We are up very early for the sunrise over Tikal, the best preserved and biggest of the Mayan ruins. Due to its location there are few people there, even though it is incredible. We are staying at The Jaguar Hotel at the gate entrance and all the tourist buses have well gone. The night before there are a maximum of thirty people at the main Grand plaza. This is not like the Mayan and Aztec ruins in Mexico that are thronging with day-trippers, tourist traps, (tourist’s prisons would be a more apt description). Tikal is like you are one of the first to discover it. Temple 4 is an enormous stone block pyramid, and as the name suggests there are at least three others, there are five main tall ones. So tall they poke well above the high tree canopy and allow you to observe the sunrise and sunset. We have watched the sunset the night before and it was a little hazy. It’s clearer the morning we are there, but not continuous azure. The twenty or so people that are quietly waiting in the crepuscular light are battered by the discordant cacophony of the competing Howler monkey troops. This is like the start of a Jurassic Park movie. The guttural howls of the primates drench out the noise of any other waking animals and take your breath away.



It is an incredible assault on the senses, as the sun creeps slowly into the sky, the humidity from the night’s rain clings to you, atop a 1,200-year monument. It is difficult not to feel the connection with the world, feel like a custodian. It’s these moments everyone should experience, the world would be a better place for it, we would be less inclined as the dominant species to pollute, destroy and rape the blue marble.



The guide shows us some of the parts we have missed the previous day, a 2,400-year old plaza. Tikal is up there to rival the Egyptian, Roman and Greek antiquities. It needs to be seen to be believed. Estimates vary on how many people lived in the enormous city at its height, at least one-hundred thousand, could even be as high as two-hundred thousand. With aerial imagery new submerged buildings are being discovered. As the world shrinks, and accessibility to Tikal at the end of a dead-end improves, it will be become a tourist trap. My advice is: go now, before it descends into that. For me it is better than anything in Mexico. When we were in the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City, also a must see, I pressed our expert guide which was the best of the ancient Central American sites, she thought about it. “I’m Mexican so out of patriotism I should say, Chichen Itza.” She paused, then added. “But if I wasn’t Mexican I would say Tikal!” Believe me Tikal is far, far better. Chichen Itza is beautiful, but a ‘very, very’ tacky tourist trap.



The heat is quite oppressive and there are a lot of mosquitoes to bother you. The Wife has reacted very badly to the bites, so we head back to Flores a few hours earlier than planned. A cold beer overlooking the lake, the cooling wind off the water is magnificent. We have watched two young women on paddle boards set off across the lake with the wind in behind them. Unless they are Olympic level boarders, this is a mistake, judging by the body shape of one of them, this is highly unlikely.




We are up early to get picked up to travel out of Guatemala to Belize. But the transport doesn’t arrive. You have to occasionally expect these things, in a foreign country where you don’t speak the lingo very well. Eventually the accommodating travel agent arrives at his office early to tell us the shuttle bus has broken down (allegedly?) and gets us on a coach for the two-hour drive to the crossing point.

Border crossings in developing countries are a great leveller, if ever you want to feel like a refugee in a play, a border crossing in a developing country is your stage – sometimes we all have to stand naked though! There’s a scrum of confused tourists, drivers, business people and locals that all have one shared common bond – they don’t want to queue up. Then throw into the mix the money changers, hawkers and it’s like Bethlehem around the turn of the tax year on stag do. We pay our tourist tax on both sides, fill in bureaucratic forms and we are in Belize. Back on the same bus and ready to head to Belize City. The most bizarre thing is we are on the Central American mainland and all of a sudden, the people are speaking English and I have not retuned my muscle memory brain from Spanish yet. We are back in the Commonwealth, the Queen has coyly smiled at us, as we passed through the customs building with an expression that suggests, ‘I’m not sure why we came to own this country either!’ But for some strange reason the people seem to like to be subjugated.’ God save our gracious Queen, and while you’re at it, Mr God, why not save all the plebs at the same time?



God bless us all - and may we all return with the wind behind us, paddles aloft and the setting sun in our hair. Next time: Literally swimming with Dugongs.



@thewritingIMP www.ianmpindar.com



Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.
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