Tikal

We got up begrudgingly for our 3am shuttle for the hour-long ride to Tikal (85Q). The 250Q entrance fee is 100Q extra for early entry (though our guide purchased them and we never saw the ticket so I'm not convinced he didn't pocket the difference). The shuttle & tour cost us 85Q - an American guy paid 120Q for the same thing, which he'd talked down from 150; pays to be a grubby backpacker!

Our group of 8 (apparently grows to 50 in high season) walked a fair way in the dark through the jungle following our guide's torchlight, stumbling over tree roots and rocks. Passing through the main plaza, we saw temples 1 and 2 eerily poking out of the dark. Then we climbed the 186 wooden steps up the side of temple 4 and waited in silence with about 30 other gringos for the sunrise. Sadly the jungle mist occluded any views, which is apparently very common. However, right on cue, the dawn chorus burst into life and we listened to some of the 400 species of birds chatter away, mixed with the panting noises of spider monkeys. The dominant sound, however, was the howler monkeys which make the most almighty roaring monster noises to mark their territory upon waking.

Our guide then took us on a brief tour before leaving us to take some of our group back to the start for their bus to Belize. We thought we were getting a 4 hour tour so Anna was a bit disappointed, however, I was relieved as he wasn't very interesting. We were then free to explore at our leisure. The place was deserted and we barely saw anyone the whole time until we started to leave and saw a few small tour groups arriving.

One of the most important Mayan sites, it is a huge site of which only 20% has been excavated, the rest is just mounds buried under vegetation. It seems far bigger than Chichen Itza but has less variety and detail. There are about 5 huge, solid temples, a few smaller ones and some other residential places that have been cleaned up. The fact that you can climb up and explore most of it makes it a lot of fun and it's jungle setting is magnificent. We saw monkey cats, guinea pigs on stilts, howler and spider monkeys (our first spiders) and lots of birds including toucans. The site is 16km2 and we haven't slept properly for 3 nights so by 10am we were flagging and headed back for a drink and got the 11am shuttle back.

For lunch, we went to a cute place overlooking the lake and I had some tiny, rubbish falafel compensated by tasty fries. Anna's mushroom burger was much better as were some refreshing watermelon, ginger and lemon smoothies (158Q).

We then chilled out in our hot room for most of the afternoon, trying to avoid the invading ants. We only moved to get huge ice creams and then to our terrace to check out the most stunning sunset - a perfectly flat lake reflecting a rainbow, then golden sky.

In our hot and tired states we were both craving junk food and aircon so lazily got a tuktuk (10Q) for the 10 min walk across the bridge to Burger King. Anna went for some retail therapy (excuse to buy a beer) and I went to bed early.Read more