Tikal! You enter the national park of Tikal though an imposing looking gate in the middle of the jungle. Then it’s a short but slow ride on a paved road flanked od either side by impenetrable jungle and signs that ask you to please refrain from running over the local wildlife, and presto, you’re in the ancient city.
Tikal is the poster child of Guatemalan tourism for a good reason. The pyramids and palaces are stunning the local plant life is to die for and the nasuas and monkeys provide endless entertainment (as long as the latter doesn’t start pelting you with its own excrement).
The only thing that was kind of out of place was a group of new-age spiritualist mostly from North America and Europe that were doing their rituals on the main plaza. No worries, we quickly exchanged our general disapproval of the whole affair and proceeded to ignore them.
After spending the whole day at Tikal, we made our way to are final destination for that day, the tiny village of Uaxactun which is located on an areological cite of the same name. We were all looking forward to spending a quiet night in the countryside, when to our horror we discovered that about 400 new-age spiritualists and archeoastronomy enthusiast come here every year to watch the sun rise on the 21th of March from the local E group. And that the night before the solstice is of course spent partying and drinking. Even certain members of own group were swayed by the music and joined the revelry causing a great commotion and generally disturbing those of the group that wanted to sleep. These same individuals were so ashamed the following day that they vowed to forgo alcohol for the remainder of the trip - a promise that was not kept.