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A riddle for you. It is 11 AM in a small town in Guatemala. You own the only bus company in town and the next bus out is at 2.30 PM. What time would you tell a group of tourists the bus was leaving?<br />

The tranquility of Denmark and other great Mayan adventures

Patrick Gatland
2006-04-05 09:27:19

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town in search of any hole in the wall that would give us money.

The second riddle of my scholg. What holiday is a
REAL holiday without a few 4.30 AM starts?

In recognition of the fact that we had been particularly lazy on our trip so far we opted to get picked up at 5.00 AM so that we could watch the sunrise over the world's greatest Mayan ruins. As everyone staying in Flores has the same idea we expected that other people would be getting up around the same time. What we did not expect however was to be staying in the same hotel as the world's loudest Danes. As some of you may know, Danish isn’t the easiest language on the ears at the best of times but to wake in fright at 4.19 AM because 12 Danes were screaming "GOD MORGON" to each other outside your door makes you think that sirens announcing enemy attacks approaching may be more soothing to the soul.

To our joy, we piled into the minibus with the Danes ad drove out to the park in stony silence - well we were silent, there doesn't seem to be a word for silence in Danish. Stopping at the park entrance James was jolted into an even better mood when he was cracked in the head by somebody opening the window behind him. Now that I was awake I proceeded to entertain our group by dancing beside the minibus to my ipod while Ben and Linda threw money at me from the (now open) window. We were having fun at 5.30 AM, the Danes just thought we were weird.

So began our Mayan explorations. Tikal is enormous and so we had a good chunk of the day dedicated to exploring the temples and pyramids. It was exciting to step into the jungle as the sun was beginning to rise, the mist lifting and the howler monkeys making the most vicious, God-forsaken noise you have ever heard in your life (no Dane jokes please). The monkeys sound similar to what you'd expect T-Rex to sound like as it traumatised the animal kingdom. I can only imagine what those who discovered the ruins of Tikal first thought when they heard the noise the monkeys were making.

In hot pursuit of monkeys we proceeded to climb as many of the temples as possible. Climbing up through the jungle canopy I was amazed at the engineering accomplishment that the Mayans executed. You could see far off into the distance from the temples that tower over the roof of the jungle.

We wandered from temple to temple marvelling at the size of them and the artefacts around them. After a while we got tired and slept on top of one of the temples - a great way to spend an hour or two. We smirked as we listened to various Americans climb to the top of the temple and breathlessly offer their view as to the logic behind each Mayan structure. Some of their theories were - some would say predictably - crazy!

At the end of our day at the park Linda and I thought it would be fun to stroll through the garden near the visitor centre. As we got out into the middle of a bank between two large ponds we spied something lurking in the water. As we got closer we realised it was a 2 metre crocodile and then had to run back as fast as we could to avoid being attacked. it was only once we got back did we see the sign saying that there were dangeroud crocodiles in the water. The highlight of this encounter was the photo I snapped of Linda as she shouted at Ben and I as we sneaked back towards the croc to snap a shot of it.

This brings me to the third and final riddle for the schlog. Why would you introduce crocodiles into a garden filled with tourists, and more so why would you provide delightful park benches next to a crocs nest?

The riddles of Guatemala continue to confound!