Tikal

Swallowed Empire
Perched in the shore breeze of Lake Peten Itza’s crystal waters, I am finally a lighter shade of warm. This morning, a 5:30 AM shuttle trucked us deep into the rainforest for a heat-beating visit to the ancient Mayan capital of Tikal. Following a false start at the hands of an alarm clock not yet changed over to Guatemalan time, we were joined at the crack of dawn by our tour guide, Juan Ignacio Jesus Bendfeldt. Thick dreadlocks, Adidas track suit, and chain smoking, Juan was a 23-year-old native Belgian-German-Italian-Mayan-Spanish-Guatemalan. A student of his own instruction, he would prove to be the most chilled-out dynamo of a tour guide I have ever had.

His five-hour odyssey through the jungle-enshrouded former capital of the Mayan Empire was a mini-epic. No formal education mentioned in an afternoon loaded with precise history, archaeology, anthropology, environmental science, and a laundry list of nailed dates no teacher I work with could whip from the heat of a 90-degree day, Juan made us feel like we were accompanying a modern day Indiana Jones down a vine choked trail to the heart of a lost mythology. From our first view point, jungle-enshrouded mountains lay before us. From the next, pealed back earth revealed the steps of thousand-year old pyramids.

We climbed the few sculpted behemoths that archaeologists have hacked from nature’s grip, ascending their steep stone steps to the jungle canopy. Shaking vertigo at each summit, the sharp edges of the few recovered limestone peaks would materialize from the forest, dispersed among the thick collection of lush green mounds—their still-buried brethren—that protruded from the jungle floor for miles around.

120,000 Mayan lived here at the time of Rome's fall. No European city came within a third of Tikal’s size during this period. The Mayans also devised what remains one of the most accurate calendars on Earth, only to be recently surpassed by the atomic clock. What is likely their tobacco and cocoa is buried alongside the pharaohs in ancient Egyptian tombs.

Yet, in 900 A.D., this great city mysteriously collapsed and was abandoned. No real evidence of the Mayan’s demise is buried in the thick carpets of earth that have swallowed their history, save for three parched layers that point clearly to a drought. Experts have speculated that one dry season in a corn-based culture could be survived, perhaps two. The evidence points to three in a row.

Whatever led to Tikal’s demise, its grand temples have not sat unoccupied. Today its tenants are swinging monkeys, busy toucans, stealth jaguars, and a rich biome of creatures among which flutter 535 species of butterflies. Yet the ghosts of humanity’s dominance are still very much alive - in the intricately chiseled art; a solar calendar made of welterweight slabs, anchored by a small skyscraper pyramid; and the engravings of a complex hieroglyphic language whose meaning was lost when Catholic priests threw the libraries of their native competitors into a roaring bonfire fueled by European conquest.

As we lounged for a good hour at Juan's encouragement on the summit of Temple IV, it was hard to fathom how such an immense human accomplishment could be lost so quickly to Mother Nature's work. The fact that a mere 1,000 years can turn a brilliant city into a mountainous jungle makes one look hard at their own people's place in time. Had it not been for a nineteenth-century gum tapper, swinging from a tall tree branch by the opening of what appeared a dark cave, Tikal might still be buried beneath nature’s cloak. A keen eye catching a stucco fleck is what led to the recovery of this ancient world.

We would learn later that Juan carries the highest score ever received on the Tikal National Park Guide Exam. And our dumb luck allowed us to score him as our own. Juan was a gem. As was Dave, the ex-pat South Floridian resort owner, who had us spotlighting tarantulas in his garden after dinner, revealing how these furry arachnids will tamely walk along a hand and arm once lured from their holes. And Lou, the ex-pat baker and small-boat tour captain who, while pointing out twenty species of exotic bird life from his bouncing boat, spiced the time with stories about his time as a Washington D.C. mail man, including the day he demanded an autograph as he put forward the court warrant he’d been charged to deliver to a laughing John Lennon.

What is it about funky backwaters and the colorful characters they attract? Perhaps funk is the intersection of history and art. Peeling back a few vines in the Guatemalan jungle, the history is alive with ghosts. The residents of El Remate today seem to sense their ancient presence. I'm convinced it's what lures them as much as the forests or the lakes.

(7/21/05)


Relic


Jaguar Temple