Oaxaca Family Adventure: Bienvendos a Guatemala, El Remate, Tikal, and Yavin 4

Perhaps the most anxiety producing part of our trip was journeying from Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico to El Remate in Peten, Guatemala. There were two options for crossing. One involved using tourist transportation, and the other relied on making our own connections. They both required about 10 hours of traveling. We decided to utilize the tourist option that began on a small bus ride (2 1/2 hours) to the border where we crossed the river. The two minute boat ride was great fun while it lasted. Once in Guatemala, we waited at a bus stop along with a group of tourists in a small town for our next connection, an A/C-less, beater bus that once filled of passengers resembled a sweaty, mini-UN bobbing and swaying on the dirt roads. Reeds and grasses greeted our bus, brushing over us and finding their way through our windows. We passed through small farming villages that were rooted in clearings. A little boy correctly identified us. "Gringos!" he excitedly shouted and pointed at our lumbering bus. Before we could reach the border checkpoint, we unexpectedly slowed to a stop behind another bus. Ahead was a mound of sand and a halted tractor. Our drivers hopped out to see what could be done. (I immediately began to imagine a "Lost"/"Gilligan's Island" scenario wondering who in our bus would get eaten first.) The drivers from both buses shoveled sand furiously with their hands and later as our driver attacked the gas pedal with his foot we punched our way around the mound, cheering that we made it through with the bus still upright.

After five hours of jostling on a mostly pitted, dirt road, we arrived in Santa Elena, the sister city of the more touristy island of Flores where most tourists lodge before seeing the ruins of Tikal. But our journey still wasn't complete. Our kind driver called for his brother, a taxi driver, to take us the remaining half hour to El Remate, a sleepy town with a handful of hotels that have sprung up on Lake Peten Itza looking like lethargic crocodiles too hot to move. Our hotel proprietor formerly known as the Gringo Perdido (lost gringo) and now as Don David has lived in El Remate for 40 years. His hotel was perfectly comforting and refreshing after our rough passage. In addition to our own hammock, there was a cool deck overlooking the lake where we could order drinks over an intercom and have them delivered via zip line. It was a refreshing reward after a challenging day. We were able to shed all of our tension before dining at the hotel.

The next morning we arrived at the park when it opened at 6:00 AM, and as the sun began to steam the jungle. Tikal is housed in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve which is an area of vast untouched rainforest the size of a small country. We had to walk 20 minutes through the forest to get to our first monuments. We opened our senses to the sights and sounds of the jungle which was a tangle of buzzes, chirps, and howls. It was especially wonderful to be accompanying Abe into the environment which he loves the most, having studied the Central American Rainforest in school this past year and making countless drawings, a mural, and diorama of it. It was special that he spotted our first wild life when a small snake crossed our path. Then, we heard a rustling in the trees and saw some limbs bend. Above us a group of spider monkeys crossed over us. The howler monkeys were roaring in the distance. Birds fluttered by and eventually we arrived in a clearing where towering temples formed a plaza and central worshipping area for the ancient Maya people. The vast city of Tikal was built of limestone over centuries beginning from a small settlement in 500 BC and mysteriously being abandoned in 900 AD. At its peak, Tikal served as a center for 100,000 people and dominated neighboring communities with which they constantly warred. The monuments we explored were primarily temples built to commemorate events and people or lavish palaces where important business was conducted. Also, there were some ball courts and altars and stellae where people made their offerings.

It would take two days to see all of Tikal and there are many more sites that still need to be unearthed. We lasted about five hours growing beyond thirsty and weary from climbing pyramids including one that towered about 1400 feet above the forest floor. This Temple #4 is particularly famous because it was filmed as Yavin 4, the rebel base in Star Wars. We guzzled water at its top savoring the cool breeze but didn't stay too long feeling nervous and dizzy from being so high. In addition to a grass field full of bees, countless butterflies, fuzzy caterpillars, giant spiders, a bat, we saw a gray fox run past the base of Temple #2.

Back in El Remate we walked to a national park where we swam in the warm lake which has risen so high that the docks have all been submerged. The next day after a quick swim near our hotel we took a bus back to Santa Elena to buy bus tickets for our overnight trip to Guatemala City. We then took a tuk tuk taxi to the petite, colorful Flores where we leap frogged from restaurant to restaurant slurping cool drinks trying not to melt from the heat and pass the hours before heading south and back into the mountains.