Jungle Jen climbs a Mayan Temple

So the plan was to get up really early in the morning and get to Tikal to catch the sunrise.  Well we certainly woke up on time, due to the roosters that loudly announced that it was time to get up. We put on a layer of sunscreen (its HOT out there!) and bug-spray and get dressed and drive the 20 miles to the entrance of the park. The only problem is that we missed the friggen sunrise! That was the whole point of getting up so early!

Perplexed and hungry, (oh, I'm always hungry!) we eat at the little cafe at the entrance of the park and try to decide what to do. You can certainly enter the park on your own, but we don't know much of the history of Tikal and would love to find an english speaking guide. After about 3 cafe con leche's and a spicy omlette with an amazing Peten hot sauce, we are lucky enough to come across Oliver, a local guide for the area.

We are lucky to be visiting durring the off season so he only charges us $10 per person and he becomes an intrical part of our group.

Tikal is an amazing and magical place. I have never been anywhere like it, and was fascinated by the Mayan history and legacy. Temple 1 (the Temple of the Jaguar) and Temple 2 are very picturesque and we had a great time exploring the residential areas and taking pictures. Towards the back of Temple 2 we heard this loud shrieking and found a ton of howler monkeys partying it up in some nearby trees. If you have never heard a howler monkey before, it is one of the scariest sounds of the jungle. (It totally sounds like an aggressive lion, not a little black monkey!)

One of the many great things about visiting Tikal is that you are still allowed to climb many of the monuments there.

We climbed many temples that had terrific views and got great pictures of the surrounding jungle and temples. It is definitely a work-out though! I totally had bun's of steel after climbing around on the temples all day.

Oliver was such a great guide and gave us some real insight on the Mayan culture. Luckily he liked his "Mayan princeses" so well, that he offered to take us back to the park after dark to climb the highest temple to see the sunrise the next day. Super stoked!

We took off from the park and stopped in the Jungle for a canopy tour with zip-lines. Now, I had done this before in Costa Rica so I figured it would be the same, but this one was super scary! The platforms were really high and felt really unstable,  the zip-lines were really fast, and  the staff spoke no english. We ended up having a good time and felt very Indiana Jones.

After we dropped Kara and Jon off at the hotel, Janene and I went on to visit Flores, this island town not far from where we were staying. Oliver had told us about a restaurant that served traditional Mayan food and it was delicious. Ahhhh.... Moza beer. Like chocolate! Did a little souvenier shopping, checked out the island and went to bed early to get ready for the next day.