Day 6 - Tikal, Guatemala – June 13th

Today was amazing! We had an early day and drove an hour out to Tikal. I love Tikal! We start out by walking about 30 minutes through a jungle trail and then we step out into a clearing and see the top of a massive pyramid peeking out over the jungle canopy. So we climbed to the top of this pyramid and from there you can several other pyramids over the treetops. This temple was almost 300 feet tall. We sat on the upper steps for about 15 minutes, listening to John Lund explain about Tikal and the landscape and what we would b seeing. He says Tikal is a good candidate for the city of Nephihah. This city shows civilization starting 900 B.C. to 1000 A.D. We spent the next 4 hours walking through more jungle paths and then come across another clearing the pyramids and courtyards and buildings. We saw so many monkeys in the trees above us; spider and howler monkeys. Mike and I climbed all that we could, and even some places we shouldn’t. The pyramids here were so majestic. The whole experience was just fun! I loved all the hikes through the jungle and awesome ruins. After our tour of Tikal we went on an hour long zip line excursion. It was quite an experience. Everything is much more laid back here, and they don’t have all the safety guidelines and restrictions that the US has, which make it fun to be able to climb steep pyramids. So much that we’ve done here, places we climbed and explored would have been off limits back home. We climbed up to these platforms, with no railings, high in the treetops and strapped ourselves in and went zipping about 100 feet to the next station in the treetops, unhooked, climbed up another ladder to another small, wobbly, without railings platform, hooked up and went again. There were 8 different zip lines. They call it the canopy tour. It was a lot of fun and a little scary. But a great experience. We got back to the hotel around 5:00 p.m. I did a little laundry while Mike napped. We had another great dinner, and then John Lund talked to us about relationships. He’s been a marriage counselor for 30 years. His main focus was to be clear with your communication. Make sure your words, body language and tone of voice all match so there is no miscommunication. And don’t hint drop. Be clear with your expectations. He’s a great speaker and very entertaining. Mike laughed through the whole presentation.