Joe's World Backpacking Trip Stories and pics from my travels.

I stayed in a village called Al Remate about thrirty minutes outside Tikal.  I stayed as close as possible because the park opened at 6 am and I wanted to be one of the first ones there.  I managed to walk into the park at 6.10 and I was the first on there that day.  I had several kilometers of jungle and Mayan ruins to myself for about the first 45 minutes.  I climbed one of the pyramids in the Great Plaza and listened to the jungle wake up.  Birds, insects and howler monkeys.  Tikal is in the middle of a jungle, and enough has been cleared away only to begin excavations on the buildings.  Everything else is as it was found.  Tikal flourished in the 4th and 5th centuries and declined along with all the other Mayan settlements around 950.  The setting of these ruins in the middle of miles of jungle, make them truly spectacular.  On top of a pyramid, all you see is the tops of trees and one or two other pyramids poking out the top for miles.  So far my favorite Mayan site, I doubt there are any that can match it.