so this is jumping ahead a little as im going to take you on a little journey to el mirador. the 6 day hike to the oldest and biggest mayan structures around. it was just a little bit fun. again im taking this straight from my journal so pretend like your reading my scrawl on paper...
so guatemala is all it was cracked up to be anc more. i have only been here a few days but it has already been amazing. the border crossing was pretty uneventful and i made it to florez without any hastle. i stayed at this hostel called los amigos which is pretty chill. the city is on an island in the middle of this lake and has a very colonial feel to it. someone was telling me that the city is where there was a huge massacre of mayans where the spaniads drove them onto the island and then butchered them. so it has a very pleasant history. much like the rest of this area.
i just got the fright of my life as jeff yelled ´theres a scorpion under you´. i almost jumped off the pyramid im sitting on. but back to the story...
so as soon as i arrive in los amigos i see this sign for people looking for one more person to go to el mirador; the biggest baddest pyramid ever built by the mayans. at this time, i still had my pack on and hadn´t even checked in yet. they also said it was going to be $200us which i was like woah. i said id think about it as id just spent bucketloads in belize. but as the day went on and i thought more and more about it, i began to get really excited by the idea of it. so i said yes.
me mark and yial, two of the guys going on the trip went to tikal the next day really early. we missed the sunrise as there are no more busses that go for sunrise but we still got there at 6:30am. before it got too hot we had walked over alot of the site, walking up temple 3, 4, and 5. temple 4 is the highest but we felt a little let down as the stairs wound around it making it very easy to get up and the vegetation hadn´t been cleared from the front so you couldn´t see the bottom. also we had just been up temple 5 which was completely excavated and the stairs were almost vertical. it had amazing views from the top. the cool thing from temple 4 was you almost saw the scene from star wars where the rebels have their base. was pretty cool. the whole site was pretty incredible, and we walked around until 12:30 then bused home. it was so hot when we left. in the avo me jeff and the other mark, two of the other guys who were going on the hike went for a swim in the lake. we tried flips and stone walking to the bottom off the wharf. it was a really nice way to end the day and escape the heat. when id been talking to mum the day before i had been sweating just sitting there. but by the end of the day i was exhausted by the end of the day.
and so this morning we began our adventure. we left at 6:30am and went for breakfast before driving 2 and a half hours to a place called carmelito where we unloaded all our gear and food and prepared to leave. we started walking before our donkeys were loaded up, they were to follow. the bush was so dry and the path was completely parched and cracked and hard to walk. my feet started playing up soon after we started and i knew i was going to get blisters. we walked for about 3 hours. it was very hot and we were not able to refil our water as they didn´t unload the donkeys until we set up camp. so we were all very thirsty and had to ration our water until we got to camp. the guide set a pretty gruelling pace and i was always at the back because my boots were heavy and hurting my feet. we reached camp about 3pm and set up. im sleeping in my hammock instead of a tent which im looking forward too. right now we´re sitting on the top of a pyramid that has not been excavated. the top is clear but we´re completely surrounded by jungle. it is pretty surreal. and that scorpion was very cool, about 10cm long with all its babies on its back. but we´re watching the sunset now, so time to take some photos...
so the end of day 2. we´re sitting on top of el tigre at el mirador. we were up at 5:30 this morning to have breakfast. we hit the trail at 6:30 and arrived at the site at 1:30pm. my feet were absolutely killing me. i have the worst blisters. i have wrapped one heel and tomorrow will need to do a few more toes and the other heel. i slept in my hammock last night and got absolutely savaged by mosquitos. my back is covered in bites. and some other little insect has been biting me leaving little tracks. and ticks! but its been sweet, we had to keep watching out as we walked for little tree stumps as we were constantly tripping over them. we again went at a pretty fast pace today. about half an hour from the main site we stopped at two little pyramids where we could go inside. it was so much cooler inside and there were a family of bats. it was pretty sweet seeing the inside of the pyramids. and now we´re sitting on the top of a pyramid in the middle of the guatemalan jungle. the moon is out and is sitting directly above us with the daylight fading away. im starting to get a shadow from the moon so will have to stop now. we´re waiting for till the night is complete to see the moonscape of the surrounding valleys. its going to be so dark going down, and we´re probably going to get alot of ticks...
so we stayed up top till about 7:45pm then headed down in the dark. i think i only got bitten 20 times last night down from 40 the night before. i didn´t get up for the sunrise as i wanted an extra hours sleep. we walked through the site today visiting the biggest pyramid danta. it didn´t seem quite as high as la tigre, but we did have to climb many different platforms to get up to it so the height was deceptive. it has been alot more jungle on the site than any of us excpected. i think we all thought it was going to be more excavated. but i have really enjoyed it, even with my blistered feet i have gone everywhere. today we went into one of the other pyramids where there were all these moths and more bats swooping over our heads. we went all over the site. it really was and still is a very impressive place. you can just imagine how the city might have looked under all these trees. it is also comforting that the city is so completely reclaimed by the jungle leaving only a scarse trace of the this ancient civilisation that it could some day happen to ours. even with our sprawling cities, these too will be like el mirador, reclaimed by nature. i kind of hope that this area stays covered, it is much more mysterious and surrealw ithout hordes of of people around. in saying that another group has just arrived. we were told 20, but i couldn´t hear 20 people from my perch at the top of another pyramid. i can see little rises some with the tops exposed, showing where a structure stands. and the trees and jungle stretching out on all sides to the horizon. its quite magical, so even this with this other group arriving we still signify a very small group of people who come here. last year only about 800 people visited el mirador, including guides. and i think the place is better for it. we hike with everything we need and take everything out. our food is cooked on an open fire and is of mixed quality... our guide aparently is paid 1000quetzales for 6 days which is a fraction what we paid. we each paid 1500q so he doesn´t get a very high percentage. but by guatemalan standards that is a fairly good wage, by our standards it is nothing at all. its sad but also a reality that we tend to like places that are cheap, but in order for that to happen, the people there need to be paid very little. ive had this conversation witha few people where they havent put the connection together between low wages and cheap travel. and so when i said that belize was very expensive i was not taking into account the fact that the people in belize are the best paid people in this hemisphere after the us and canada. there is always a tradeoff. rigth im going to check on the pottery the others just found...
its very early in the morning and ive just been rudely awoken from my slumber by the onset of rain. as a hammock doesn´t come witha tarp i started to get very wet. so now im sheltering under the cooking taros. its fairly cold at the moment. the last few nights have gotten very cold in the morning. so since im up i may as well doa bit of a recap. after checking out what the others had found, which were a few bits of mayan pottery, some with paint on some without, we headed down to camp. i have played so much chess on this axpedition. and ive only beaten jeff once, so chess was played untill well after sunset. we saw alot of the other group, which while they had girls was far too big. it would have made it very trying id we´d had that many people. but i managed to have a shower at least. admittedly is was with black water taken from a pond, but it felt good to get at least one layer of filth off. while we were down at the lagoon we saw some toucans playing in the tress, unfortunately none of us had our cameras with us. that night after the sun has gone down and truely set, we went back up to the top of el tigre. although we took a couple of wrong turns getting there we made it. the jungle looks very different at night. it was so magical up there at night. the moon was not quite full but it lit up the top of the pyramid really nicely and you could see all around us. we sat up there for about an hour, each one lost in his own thoughts. it would have been a really cool place to camp.
we didn´t set out oo early morning as we were only walking about 4 hours. but we visited another group of ruins that are apparently older than than the mirador ruins called nakbe. we camped out in the central plaza and had another afternoon of chess. with sunset approaching we climbed to the top of pyramid uno and watched the sun set into the haze. it doesn´t ever set or rize on the horizon, but from the haze above it. when we went up for sunrise yesterday, this layer of fog rolled in completely obscuring the view and we couldn´t actually see the sunrise at all. we heard alot of howler monkeys though, and as mark said, they kind of sound like dinosaurs and makes us feel like we´re in jurassic park. climbing down the pyramids in the dark is always interesting. especially when im wearing jandels, heaps of grip i tell you. and the steps are very steep at some points. after dinner of sardines, refried beans and bread we had some spanish practice, where one of the guys was having a look at my notes. i really should spend some more time going over them. just half an hour a day, i think that would help so much. it cna be my new years resolution come late. this rain sucks. i had finaly gotten my mosquito net just right around my hammock that i wasn´t constantly being kept awake by the buzz and bite of mosquitos. mark tried counting the ones on my back but gave up after 30 just on my shoulder. maybe around 200 im told. fanfuckingtastic. today we have 8 hours of walking apparently. yus. time to try and get warm and sleep some more on this bench...
i got a little more sleep but the bench was neither warm nor comfortable and i woke up feeling not very refreshed. i have not slept very well on this trip in the jungle. a combination of bugs, their bites, and being cold has ensured a broken sleep. we left this morning at 7am. a bit later i think than our guide erik was expecting. and he set such a grueling pace. this whole trip we have been walking really fast, almost too fast for me. i kept up well utill about 5 hour into it, whn i really started to lag. my legs got so sore and fell way behind. at one point we thought we´d lost the others but they had just gotten really far ahead without stopping. so we hiked in total about 8 and a half hours today. man that was intense, i was so relieved when i saw we´d reached our next camp- i could not have gone much further. now my legs and feet still ache and im sure tomorrow they will also. the camp we´re staying at tonight is a bit more built up witha thatched roof so i can hang my hammock up under the roof safe in the knowledge that the rain wont bother me tonight. throughout this trip we have been finding ticks in the most unfortunate places. they really get everywhere. each time we stop we have to doa tick check. i dont think ill have trouble sleeping tonight after todays hike. its a pity i think tonight is either the full or very close to being full moon. but there are no pyramids aroudn where we´re staying. it will be cool to see around florez though. so one last day and we´re finished our mirador adventure. it was both what i expected and not at the same time. but i have no regrets about coming on this crazy jungle mayan experience. i´ve really had to push myself hikingwize, but the ruins were amazing and i will remember this trip for the rest of my life...
so our last day of walking we started at 7:30 and walked about 2 and a half hours. iw as way at the back as my knee and feet were just plain sick of walking. at one point i thought id lost the others or gone down the wrong path as i hadn´t seen them for about half an hour. but we finaly got out of the bush and you have no idea the relief to be out. as nice as it was it was also very nice to be out. we wound up waiting for quite a while in carmelito for our ride back to florez and when it finaly arrived it was this piece of shit van that felt like it was going to break down the whole time. you could see out of holes in the floors, roof and sides. it had wooden braces for the roof and missing windows and kept making crazy sounds as we went along. it was a full van with other peopl getting rides as well. because of the dirt roads and lack of windows most of the road wound up inside the van with us tieing shirts over our noses to breathe. it took us 3 and a half hours to get back as the guy tooka different way back and drove really slowely. but we finlay got back to florez ditched our bags and went with some poepl for a swim. it was so nice to feel all the filth wash off us.
and so we were back in florez, we popped down to the market and i bought a sweet machete which i still have to sharpen. but its got this sweet leather scabbard. its a little bigger than i had anticipated but i stoked. and so ive been writing for ages. time to get out.
peace and love
