From the entrance to the archaeological park, it's a forty-minute walk to temple IV, the tallest temple in Tikal. From the top of this temple, there is an excellent view over the roof of the jungle and some of Tikal's big temples. This is what it looked like during the day:
In the morning, however, the weather god was for once not with me. The view was thoroughly unimpressive: everything, including the sun, was covered in thick fog and dawn snuck in almost imperceptibly. At 7am, I decided to leave and come back later - when the view had finally cleared up and I could take the picture above.
Exploring Tikal on my own, I discovered tons of wonderful buildings and views. For example this stela, depicting the life of some ruler or other:
Next to almost all of these stelae and other carved stones - many of them having fallen down and lying in comfortable seating height - there were signs asking visitors to please not sit on the monuments. Quite hilarious! But typical of course - I often get the impression that tourists will sit on anything, carve their names into anything, and in all other respects behave as inappropriately as possible as well ;-)
The temples used to be splendidly decorated back in the day - between about 300 and 900 AD - but most of that has been lost by centuries of jungle growing right on top. In some places, however, there are still some carved stones left, overgrown by moss:
To give you a vague idea of what the park maintenance of Tikal has to accomplish on a daily basis, just compare the following two pictures:
The pyramid in the first picture is freshly cleaned, while the temple in the second picture has been left alone for a bit. While I don't know exactly how long, I think it is much shorter than anyone would find comfortable if it occurred in their garden ;-)
With a height of 57 meters, temple V is the second biggest temple in Tikal - but the biggest to be free of vegetation right now. (Restoration work at temple IV, the biggest, is currently in progress, so it's only a matter of time until the view of temple IV is as grand as this.) The front staircase is really quite impressive, isn't it?
The centerpiece of Tikal is the great plaza, a collection of two temples facing each other and various palaces on the sides. This is a view of about half of it - the other half to the left of this picture looks pretty much the same, only with a slightly smaller temple.
The park also has two museums that display some of the stelae and altars found, as well as the contents of some of the burial sites inside the temples: mainly ceramics and jewelry. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, but as usual Wikipedia has some images if you're interested.
