I went to Tikal because, well, ya just kinda hafta. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and from approximately 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., it "dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metropolis of Teotihuacán in the distant Valley of Mexico [Wikipedia]" (Teotihuacán was the subject of an earlier post). Right, so, let's get to the pyramids.
I took a 5am bus and booked it into the site, so for the first half hour or so, I had the main plaza almost all to myself.
The plaza continues to the left from the previous shot.
Jesus Christ, it's a scary head. Everybody get in the car.
The opposite pyramid, from which the first two shots were taken. They don't let you climb the other pyramid anymore. Something about tourists slipping and falling to their deaths..
The two pyramids seem to stare at each other, broodingly. Mr. Scary Head is under one of those little shelters on the right.
Alright, yeah, now this is what you're here for: pyramids rising out of the jungle.
It's a short walk down and up a steep ravine to this third, more isolated pyramid.
Awesome.
It's tall and steep..
..and affords excellent views. Here, looking back toward the central plaza.
The vast, trackless jungle stretches to the horizon.
Like I said, tall and steep. Though perhaps technically stairs, this structure bears a strikingly resemblance to a ladder.
The backside of the same pyramid, showing what they looked like before modern reconstruction.
The reconstruction continues elsewhere.
Even cleared of vegetation, the unrestored structures are barely differentiable from natural hills.
This is supposedly the best artwork available at Tikal. Having been to Palenque, I wasn't terribly impressed.
Nope, not all that impressive.
Some people will tell you Tikal is better than Palenque because it is bigger.
In practice, this simply means you're going to spend a lot of time walking through the jungle. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't so unbelievably hot and humid. After maybe four hours of trudging around the site I ran out of water and, shortly thereafter, patience.
I don't normally have any problems with dehydration or heat stroke or whatever, but that day I was just plain done. I left the site, paid way too much money for water and gatorade and spent the next 3 hours sitting in the shade, waiting for my ride back to town.
Waiting for my ride, there was a very persistent spider. I was all like, "Get off me, stoopid spider."
While waiting for Guatemala to return to some semblance of normal (there were days when the bus companies didn't even bother opening, the roads and bridges were so out of commission), I decided to use one of the marina's free kayaks to check out El Castillo de San Felipe, a Spanish fort a mile or so upriver.
A pirates' eye view. A kayak pirate. Yarr.
Now, a word or two on kayaks. This was my first time using one, so I allow for the possibility that I'm just really bad at it and/or my particular kayak was lousy. That being said: WTF?! No keel? No rudder? Are these such complicated and mysterious technologies that kayaks can't make use of them? Whenever I started to build up a decent amount of speed, the kayak would begin to turn to the side. Not change direction, really, but rotate with regard to my direction of travel. Yaw, if you will. No matter how much I tried to correct by paddling on the same side as the yaw, it was impossible prevent the craft from eventually spinning out and losing all forward momentum.
What looked like it should have been a leisurely 10 minute paddle (I have plenty of experience in canoes, I know of what I speak) became a 45 minute slog under the boiling Central American sun.
On the bright side, the fort was pretty cool.
It's an imposing gate.
The main courtyard.
The kitchen/dining hall. El Castillo would have been way cooler if there were more period furniture, explanatory material, etc. Oddly enough, I didn't notice a box for complaints/suggestions.
Climbing up to the battlements.
The central courtyard from above.
The tower from which the pirates were spied and the guns used to reach out and touch them.
"Hold still for just a second.."
No pirates showed up that day, thankfully.
I was practically the only one there. It was a ton of fun climbing all over the place, the sort of thing you could never get away with in a museum in the U.S.
Under the main gun battery was a "dungeon." It was mostly just dark and musty. I think I've captured at least half of its essence here.
I guess your average soldier doesn't need much frippery to commune with God.
Must have sucked to man these guns when the pirates showed up. "Man, first platoon gets all the perks.. day shift, better food, walls to hide behind. Lucky SOB's"
When last we left our intrepid traveler, he was "working" at a dive shop on Isla Mujeres, Mexico. It was good at first but had grown tiresome and boring as the number of tourists (and, therefore, opportunities to go diving) declined. The question, then, was how to flee an island paradise with the most possible panache.
The answer, of course, is as a deckhand on a 63' motor-sailor.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Maraya II. Ain't she purty?
It is completely ridiculous how quickly and easily I became a deckhand. I had heard from a few other travelers about working on sailboats and it seemed like a good idea. One night at the bar I met a fellow who was already working as such and figured there might be enough work for another guy, so the next day I went down to the marina to meet the captain/owner. That didn't work out, but I'd already come all the way down to the other end of the island so I decided to walk back and ask at every marina I passed.
No joke, at the second marina I tried:
Me: (to a marina employee) "Hey, do you know if any of the boat owners here are looking for deckhands?" Employee: "Uh, yeah, actually, the owner of that big one over there. In fact, there he is. His name is Dave." Me: "Hi, Dave, I'm Benjamin and that guy over there said you might be looking for a deckhand." Dave: "Well, yeah, I am."
(ten minutes of interview/discussion ensue) Dave: "Ok, then. We sail in two days." Me: "I'll be here."
Ridiculous.
I wrapped up my affairs at the dive shop ("Hey, boss, I'm outta here" or, actually, "Oye, jefe, me voy") and got on the boat. It wasn't to be a long voyage: 10 days to go from Isla Mujeres to Rio Dulce, Guatemala, where the boat would be moored for hurricane season. It is prohibitively expensive to insure pleasure craft during hurricane season so pretty much everyone docks and flies home from June 1st to November 30th.
According to Google, it's about 450 miles. Click to view huge.
Alrighty, then. 10 days of sailing plus a few more at dock cleaning and stowing; a bunk and 3 squares a day; a ride in the direction I wanted to go and..
..and..
$500.
Not bad, eh?
The living room, complete with flat panel television.
My bunk. I had a skylight!
Dave the captain (on the right) and his buddy Fred, who did all of the cooking. Nice thing about being the captain: no one can tell you not to have a bloody mary at 9 in the morning. Nice thing about the captain having a bloody mary at 9 in the morning: then the crew can too.
While we were under way, my duties as a deckhand were, quite frankly, laughably easy. That didn't stop Dave from yelling at me about how stupidly and/or slowly I was doing them, but that's neither here nor there. All I really had to do was raise and lower the anchor every morning and evening (ie, press the button on the anchor chain motor) and crank the sails up and down. Once the sails were set and so long as they didn't need adjusting, I was free to do whatever I wanted, though my options were somewhat limited: read, nap or stare at the ocean. As you might imagine, I did a whole lot of all three.
There were dolphins!
Frolicking in the bow wave! Yes, I said frolicking. There is really no better term for it.
The photos are good, but you need video to truly appreciate how cool it was. There isn't much to see until about the 30 second mark, and then just before 1:00 you can see 4 or 5 go by just below the surface.
Sighted off the coast of Cozumel, the bane of budget travelers everywhere: the dread cruise ship.
Consider, for a moment, an economy built on daily deliveries of 1,000 fresh tourists, anxious to see and do as much as possible in their 12 hours ashore. Prices skyrocket and any local culture that can't be summarized in an after dinner show or doesn't fit into the tourists' preconceived notions dies a quiet death. I don't want to get too wrapped up in that whole "quest for authenticity" thing, which is also largely bullshit, but suffice it to say that pretty much every place the cruise ships stop goes kind of Disney. Thankfully this was about as close as we got.
I mentioned staring at the ocean earlier. It wasn't meant to be funny. I like staring at the ocean.
Between Cozumel and the passage through Belize's barrier islands, we could see the squalls approaching. There would be a mass of cloud tracking perpendicular to our course and, just before it hit, you could even see the line of rain coming up. Then, a half hour later, you'd be through it.
After passing through the channel at English Caye (you can even see it on Google Maps) we anchored alongside a few little specks of land only a few feet above sea level.
Fred and some clouds.
Me and an island and some clouds.
A boat and a Fred and some clouds.
It had been a long haul from our previous anchorage at Cozumel: something like 250 miles and 30 hours of continuous sailing. We'd earned our drinks.
I strung my hammock on deck that night.
There was lightning off in the distance.
We stopped at Placencia, Belize for fresh provisions.
Funny story about Belizean immigration officials: we arrived on a Monday that happened to be a national holiday, so obviously all government offices were closed. When we checked in the next day, we were (1) yelled at for not checking in at Belize City (doing so would have required sailing north - the wrong direction - after passing English Caye) and (2) charged overtime for checking in on a national holiday. But wait! It was now Tuesday, a normal business day, right? Ah, yes, but one cannot check in and check out on the same day! Clearly, because we were checking out on Tuesday after having stayed only one day, we must have checked in on Monday, which would have required overtime.
That makes sense, right?
The Guatemalan immigration contingent, with Livingston in the background. In Belize, you have to go find the immigration office in order to be robbed. In Guatemala, the immigration office finds you. In Central America, this is known as "quality service."
The entrance to the Rio Dulce.
Sailing up the Rio Dulce is quite dramatic, what with the jungle clad cliffs towering above you.
I wish it hadn't been raining cats and dogs, though. This would prove to be a frequent wish over the next couple of months (Central America's rainy season begins around June 1st, shortly after my arrival in Guatemala).
Now that's local culture. That wasn't built to be kitschy for the tourists. That's someone's house.
Like I said, these people are still rocking it old school. They're sitting in a dug out tree trunk, by the way.
There is a hot spring and restaurant about half way up. Dave had been talking about it for days.
Quite frankly, I was underwhelmed.
The Maraya II, riding very prettily at anchor on the Rio Dulce.
Dave and Fred admiring the pretty boat.
Dave doesn't like beer ("Beer makes you fat!"), so we inquired as to the existence of mixed drinks at the little restaurant by the hot springs. There were none. So Dave was all like, "No vodka? Wtf, brb."
After sailing up the Rio Dulce and below the bridge at Fronteras, we arrived at Marina Tortugal, where Dave would be anchoring the Maraya II for hurricane season. I still had a few days of work, cleaning the boat, stowing sails and lines and whatnot and, in general, getting the Maraya II ready to sit at dock for 6 months. This included washing the hull and polishing all of the brightwork (ie, anything made of stainless steel, of which there was a lot).
Now before I get to the real point, let me just note that while I was washing the hull, standing in the little inflatable dinghy holding onto the boat with one hand and sponging with the other, stripped to just board shorts and still sweating buckets, Mike, the marina owner, saw what I was up to and informed me that what I was doing was not necessary. That Dave's dock fees included regular washings. When I asked Dave about this, his deadpan response was "Yeah, but if I have you do it, it gets done the way I want."
Essentially, Dave's a dick. A dick with a great big boat, to be sure, but a dick nonetheless.
Right, so, the point: while cleaning the hull I came across some black scuff marks from the rubber bumpers that get deployed between the hull and the dock. When the big soft sponge I was using didn't clean off the scuff marks, I used the dishpad I had along with me for scrubbing the brightwork. Not steel wool, or anything like that. No. A dishpad, the kind with a green side and a yellow side. A green side that is apparently just about a million times too rough to be applied to a sailboat hull.
Fine, it was scratched. Weeelll.. maybe scratched isn't the right word. It was dulled. Where before the hull had been so highly polished you could see yourself in it, it was now, for a 4' long, 6" wide strip, somewhat less reflective. In Dave's eyes, though, I might as well have spray painted swastikas and giant penises over every square inch of his precious boat. He couldn't even look at me he was so pissed. He just said I needed to get my stuff and get off the boat. Now.
So I checked into the nicest dorm I have ever seen, opened a tab at the bar and hoped like hell that he paid me.
After a few nervous (and progressively drunker) hours, he did, indeed, give me my money. Talking to some other crew at the bar that day, I learned that no captain in his right mind would stiff his crew. Word gets around. And I derived some pleasure from Fred apologizing on Dave's behalf: "He's kind of always been a hard ass like that. My wife doesn't know how I stand him."
I ended up spending several more days at the marina, waiting for the weather to clear. Tropical storm Agatha had flooded towns, caused landslides, washed out bridges and generally made a royal pain in the ass of herself (all I saw was heavy rain, thoroughly indistinguishable from your standard Central American thunderstorm). In the same couple of days, a volcano erupted and a couple of sinkholes opened up in Guatemala City.
That's one helluva one..
..two..
..three punch. It's like for one week, Guatemala was covering for the rest of the world in terms of natural disasters. "Don't worry about it guys, I got it." Photo credits: one, two and three.
Volcanoes, sinkholes and tropical storms are all good omens, right? Right?
