spider next to me, unfortunately I couldn't but I didn't talk so some people could wonder what the hell am I doing at that moment...

Ok, the monkeys are definitely hard to see in this video but I promise you some better footage in the next posts.

A toucan, shame it wasn't closer...

A nice little creature which I almost stepped on...