Like colourful streamers, children ran through the dust kicked up from the back wheels of our van screaming and waving madly. For the first two hours, we were unpreturbed by the uneven dirt road winding through the remote villages hidden in leafy valley pockets , returning the greetings with the same vigour. However after 8 hours of back jolting, we were glad to arrive in Flores.
Skipping the tour we bypassed the hoards of tourists wanting to trape through the National Park to see the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal. Again we were blessed with solitude. In those early hours, the park was bathed in a thick, sleepy mist, however the jungle was alive with activity. Cries of monkeys, screeches of parrots and toucans, gobbles of feasants and the foraging of anteaters, racoons and peccary were all around us.
One of the largest archeological sites of the pre-Colombian Mayan civilisation, the structures rise valiantly out above the canopy’s heavy blanket. Without the use of draft animals their construction is an astonishing human feat; structures that have defied time, standing strong, yet succumbing to the environment around them, becoming one with the jungle.
Filed under: CENTRAL AMERICA, Guatemala, TRAVEL
