Green Hue Changes as We're Tikal-ed Pink in the Jungle

The plan. Go to jungle, trek for 2 days to get to El Mirador. Stay for a day exploring the massive ruins, then trek home again for 2 days.

It all sounded like a great plan. But as Robbie burns wrote, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men gang aft agley".

Since T has 'covered' this already I won't repeat it, but safe to say perhaps the only more doomed trip was the Titanic's to New York.

So back in Flores after a quality trip on the Chicken bus and after T had stopped looking green, we decided to make the most out our bad luck with a trip to Tikal. One word. Wow.

OK, lots of words. What an amazing site, if you get the chance - no let me rephrase that - create the opportunity to visit Tikal. It is absolutely amazing. There a few things in life that I can think of the truly stunned me:

1.The way T looked on our wedding day.

2.Neil Kinnock losing the election to the tories.

3.Leonardo Davinci's painting of the Last Supper in Milan.

4.England regaining the Ashes 2009 - Get it right up ye's woo hoo. (think I might need to tone this down when I arrive in Oz).

5.The Sagrada da Familia in Barcelona.

Tikal is right up there and the photos we've got will not do it justice, only a visit really brings home the scale and magnificence of this ancient place. Fantastic.

The temples are huge, the views are simply gob smacking. And the history of the place from the architectural and city planning feats to the rituals of human sacrifice are just fascinating. There is something for everyone from the twitchers to the archeologists to the hikers, the site is just huge.

In fact, considering we were at a place rightly considered by many to be one of the wonders of the world, I couldn't believe how few people there seemed to be. There may well have been hundreds of folks, truth is that in a park this size you can walk for ages and just not see anyone else.

So the first night we sat on top of pyramid two watching the sun set over the great plaza. Then I had a slightly unnerving thought that we didn't bring a torch so we made a hasty retreat in the semi dark back to camp for an evening beer.

The good news is that if you buy your ticket after 3pm then it is valid for the next day, so at 6am we joined our scheduled tour for a four hour hike round the ruins. I usually get bored on these things but this could have taken eight hours and I wouldn't have noticed. Such is the scale and diversity of things to see.

After lunch we went back into the park for a last couple of hours and then it was that I saw something quite astonishing (not a jaguar fortunately/unfortunately - delete as appropriate) but a swarm of ants. I had no idea that you got swarms of ants but these fellas meant business. Must have been an entire colony covering virtually the entire pathway out. Quite similar to the evening roosts of starlings that can be seen in Britain, but creepier. No idea what had caused this mass exodus but when they moved my way I thought it was time to go! My thoughts being these ants are like Neds (Glasgow term for Chav) - you could have one on his own but put about 1,000,000 of them together and you're in trouble.

So that was cool, and I got to hold a tarantula as well, no mean feat given I am not exactly nuts about spiders, but it was really, really soft, like holding feathers.

Safe to say we're tickled pink with Tikal and have now gone back to Antigua to relax for a couple of days. What ever T had has caught up with me so I spent yesterday in bed with a crazy fever but the anti-parasitics and paracetamol, plus enough Gatorade to drown in seem to be having the desired effect.

Next up is a very brief stop in Panama then onto Ecuador for some more… jungle trekking.Stay safe peeps.

By the way is anyone actually reading this? Thought I'd ask. I'm enjoying writing it.

Dave