To say the Tikal mayan ruins were impressive would be an understatement. The mayans definitely went all out when they built Tikal. Set in the jungle, covering 16 km, it has ruins that tower 65 meters tall. Daunted a bit by the cost of accomidations within Tikal (think Disneyland prices), we decided to rent hammocks and stay in a palapa on the outskirts of the park and jungle. All seemed to be going well until we were awaken by unifamiliar animal sounds coming from the jungle next to us around 1am. We conviced eachother that it was nothing, but later revealed that we had both laid awake thinking we may be breakfast for some animal (although they haven´t been known to attack humans, jaguars are prevalent in the park). Turns out that it was merely three rowdy howler monkeys out for a midnight chat.

We got up at around 3am to attempt to see the sunrise from the tallest temple, Temple IV, which conveniently faces east. Although it has been termed ïllegal,¨ for a few quetzals, the night guards will personally lead you there themselves at 4am. Despite the sawed off shot guns they carrid, they were quite friendly. A guard led us and two other couples through the jungle and we arrived to temple IV around 45 minutes later. At around 5am, the jungle began to come alive. It started with one howler monkey stiring and howling loudly in a nearby tree. Immediately another began, then another, until the entire jungle below us was roaring awake. Then the sky gradually began getting lighter, illuminating the other temples ahead of us. The sun finally made its appearance above the horizon.And what an appearance it made! It was larger than normal and had a beautiful reddish hue. After the sun had risen, we set out to explore the remaining 15 km of the park. We did pretty well for the first few hours, but our lack of sleep finally caught up to us and we found ourselves taking frequent breaks around 10am. The kicker, is that we got made fun of by a group of older American tourists. They teased that we were young and should still have energy. Easy for them to say, they hadn't been up and strategizing ways to avoid being eaten at 1am in morning.

After spending nine hours looking at the ruins; tired, hungry and amazed by what we had seen, we made our way south towards the island town of Flores, Guatemala.