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Waking up early and getting on another bus up to El Remate (our gateway to Tikal) was not a nice prospect, however it had to be done!! The bus journey took around another 8 hours and upon arrival in El Remate all I wanted to do was sleep. That night there were some serious thunder and lightning storms and I have never heard rain like it!! Incredible amounts of water coming down.
The next morning feeling drowzy from lack of sleep due to the rain we woke up at around 5 to catch the early morning bus to Tikal. Upon arrival we set up our camp site, paid the fee to get in and started to wander around hoping that we would see as much wildlife as possible!! Almost as soon as we walked into the grounds we saw spider monkeys and howler monkeys swinging from the trees. It was awesome to see them in their natural habitat, however we were a bit worried after reading a bill board which said some monkeys defacate on the heads of visitors as a sign of dominance and to show they are there. We thought that defacation was a little unnecessary, a howl would have sufficed!!
Walking across the main Plaza we were dive bombed by a very loud and colourful bird, who seemed to be protecting his nest!! That was amusing and the birds call was equally funny. We decided to hike up to a few of the temples, some of which were near vertical ladders running for around 60m to the top of the temple with no safety equipment to hold you on the ladder so those were rather scary!!
Other birds we saw on the trip were woodpeckers, toucans and parrots. It was so cool seeing them in their natural habitats. Whilst walking to a remote out of the way part of the ruins we saw the coolest dragonfly ever which flew like a bird and had wings like a bi plane. We also had the luck of spotting more spider monkeys, these were a lot closer than the last and provided some awesome photo opportunities!!
The afternoon heat kicked in and made us sit in the shade, however when in the shade we were still spotting wildlife, as a howler monkey ran straight past us. Simon and I grabbed our cameras and ran after it. That made my day!!
That evening we chilled out and I slept in a hammock whilst again witnessing some serious thunder storms!!
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