If you go out in the woods today....

You will see Mayan ruins. We went to the Tikal ruins today. It is a very extensive site set in the forest. There are three (that we found) of the temples that you can climb up on wooden staircases and view things from the top. Very impressive, worth both the climb and the vertigo combined. One of the staircases was almost as steep as a stepladder....shades of Angkor Wat (sp?). At the best of the three climbs, we sat at the top for quite a long time watching the canopy of the forest with two of the other temples poking out the above the trees. One aussie up there said the view was used in Return of the Jedi, but I don't remember. It was one of those truly great places you end up at in your life. We were at the Tikal site for 4 hours and on the move for a lot of it. I am not sure how big it is but once we walked between two temply things for 15 minutes on a fairly good road at a pretty fair pace, so it is quite spread out. Needless to say the whole time we were on our way to and from those "outbuildings" we only saw two other people. There were probably a couple of hundred people at least at the main set of buildings.

We are off to Belize in the morning (That is country number six for those that are trying to keep up with the whirlwind pace). I am going to have to figure out where we are going so we can buy a ticket. I originally wanted to go snorkelling but I am beginning to think that my eyes may have deteriorated enough that coral reefs will be a bit of a blur without one of those prescription masks. I may opt for a jungle trek instead. Although today was in the forest, I really didn't get much of a wildlife fix out of it. There was a monkey throwing things at us from a tree at one point though, so at least that is something. Tapirs, here we come (maybe).