Remembering Tikal
By Paul Lyons
Next month our good friend Patricia is visiting and we have planned a few excursions. One of the first places we are planning to go to is Tikal, the famous Mayans ruins in the Peten jungle. We will be flying up to Tikal from Guatemala City with a tour package that includes hotel accommodations and all of the meals. How safe and unpredictable compared to the last time we were there.
In 1990, before we had kids and life was on a different wavelength, we visited Tikal. We were both in our twenties, living in the mission district of San Francisco, hanging around a crowd whose chief mission was to journey to as many parts of the world on as little money as possible. This everyone did at breakneck speeds, hopping on local buses and staying in youth hostels and run-down hotels. Recently, when we were in Antigua, Guatemala in November of last year, we hiked to the top of a volcano with the same sort of youthful adventures. Now, however, it seems that most of these types are Australians. In fact, in Australia it is something of a rite of passage to journey around the globe, exploring the far reaches of small deserted islands and out-of-the-way villages before settling down to a dreary life behind a desk.
In 1990, before trekking to Tikal, we had stayed for a number of days in the Yucatan in Mexico, enjoying the Caribbean and visiting Tulum. Here we stayed in a place called Cabanas Santa Fe. It was run by a Rastafarian community that since has been shut down. I remember it well for the simple cabanas and hammocks that we slept on, the sense of freedom all the European women had with their bathing suits or lack of bathing suits and the plentiful food. Every evening there were large servings of rice and beans and fish, as someone seemed to always be returning on a boat with a fresh catch.
I could have just stayed at Cabana’s Santa Fe for the remainder of the three-week trip, but we had a vague itinerary and we were destined to move on, and besides, what would we possibly say to our crowd in San Francisco. We hit the highway going south and waited for the bus. On the way, we ran into a group of Italians heading on the same route as us, so we decided to make it a caravan. I remember the cultural shift leaving Mexico and entering Belize, heading into the English-speaking Caribbean and seeing so many more black people; somehow the energy in the air was different – the Catholic churches were now Anglican and the vegetation was different. In Belize City, we stayed overnight in a hotel with our Italian acquaintances. Early the next morning we caught a bus to Guatemala.
The border between Belize and Guatemala is but a small building, maybe even a shack run by authorities in costume, and a few guys hanging out on either side with vans looking for passengers. We hired one of these vans to take us to Tikal. I remember a bumpy trip along dirt roads, but we made it there no worse for wear.
At Tikal we explored the ruins by day and camped on a pleasant lawn at night. There were monkeys in the trees above and all sorts of sounds at night that I had never heard before while camping. We climbed to the tops of tombs, took pictures and imagined the games in ancient ball courts. It was here that an ancient Mayan god gave me a nasty foot fungus that took years to get rid of. At first I was worried that I had gotten some sort of parasite. Whenever my foot encountered a sudden change of temperature, I would see a line under the skin that looked like a little worm and it would itch like mad. Later, in the United States, I visited a doctor who had no idea what it was, and simply gave it a name of "dermamicosus." Fortunately, the Mayan gods released me of this burden and the condition finally went away.
After a few days in Tikal, we woke one morning and caught a bus to Flores where we intended to catch a plane to Guatemala City and then a bus to Panahachel. When we arrived in Flores, we were first approached by a kid on a bike that wondered if we needed a taxi to the airport. We informed him that we did not know at this point, but first we needed to buy plane tickets. He pointed us in the direction of a travel agent where we bought plane tickets to Guatemala City. The woman who sold us the tickets, wrestling with here computer, seemed convinced that the plane was still available for today and had not taken off. When asked what time it was to depart, she only gave a vague response that it was sometime in the morning, but that we had plenty of time; she did seem to be a bit nervous and in a hurry about the whole thing.
With tickets in hand, the travel agent insisted on driving us to the airport in the company van. We climbed in and waited. The van did not start. She seemed to be getting a bit impatient as the motor turned over but would not catch. We really had no idea what was going on. About a minute later, I looked out the window to see the same kid who greeted us to Flores, driving a little Toyota and signaling us to climb in. We hopped out of the van and piled into the little car with no muffler and questionable steering capabilities, driven by a fourteen year old kid, and headed to the airport. Our travel agent was a bit perturbed, as perhaps this scenario had been played out before.
The airport in Flores looked more like a typical flea market in the US than an airport. There was an open-air structure made of concrete where there was a semblance of a ticket counter, behind which stood a woman in an airline uniform that seemed to be running the show. When she saw us arrive in the rusty old Toyota, a look of concern came over her face. She looked at us. She looked at the plane that was taxiing out on the field, getting ready to take off. She looked at us. She then started emphatically waving to the plane. We got out of the taxi, paid the boy certainly way too much money for the taxi ride, gave the woman at the counter our plane tickets. At that point, a few guys began rolling out those stairs to the plane that you so rarely see anymore except at little regional airports. They proceeded to open the door and we got on, backpacks and all, covered in sweat. We sat in the only remaining seats, which I believe were the ones reserved for the flight attendants, looking backwards at all the rest of the passengers.
We made it to Guatemala City, caught a bus to Lake Atitlan and the town of Panajachel, where I had probably the scariest dream of my life. In my dream our hospedaje-motel room was filled with indigenous Mayan people staring at me sleeping. Each time I woke up thinking they would go away, they were still there, just staring at me - cowboy hats, colorful dresses, twenty people, crowded in our little room, all with completely blank expressions on their faces. I would go back to sleep, awake, and they would still be there. In the morning I was pretty shook up.
The civil war was at its peak at this time. The borders were not a good place to be, buses were routinely checked by soldiers and one could feel the tension in the air. Today, people are still starving in the countryside and illiteracy is everywhere, but the banks are no longer guarded by fifteen guys in camouflage uniforms with machine guns. Guatemala is now in many ways a different country. I now have middle age pretty much surrounded.
Gallery:
The Lake at Flores
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