My week of travel - Tikal (and human sacrifices)

Tikal

So after I got back from El Salvador, the next day it was straight to Tikal, which is an ancient archaeological site with Myan temples and pyramids. There was about 8 of us in the group, most of who I was friends with already! So that was good fun. We spent the 8 hour car ride talking and singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody..as you do.

That night we stayed in a town called Flores, which is right next to Tikal National Park. In the morning, we headed off for a full day of exploration. 

Balcony of the beautiful hotel at Flores

Hehe...mistery.

First we went to the Acropolis, where the city's nobility lived in places thousands of years ago.

Hardly any of the sites have been excavated because it is so expensive. Apparently there are thousands of temples and Myan ruins hidden in the jungle just waiting to be discovered. This temple here only just pokes out of the trees. If it wasn't so tall, you wouldn't know it was there!

Next we went to the plaza, where the most famous temple is, Temple IV. Our guide said it is 70 meters tall and took 20 years to build! Visitors used to be able to climb up it, but then 5 people died falling off and it became to unstable and dangerous.

               (Me, David & Erica)

 Those monuments in front of the last picture were actually stones used for human sacrifice. True story. There are quite alot of them around - the Myan religious rituals must have felt sacrifice was important to appease the gods. As you can see below, here are some more sacrificial alters - they are all set out in a row. I don't know if they used them all at one (7 people??) or not. Apparently the sacrifice was quite slow - they started with cutting the palm of the hand, then tongue, ears etc - and the subject ate some kind of magic jungle mushroom that put them in a daze so they couldn't feel pain. Myan people still use this site for sacred religious rituals - but they now use a chicken. And I don't think the chicken is given any mushrooms, poor guy.

After seeing that, we wandered around the other temples and stone monuments. This is a dedication to the rain god.

One thing is, there are so many steps! The Myan people are not tall, so I have no idea why they made their steps so big (almost up to my knees)!

                                                     (Noah and I!)

View from one of the temples we could climb - they just had stairs going up and up, the rest of the pyramid was still covered in trees etc.

Just being awesome.

After the temples we went walking in the jungle - it was pretty cool, our guide knew all the bird sounds and animal prints etc. I saw a falcoln, turkey, howler and spider monkeys! Was very cool. Here is a plant (the little green leaves that his hand is holding) which the Myans use for loads of different things - they chew it and then put the mush on themselves to soothe mozzie bites (yummo) or use it as an all-spice in cooking. We all tasted some - to me it tasted like Wrigley's cinnamon chewing gum, it was ok!

That's Noah and I in front of a massive tree (serious faces, people) - that's just a fraction of its trunk. And Erica and I on a natural vine swing.