Coffee and mayaruins in the north

Coffee plant with it's berry and flower

Tikal

Sunset over the main plaza, Tikal

Watching the sunrise over the jungle from one of the temples, Tikal

We continued our journey through Guatemala by taking another ¨safe¨ minibus to the very centred Cobàn. Cobàn is known from producing the country´s finest coffee due to it´s colder climate and high altitude. The city itself wasn´t pretty at all; dirty streets and alot of fast food chains. But as the main income didn´t come from tourists people were nice and friendly - and of course the coffee was excellent!
We toured a coffeefarm together with two Americans and learned, thanks to one of the girls´s fluent spanish, everything there is to know about coffee. Cobàn was also a perfect ¨break up the drive¨ on our the way to the magnifique Tikal - the mother of all maya ruins in the very north of Guatemala.
We got into the park on the following day´s ticket to watch the last hour of sunlight slowly descend from the ancient stonetemles in the middle of a jungle.
We rented a tent, as this was by far the cheapest way to sleep outside the park, and got in at 6am the next day before the big hords of tourists rolled in.
Tikal was the greatest of all maya kingdoms and it really is impressive. The location in the middle of a jungle with temples to climb up over the tree tops gave it a magical feeling (no wonder starwars was filmed here). But compared to Copán ruinas in Honduras Tikal lack the fine details carved by hands and all the decorative statues and reliefs. The beauty lies in it´s location and size.

The mayapopulation in Guatemala goes up to around 60% but they are an economical and political minority. The whole country´s money basicly lays in the hand of a very few. The police is very corrupt and there´s lots and lots of unsolved crimes. 2/3 of the cocaine supply to US from South America travel through Guatemala and you´ll see alot of men with machine guns checking the traffic.
Guatemala has alot of issues and is a step behind it´s southern neighbours which lately is increasing in wealth and democracy (don´t know about El Salvador).

Me and Philip will go separate ways tomorrow. He will continue west into Mexico and I will also go there but to the northeastern part and finally fly out from Cancun on Wednesday if everything goes as planned.