| General Non-Fiction posted January 6, 2017 | Chapters: |
...5 6 -7- 8... 
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from Flores to Tikal
A chapter in the book A Tale of Yucatan
A Tale of Yucatan - Part 7
by tfawcus
| Background A turn-of-the-century travelogue. 19 days on the Yucatan Peninsula. |
We returned to Belize City late the following morning in much the same way that we had come, speeding across the Caribbean in an open boat. What an exhilarating start to the day!
At the TACA check-in counter we are informed that our onward flight to Guatemala has been over-booked and that the airline will be putting us up in a local flea-pit overnight.
One had the feeling from the body language accompanying Wendy's finely modulated response that this was set to be more than just a border skirmish. Words continued to fly until just before the final call for boarding, at which time the manager proposed a compromise. They could fly us half-way, to Flores, and put us up there for the night instead, then take us on to Guatemala City the following evening.
After a rapid discussion of the pros and cons we conceded, but only on condition that we had two nights in Flores, one paid by the airline, the other paid by us. All being finally agreed, we clambered aboard barely minutes before take-off. It would now just remain for us to persuade Air Caribe to re-write our tickets from Flores to Cancún , so that we could use them to fly instead from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, about two hundred miles further west, in the Chiapas region of Southern Mexico, but that was a battle for another day. We had fought hard enough for one day already, just to get this 25-minute flight across the border into Guatemala.
We found El Hotel del Tropico tucked away down a side alley in a street full of mechanical workshops and hardware stalls. Policemen loll against breezeblock walls with sub-machine guns slung loosely from the shoulder, urchins pee in the gutter, buses blare as they cut a swathe through assorted cyclists and pedestrians swaying and swerving in all directions as they go about their daily business. Dusty and hot assail the nose, but really the spice of the place is in the air; a delicious mixture of food odours from roadside stalls mingles with the stench of burning rubber and diesel fumes; a suggestion of over-ripe banana and mango hangs in the background and somewhere just over the wall a sweet scent wafts, fleetingly redolent of frangipani.
The following morning, the hotel minibus picks us up at 8 a.m. to drive us out to Tikal. The excursion is a full day, for the ruins are extensive. They are some 40 miles to the east, beyond the end of Lago de Petén Itzá, and lie in a national park covering more than 250 square miles. The central area of the city spans an area of about 12 square miles. Many of the most spectacular of the ruins were excavated towards the end of the nineteenth century by archaeologists from Europe, most notably the Swiss Dr Gustav Bernoulli in 1877 and the English archaeologist, Alfred P Maudsley in 1881. In the last forty years the work of research and restoration has been continued both by the University of Pennsylvania and Guatemala's own Institute of Anthropology and History.
The road takes us along the southern side of the lake and there are several small villages dotted along its shore. We are told there are three lakes in this region, one of fresh water, the next of salt and the third of sulphur. The lake we follow has several kinds of fish, including white bass, and it is home to a small freshwater crocodile. The crocodile and turtle are much revered in the Mayan mythology, being creatures able to cross the divide from one world into another. Men plod tirelessly along the roadside with huge loads of firewood on their shoulders, held in place with bands running from their foreheads. Women with pads of cloth on their heads balance bags of maize and brightly striped earthenware jars full of water from the well. Small piglets and chickens stray across the fields and road. Barefoot boys race after the bus, shouting and waving their hands. Along the verge hollow ribbed horses and angular cows are tethered to graze and every inch of land that is cultivable up to the very edge of the jungle is neatly planted with row upon row of subsistence crops; predominantly corn but also beans, plantains and a small variety of other vegetables.
As we get closer to the ruins the vegetation thickens. A jungle turkey struts across the road in front of the van. Vines hang down from the trees. Our guide when we get there is a friendly man, not a Guatemalan as it turns out, but a Honduran who learnt his English in a bi-lingual fishing village on the coast. He fled to Guatemala as an illegal immigrant in more troubled times, a status which has now been regularised by the authorities although even after twenty years they still won't grant him citizenship. He is still hoping. Perhaps next year, he grins.
It is clear that he is just as knowledgeable about the jungle plants and wildlife as he is about the ancient Mayan ruins. Our first stop is by an allspice tree. He plucks a leaf and crushes it. The aroma is immediately overpowering. This is not the source of the spice, he tells us, but an infusion of these leaves is a most powerful remedy for the stomach ache. Well, that could come in handy! Bunches of unripe berries hang higher up, a month or two from harvest.
In amongst the coarse grass below there are patches of mimosa with their tiny mauve balls of flower and comb-like leaves that shrink away and close to the touch. An army of leaf-cutter ants crosses the path carrying sawn-off pieces aloft, some three or four times their own size, down into holes in the ground. These are the expert gardener ants. On their beds of leaf mould a fungus will grow, and it is this which forms the diet of the industrious insect and its larvae. If all Guatemalans were as hard-working as these ants, our guide observes, we would be a rich country without worries or care.
Next we pass a chicle tree whose sap between the bark and the trunk is farmed like rubber, to the eternal benefit of the chewing public and, of course, the enterprising Mr Wrigley. Above it. wheeling in lazy circles, there is a swallow-tailed falcon and then, round the next corner suddenly, the steep sides of a burial mound. Overhead in the dense canopy of the rain-forest, a chattering spider monkey swings away through the trees, much as he might have done two thousand, seven hundred years ago, when the first of these huge stones were being hauled into place.
We have arrived.
At the TACA check-in counter we are informed that our onward flight to Guatemala has been over-booked and that the airline will be putting us up in a local flea-pit overnight.
One had the feeling from the body language accompanying Wendy's finely modulated response that this was set to be more than just a border skirmish. Words continued to fly until just before the final call for boarding, at which time the manager proposed a compromise. They could fly us half-way, to Flores, and put us up there for the night instead, then take us on to Guatemala City the following evening.
After a rapid discussion of the pros and cons we conceded, but only on condition that we had two nights in Flores, one paid by the airline, the other paid by us. All being finally agreed, we clambered aboard barely minutes before take-off. It would now just remain for us to persuade Air Caribe to re-write our tickets from Flores to Cancún , so that we could use them to fly instead from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, about two hundred miles further west, in the Chiapas region of Southern Mexico, but that was a battle for another day. We had fought hard enough for one day already, just to get this 25-minute flight across the border into Guatemala.
We found El Hotel del Tropico tucked away down a side alley in a street full of mechanical workshops and hardware stalls. Policemen loll against breezeblock walls with sub-machine guns slung loosely from the shoulder, urchins pee in the gutter, buses blare as they cut a swathe through assorted cyclists and pedestrians swaying and swerving in all directions as they go about their daily business. Dusty and hot assail the nose, but really the spice of the place is in the air; a delicious mixture of food odours from roadside stalls mingles with the stench of burning rubber and diesel fumes; a suggestion of over-ripe banana and mango hangs in the background and somewhere just over the wall a sweet scent wafts, fleetingly redolent of frangipani.
The following morning, the hotel minibus picks us up at 8 a.m. to drive us out to Tikal. The excursion is a full day, for the ruins are extensive. They are some 40 miles to the east, beyond the end of Lago de Petén Itzá, and lie in a national park covering more than 250 square miles. The central area of the city spans an area of about 12 square miles. Many of the most spectacular of the ruins were excavated towards the end of the nineteenth century by archaeologists from Europe, most notably the Swiss Dr Gustav Bernoulli in 1877 and the English archaeologist, Alfred P Maudsley in 1881. In the last forty years the work of research and restoration has been continued both by the University of Pennsylvania and Guatemala's own Institute of Anthropology and History.
The road takes us along the southern side of the lake and there are several small villages dotted along its shore. We are told there are three lakes in this region, one of fresh water, the next of salt and the third of sulphur. The lake we follow has several kinds of fish, including white bass, and it is home to a small freshwater crocodile. The crocodile and turtle are much revered in the Mayan mythology, being creatures able to cross the divide from one world into another. Men plod tirelessly along the roadside with huge loads of firewood on their shoulders, held in place with bands running from their foreheads. Women with pads of cloth on their heads balance bags of maize and brightly striped earthenware jars full of water from the well. Small piglets and chickens stray across the fields and road. Barefoot boys race after the bus, shouting and waving their hands. Along the verge hollow ribbed horses and angular cows are tethered to graze and every inch of land that is cultivable up to the very edge of the jungle is neatly planted with row upon row of subsistence crops; predominantly corn but also beans, plantains and a small variety of other vegetables.
As we get closer to the ruins the vegetation thickens. A jungle turkey struts across the road in front of the van. Vines hang down from the trees. Our guide when we get there is a friendly man, not a Guatemalan as it turns out, but a Honduran who learnt his English in a bi-lingual fishing village on the coast. He fled to Guatemala as an illegal immigrant in more troubled times, a status which has now been regularised by the authorities although even after twenty years they still won't grant him citizenship. He is still hoping. Perhaps next year, he grins.
It is clear that he is just as knowledgeable about the jungle plants and wildlife as he is about the ancient Mayan ruins. Our first stop is by an allspice tree. He plucks a leaf and crushes it. The aroma is immediately overpowering. This is not the source of the spice, he tells us, but an infusion of these leaves is a most powerful remedy for the stomach ache. Well, that could come in handy! Bunches of unripe berries hang higher up, a month or two from harvest.
In amongst the coarse grass below there are patches of mimosa with their tiny mauve balls of flower and comb-like leaves that shrink away and close to the touch. An army of leaf-cutter ants crosses the path carrying sawn-off pieces aloft, some three or four times their own size, down into holes in the ground. These are the expert gardener ants. On their beds of leaf mould a fungus will grow, and it is this which forms the diet of the industrious insect and its larvae. If all Guatemalans were as hard-working as these ants, our guide observes, we would be a rich country without worries or care.
Next we pass a chicle tree whose sap between the bark and the trunk is farmed like rubber, to the eternal benefit of the chewing public and, of course, the enterprising Mr Wrigley. Above it. wheeling in lazy circles, there is a swallow-tailed falcon and then, round the next corner suddenly, the steep sides of a burial mound. Overhead in the dense canopy of the rain-forest, a chattering spider monkey swings away through the trees, much as he might have done two thousand, seven hundred years ago, when the first of these huge stones were being hauled into place.
We have arrived.
Next instalment: "The Kingdom of Lord Chocolate"
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