Trying to keep with the strict economical rutines we set in South America, I defied all advice and went for common public transportation when leaving Mexico. Not a very good idea. I ended up spending about 20 hours getting to Flores and there was alot of unpleasentness with taxi- and bus - drivers. The alternative, the tourist agency - shuttle, uses aobut 8 hours, pretty care - free and turned out to be only about 20-30NKr more expensive. Anyways, I arrived in Flores in time to have a propper look around and book transportation to its grand tourist attraction: The mayan ruins of Tikal. Situated pretty deep in the secondary rainforest of Guatemala they have now uncovered about 15% of what was once a massive, flourishing mayan city, housing about 200 000 people. Some of the tempels stretch over 60m over the ground and peek far over the jungle canopy. After doing Palenque and Chichen Itza without guide I decided to spend a couple of quetzales(Guatemalan currency) extra to get some propper info on my tour this time. Bad Idea. The group consisted off about 40 people and were mainly walking around looking for monkeys in the threes. I stayed with the group for about 5min before I headed out in the "jungle" on my own. Good idea. Compared to Chichen Itza, this place was deserted and you could walk around by yourself and admire the amazing structures. As a big bonus, every now and then you`d stumble over a snake or stand eye to eye with spider-, or hauler-, - monkey. The site is massive, and covering all of it takes hours. Pretty exhausted from hours of walking up and down temples and exploring the site in the hot and humid jungle I spent the remains of my day on top of the highest temple, temple 4, enjoying the view and taking in the jungle that surrounds you as far as the eye can see. My experience from Tikal was on a completely different level than Cichen Itza. It is alot less crowded and you can actually climb the temples. The temples aren`t as perfectly constructed, but their higher and every bit as impressive. Also the fact that you`re in dense rainforest, surrounded by tropical animals, makes it feel very real.

Archeologists recently descovered another Mayan site not far from Flores calles "El Mirador". It`s location makes it far less accesible and very few sets out on the 5 day hike through the jungle to get there. The site houses, among other things, the highest mayan temple ever found, ranging over 70m over ground level. It sounded like a perfect adventure and I signed up with pretty much all the travel agents in town. Unfortunately, this is low season for tourism and most of the tourist in Flores aren`t to fond of walking around in the mud for days. Strange people. This meant that the tour-agents couldn`t get together a big enough group to set off for a trip, and I dropped the idea and instead decided to head south for some volcano - action in Antigua!