The Stars in Tikal

The experience I´ve been wanting to share with you is my visit to Tikal, the ancient Maya site in the dense jungle of North Guatemala. In many ways a special experience, and not only for the fascinating history of the Mayas or the starry night in a hammock.

When we arrived at 6 in the evening, it turned out that the Park Tikal was closed for visitors. The reason? All the presidents of Central America were there at that moment, making lots of noice with their big helicopters and leaving no space for others (seems logical concerning the fact that Tikal sizes only 576 km2). For Stefany and me that wasn´t a problem, cause we would stay overnight to see sunrise at Tikal the next morning. So we took our time to explore the jungle, meet many mosquitos and admire the ´grotesk´ arrival of the presidents. At 21h ´en punto´ the ligths went out in our hotel and with some others we climbed up a roof to watch the stars and drink a beer. The howling monkeys, the snoring insects, the fireflies leaving fluorescent traces made it a real jungle experience. Incredible!

At 4 o clock in the morning we jumped out (ahum...) our hammocks, ready for sunrise. Our enthusiasm was only a little bit tempered by the fact that Stefany left her contact-lenses inside the locked up hotel. The attempt to break in didn´t work so imagine me walking through the jungle, while it´s raining, while it´s VERY dark, with a girl hanging on my arm that can´t see a bit of all the impressive things we pass by... Around 6 it got lighter fortunately and there we sat, on top of a 65 meter-high-pyramid, watching sunrise in a red-black sky above the Guatemalan rainforest with it´s majestic Maya-temples. The rain started again, making the whole even more absurd, eery, cool, I cannot find the word. (Stefie still didn´t have her contact-lenses so we made an extra hour of walking back to the hotel in the pooring rain, remember the pic?)

Okay, are you still tuned? I want to keep this weblog short, but it doesn´t work this time. Don´t sayI didn´t warn you! There we go then. The Mayan civilization is the oldest after the Greeks and the Egypts. The buildings at Tikal have been built between 4 BC and the 850 AD by the population of the Mayas in Tikal (100-200.000 people). This highly civilized culture was at its peak between 200 and 850 AD. After it, they mysteriously abandoned Tikal. According to our guide Giovanni, this had to do with environmental issues. Many dry years, infertile ground afters years of exploiting the soil for agriculture made the Mayan´s desperately sacrificing more and more people to their gods in trade for rain and life. They even sacrificed the king, but even that didn´t help.

From Tikal and other Maya'cities in the area, Mayas spread over the country and divided up in many submayan cultures with all their own practices, symbols and languages (that are in fact so different that different Maya'villages right now don´t understand eachother when not speaking Spanish!) It´s only after the arrival of the Spanish they start to make their famous clothing-handcraft. The name Maya itself also comes from the Spanish, who were answered the word ´Mayap´- ¨I don´t understand¨ - by these indigen habitants of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize and Honduras. Later they mixed up with Aztecs and other native inhabitants of Central America. The Ladino´s in Guatemala are a mixture of Spanish and Maya´s, having a higher social status than the generally poor, struggling, non employed Maya´s. This is a big inequality in Guatemala.

As mentioned, the Mayas sacrificed people and had more crual practices, like killing a non maya by surrounding him with a huge group, throwing spears. Or the ´meso america ball game´, a combination of football and basketball, where not the looser but the star, the winner was murederd by sacrifice. They only wanted to give the best they had to their gods, so it makes sense doesn´t it?

Interesting is the theory of guide Giovanni about the origin of the May´s. According to him, they come from Asia. Similarities in looks on the outside but there´s more. The tailbone of both groups seem to have a bluegreen spot just above it. Furthermore the pyramids in for instance Cambodja look very much alike the Mayan pyramids. Before the Mayans came in central america there was lots of natural problems in asia like earthquakes, storms etc. So they went to tranquil central america where non of the old Maya ruins were ever violated by nature.

History is so simple.