A couple of hours after I got to Flores I lay in the hammock, chilling and doing nothing. I was quite tired, so my plan was just to chill for a couple of days, then spend a day at Tikal, this huge Maya city nearby before heading west to Mexico. Suddenly this dutch couple whom I've never spoken to before came and asked if I wanted to do this three day jungle tour. This was as far from what I had planned as possible, but after thinking long and hard, I thought "why not?" and said yes. Now, a few days later, I'm very glad that I did. The trip was amazing!
The trip started at 6:am, and after a breakfast at a local comedor, we began to walk. It was seven of us in total, Gus and Susanna from Holland, Eirin from Canada, Deborah from Switzerland, two local guides and myself. The trip started at a leisurely pace with us walking down this dirt road through the outskirts in the jungle. While we walked, we chatted, and the guides taught us about various plants and their medical abilities. One of them had roots which worked as pain-killers, and when we chewed them, we could actually feel our mouths go numb. It it worked way more quickly than ibuprofen and other stuff...
After a few hours of walking we came to a small campsite where we would spend the night. At dusk, the guide took us to this grotto, and when we sat there, thousands and thousands of bats left the caves and flew out over ourheads. It was quite a sight.
Next morning we got up at 4:30, yes I actually got up voluntary at 4:30 , and hiked for 30 minutes to the ruins of El Zotz, a small city. There, from the top of a 35m high temple we watched the sunrise and had fresh fruit. Twas quite an amazing view. And as we sat there we could hear the jungle waking up, especially the howler monkeys. These monkeys are quite small, but they make a lot of noise. Apparently, their screams were used as the base for the dinosaur-roares in Jurassic park, that's how loud and powerful they are. I'm pretty sure they are used as the dragon sounds in Skyrim as well, and as I sat there with skyrim songs playing on my iPod , I couldn't help feel like I was in the game - which is totally awesome. And that was my nerdy moment of the day.
Anyways, after sunrise our guide dressed up in this costume made of leaves and performed a dance o f his ancestors, the Mayans. Very interesting. Later we explored the ruins before returning to the campsite for lunch. During the walk that day, we came into the real jungle, and I have to tell you, if the jungle was a person, it would be a two-sided one. Granted, there are all kinds of medical plants and trees that can give you water and stuff, but at the Same time, it's dangerous as hell.
Unlike the Norwegian forests that I'm used to, the jungle basically wants to kill you. When we walked, we had to watch our feets constantly in order to avoid tripping and stepping on snakes and other animals, and when we looked up, we would find small vines (or gigant logs ) few inches from our face. The wines were often covered in small, but very painful thornes. Even many of the trees had spikes. In addittion to the evil plants, there are all kinds of animals. We had to dispose of a couple of snakes and scorpions laying in our path (which is why the guide always walked first), and there were of course an abundance of mosquitoes, ants, ticks, flies and spiders. I quickly learned another lesson; Norwegian bug-spray sucks. Seriously, even though I covered my body in thick layers of spray four times a day, I still got bitten all the time. Not cool. In addition, this huge ant crawled inside shorts and bit my inner thigh while we were playing cards. The pain was surprisingly strong, and I could hardly walk for an hour. Damned ants, what did I ever do to them? And last but not least, there's the climate. The jungle is so dense, hot and humid, so we basically bathed in sweat after five minutes. Yummy.
Day three we came into thicker jungle. We tried to keep stuff from hitting our faces, but after five minutes we just gave up and let plants, spiderwebs and other stuff slap us in our faces more or less non-stop for five hours.. Nevertheless it was great fun, and I liked that it was a bit challenging. After five hours of briskly walk, we came to Tikal. I have never been so glad to see other tourists in mywhole life. To quote Eirin "look, clean people!" Needless to say, they weren't too happy to see us, us seven dirty, sweaty and smelling people. We couldn't had cared less though, and we just sat there, enjoying our cold sodas.
After lunch we had this sunset tour, and that was awesome. Tikal was one of the last big Maya cities, and it is believed that more than 100, 000 people lived in the city centre, with many more living in the surrounding villages. There's many big temples there, and a lot of stuff to see. The sunset itself were also amazing.
So, to sum it up; even though it was tiresome and I've never been as sweaty, dirty and mosquito-bitten my whole life, the trip was amazing. It was fun walking in the jungle with a local guide who told us stories from his grandparents and Mayan folklore, and we saw some amazing things. The people were really nice as well, s so it was absolutely worth it. And for those who wondered, we walked around 60kms in total, which is not that bad in two and a half days.
Now I've spent couple of days chilling in Flores, and tomorrow or the day after, I'm heading to Mexico.
So long!
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