Ti’kal

The hotel has electricity only from 6pm to 10pm. So, at 3.30am, you wake up, you wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and hope to see some sort of shapes in your room so as not to bump into anything. The eyes don't adjust. It is pitch-dark. I had to rely on my mobile torch. At 4.15am, we went out, and there wasn’t one spot in the sky that wasn’t filled with stars. I don’t think I have ever seen so many stars in my life. We walked through the forest and climbed the highest pyramid. At the top, a guard motioned us to remain quiet. We sat on the huge stairs with a handful of other people, and we overlooked the dense forest, the plains of Péten and the now somewhat black somewhat very dark blue sky with a very faint orange at the horizon. Only one very prominent star was now visible and shining.

All in silence.

Suddenly the howler monkeys start to scream. From one corner of the forest to the other corner (Howler monkeys were used in Jurassic Park for the sound of one of the dinosaurs, so, imagine the kind of sounds we were hearing..) and then the birds woke up and started to sing. And the faint orange gradually turned into a very strong reddish orange.

All in silence.

The day became clearer, and now, we could clearly see the top of the pyramids, the dense forest and the plains no longer looked like a vast sea. The orange faded and became clear blue.

And then suddenly, very far away, we could see a line of very strong orange. It seemed like far away there was a huge fire.

And then, the circular shape of orange appeared.

Bliss.

Tears.

All in silence.

The ball of fire rose.

All in silence.

One of my most precious experiences. It reminded me of another place where at dawn we wait for orange to come out.

Tikal was a prosperous township during the Mayan era. They built their pyramids and temples in such a way so that they could study the movement of the sun and the stars. I think it is appropriate to watch the sunrise there, away from the late morning crowd.