The thing about mosquitos is that they have been around longer than we have. They have had eons to perfect their art. We on the other hand are still new at all of this jungle existence, especially those soft skinned versions of us who hail from the likes of England and Europe. I remember many years ago Karen and I stayed in a Malaysian municipal holiday resort in Southern Borneo for a few days. This place was about as welcoming as a crematorium, dark, somber, damp and rather unsettling. It was however in a national park well known for great wildlife sightings, especially proboscis monkeys which are a bit of a specialty in the area. The thing about seeing the wildlife, you needed to walk into the jungle to get any sightings. So off we duly went, into the jungle, looking for the monkeys, Tigers and anything else we could find. We did however not have any bug spray! We lasted exactly 6 minutes at which we point, we turned and ran for the meshed in safety of the hut we were staying in. The armadas of the spawn of Satan liberated us of vast quantities of the precious red stuff, and I don't mean decent Bordeaux!!
Keen to learn from that experience I decided to use a layered approach to my mosquito management while in the Guatemalan jungles. 100% Deet as the base layer, arms and legs and neck. 50% Deet spray as a constant top-up to counter the effects of sweating in the 90% humidity and 35c heat and then 35% Deet cream for ears and face. Flying hypodermic needles, bring it on! Hacking through the Biotopo Cerro Cahui next to El Remate on the banks of the Peten Itza lake in northern Guatemala it seems my cunning plan works, for exactly 20 minutes that is. Mosquitos if anything are persistent and they WILL find the 1 square centimeter of non Deet covered skin and they will ALL pile in at the same time! Aaaarggh, man it hurts and then itches for ages, not cool. I wish I could drink a Deet cocktail and then sweat out pure Deet afterwards, heaven knows what that would do to my innards.
The reason why I'm here is mainly to visit Tikal, possibly the most impressive of all the Mayan complexes in Central America. It definitely is the most visited site in Guatemala and the setting in the jungle is superb. Many of the temples and pyramids have been left as they were found, still covered in jungle growth, trees and earth. Some of the temples stand at 60m high and more and tower over the jungle. The whole site is vast and you could spend days wandering around marveling at the awesome stone work done by the Mayans over 1000 years ago. Walking between the temples for distances of kilometers in some cases, you are in typical jungle, surrounded by incredible bird life. This place is tailor made for twitchers, as long as you can handle heat, humidity and mosquitos!
I signed up for the Tikal sunrise tour where you are collected at 3:30am and then taken to the site where you climb temple 4 to a height of about 55m and you watch the sunrise and listen to the jungle come alive. Up at 3am, duly off at 3:30 we all get to the site entrance at 4:30. It's quite a walk in the dark to temple 4 past the other temples and pyramids. Man this place is amazing in the dark, you can feel the history, so cool! Grey somber rock structures all around you, hemming you in. Those Mayan dudes knew their stuff!
5:40am and there are about 30 bleary eyed tourists up on temple 4 waiting for the sunrise. Did I mention that it is rainy season here? Unfortunately no sunrise, only thick mist. HOWEVER, I do have a great video which includes the awesome sounds of the jungle waking up. You have gotta hear the jungle! Unfortunately the bandwidth here in Belize is too low for me to upload the video. I'll do it in the final blog post from Atlanta.
The Jurassic park noises in the background of the video are Howler monkeys. They are insanely loud
and can be heard for miles. The close ones that you can hear were at the base of temple 4 and they had bombarded us with monkey poop as we walked below the tree that they were sleeping in. I reckon they get a strange perverted pleasure in flinging fresh dung at unsuspecting, half asleep tourists. According to the guide it is good luck to get hit on the head by a fresh dump. Not sure I agree with him there!
After about an hour of crazy jungle noises, things become quiet in the jungle and the inhabitants get on with their daily search for food. Hawks, Eagles and vultures prowl the skies, birds forage and monkeys stop flinging dung while pigging out in a Pimiento tree. Nature at its best!
Now, all I have to do is survive the mosquito onslaught whilst checking out the temples and heading back to the visitors center.
I'm sure I can drink Deet, as the Dr Peppers advert says; "What's the worst that can happen??".
Hasta Luego
Andrew
Keen to learn from that experience I decided to use a layered approach to my mosquito management while in the Guatemalan jungles. 100% Deet as the base layer, arms and legs and neck. 50% Deet spray as a constant top-up to counter the effects of sweating in the 90% humidity and 35c heat and then 35% Deet cream for ears and face. Flying hypodermic needles, bring it on! Hacking through the Biotopo Cerro Cahui next to El Remate on the banks of the Peten Itza lake in northern Guatemala it seems my cunning plan works, for exactly 20 minutes that is. Mosquitos if anything are persistent and they WILL find the 1 square centimeter of non Deet covered skin and they will ALL pile in at the same time! Aaaarggh, man it hurts and then itches for ages, not cool. I wish I could drink a Deet cocktail and then sweat out pure Deet afterwards, heaven knows what that would do to my innards.
Views from the mosquito trail
The reason why I'm here is mainly to visit Tikal, possibly the most impressive of all the Mayan complexes in Central America. It definitely is the most visited site in Guatemala and the setting in the jungle is superb. Many of the temples and pyramids have been left as they were found, still covered in jungle growth, trees and earth. Some of the temples stand at 60m high and more and tower over the jungle. The whole site is vast and you could spend days wandering around marveling at the awesome stone work done by the Mayans over 1000 years ago. Walking between the temples for distances of kilometers in some cases, you are in typical jungle, surrounded by incredible bird life. This place is tailor made for twitchers, as long as you can handle heat, humidity and mosquitos!
I signed up for the Tikal sunrise tour where you are collected at 3:30am and then taken to the site where you climb temple 4 to a height of about 55m and you watch the sunrise and listen to the jungle come alive. Up at 3am, duly off at 3:30 we all get to the site entrance at 4:30. It's quite a walk in the dark to temple 4 past the other temples and pyramids. Man this place is amazing in the dark, you can feel the history, so cool! Grey somber rock structures all around you, hemming you in. Those Mayan dudes knew their stuff!
5:40am and there are about 30 bleary eyed tourists up on temple 4 waiting for the sunrise. Did I mention that it is rainy season here? Unfortunately no sunrise, only thick mist. HOWEVER, I do have a great video which includes the awesome sounds of the jungle waking up. You have gotta hear the jungle! Unfortunately the bandwidth here in Belize is too low for me to upload the video. I'll do it in the final blog post from Atlanta.
Early morning view
One of the pyramids
View over the site
and can be heard for miles. The close ones that you can hear were at the base of temple 4 and they had bombarded us with monkey poop as we walked below the tree that they were sleeping in. I reckon they get a strange perverted pleasure in flinging fresh dung at unsuspecting, half asleep tourists. According to the guide it is good luck to get hit on the head by a fresh dump. Not sure I agree with him there!
After about an hour of crazy jungle noises, things become quiet in the jungle and the inhabitants get on with their daily search for food. Hawks, Eagles and vultures prowl the skies, birds forage and monkeys stop flinging dung while pigging out in a Pimiento tree. Nature at its best!
Now, all I have to do is survive the mosquito onslaught whilst checking out the temples and heading back to the visitors center.
I'm sure I can drink Deet, as the Dr Peppers advert says; "What's the worst that can happen??".
Hasta Luego
Andrew
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