It's my 60th birthday! Since I never expected to live to be 30, I'm thrilled! We headed up to Tikal this morning, a perfect day for it as it was only 65° when we got up and never got over the low 70's all day. When we got to the park entrance, many miles before the ruins, Chica started barking at the guys who walked up to the RV and they informed us we were not allowed into the park with dogs. We've been rewarding her for barking at men who walk near the rig so it was our karmic reward. They wouldn't let us in so we parked the rig right at the entrance and unhooked the jeep to drive in.

This is Patti on one of the trails in the park. Also check out the size of the people in front of the opening on the first picture, these temples are huge!

We spent the whole day walking around the ruins and looking for birds as much as at the mayan ruins. Mimi and I were here 3 years ago but didn't get to all the areas that we did this time. There are several reasons why I put this site at the top of the list of Mayan sites. First,the location is spectacular. The ruins are in the center of a huge national park with beautiful high canopy jungle and an incredible number of plants, trees, orchids and ferns. Second, the amount of wildlife in the park is also incredible, more so than any other area I've visited. Third, it was a huge and powerful city for many centuries and the buildings that have been restored are well done and many that have not been are still in good shape. The number of huge temples, the elaborate palace residences with many levels like a modern apartment building and the still functioning system of canals and resevoirs are impressive.

This tree root coming out of an unrestored temple in a group they are currently working on caught my eye. It's one of 6 small temples flanking a larger one all of which are on one side of a huge square that has large, impressive buildings on all sides. Since they are working on this group, they had a mock up of what it would have looked like a thousand years ago, everything painted red and all of the buildings complete.

We saw some great birds, toucans, amazon parrots, oropendulas, trogans, many flycatchers, and some others I've forgotten the names of. We also saw spider monkeys, howler monkeys, coatimundi (see picture), and what we call a topo (looks like a huge rat). The howler monkeys were roaring the whole time we were there, they sound like a huge cat growling, and roared for hours in the evening where we were camped. We got back to the entrance about 4pm, the dogs were fine, and we returned to our spot in El Remate.



Walked down the street to a restaurant on the lake with Bobby and Patti for my birthday dinner and spent hours playing dominoes afterwards. I raised a drink in the general direction of our friends gathered near Patagonia Arizona, Salud! It was a great day!