Cafe Arqueologico Yax-ha - Where I work

Café Arqueológico Yax-ha. That's it, my new work place for the next 6 months. But what's at the bottom of it?

The Café's main focus is on the Mayan culture and architecture. Here they aim to spread their knowledge of ancient Mayan culture. Inside, they offer a wide variety of old and new photos of different archeological sites ( Tulum, Ek'Balam, Palenque, Tikal, La Blance, YAX-HA and so on...), books and maps, and slide show evenings.

All exhibits document the excavation of the sites, include pictures of the staff and the discoveries. Cafe Yax-ha is the meeting point of the archeologists that do reasearch and excavations in El Peten. There are many sites that are still not completely excavated or even found! It might sound a bit boring or geeky but after I got a deeper insight by all the stories and visiting Tikal I got totally carried along....

In addition to this, they or we :) also offer special tours to Mayan sites. My boss, Dieter, is a (famous) archeologist himself and participated and lead several excavations here. 

Dieter is funny. Sarcastic and unpredictable. He is the most chilled person, or boss, I have ever met. 

Just one time I sat at the table behind my laptop when he walked by and just said to me SHUT UP (Schnautze!) even though I haven't even said one thing to him. Followed by his funny laugh. Silly guy and so not-German.


Besides all the archeological stuff, there is also a Spanish school "Dos Mundos". While the travelers stay here, they have the oportunity to take one-to-one classes with local students and learn Spanish very easily. Even I have been taking classes, I think 4 times now, with a Chapina (thats what the Guatemalans call themselves) named Celine. She is 19 years old and such a sweety! I learn really fast and its just fun talking to her about everything. 
People can also stay with local families, which is pretty cool, too. 

One spacious room of the second floor Dos Mundos Spanish school

The Cafe also has 7 rooms with private bathrooms. Nothing special but comfy and perfect for the mostly short stay of the guests. 


The Cafe itself serves awesome international food as well as -OF COURSE- typical prehispanic dishes, which were created in cooperation with Mayans who still preserve their old traditions. The meals use local ingredients that have existed in this area for hundreds of years and were used by the Mayans in their daily lives.

My favourite breakfast

Me at the 2nd night, eating Pollo Xni Pec, yummy :)

What do I do?
So far I help in the Cafe, taking orders, serving people, buy supplies, prepare smoothies, clean up and so on. Also, I am the administrator of the Cafe Yax-ha facebook page (Go ahead and 'like '!!!) Plus I am contacting local and international NGO's that are working in the Peten area or anywhere else in Guatemala to inform them about our well-located Spanish school. What else....hm. We have built a temple shaped board to advertise our delicious breakfast more to the people that walk by. We did some translations from German into English and I am Dieter's wife German teacher. I have a lot of free time also and am enjoying it very much. It is a little bit of everything....

Tikal - The heart of the Mayan civilization

With its size of approx. 500! km2 and over 3000! building structures, Tikal is the largest Mayan site. In Tikal, the highest and steepest pyramids can be found and the first evidence of human settlement is dated 800 B.C. It is located deeply in the rainforest and together with all the wild animalitos that can be seen there this site will fascinate every visitor. 

This is a map, focussing on the main buildings. All the black cubes illustrate building structures. 

We left early in the morning, around 7 mas o menos. All packed with mosquito reppellent, 3 bottles of aqua pura, a sandwich and several snacks my bag was pretty heavy buuuut I was ready to go! It hasn't rained in 2 days so I knew this day was gonna be hot, nevertheless, I decided to wear jeans since everybody said the mosquitos were really aggressive in Tikal plus I don't like it when tall grass and stuff like that is tickeling my legs. 


The bus ride takes 1 hour 20 minutes. I finally get to see more of whats outside of the island. We pass many villages, lovely villages, were I see cute hairy pigs, the cutest dogs, skinny horses and people strolling along the main road or just relaxing in the shade. I see colorful houses, all equipped with the typical hamacas (hammocks), tiendas, surrounded by palm trees, girls playing or preparing food with their mothers... beautiful. Every now and then you I see military or police passing by. Doesn't bother me, i guess I got used to that.


We pass by El Remate, that's where Alfred moved to. We heard how beautiful the Lake is on that side, now I see it with my own eyes.

I only saw this from driving by, this is not one of my pictures.

Yay, finally there! After entering the Park, we drove another 17km into the jungle until we arrived at the bus parking. We went to the tourist information, bought a map and started walking. The bus driver told us to walk quietly  if we want to see alot of animals. First thing we saw were Pizotes. We only saw them from a long way but we sneaked up on them and were surprised to see that there are about 20 of them, of all sizes- soooo cute!

Off to the first temple. Also called Temple of Inscriptions since its roof comb is decorated with many glyphs. 
It is Hidden in the rainforest. It's so peaceful.

Temple of the Inscriptions

Ok, let's keep going. Grupo G. Thank god it was located in the shade. After a 20 minute walk we needed a break and some snacks. At Grupo G we were able to hear the Howler Monkeys for the first time. They sounded funny. And.. mean. I sooo wanna see one!

Grupo G

After this much needed rest, we navigate towards the Temple V. It takes us about 15-20 mins till I see a humongous pyramid! Wow. Breathtaking. Pictures, pictures, pictures. Rest. Apply more repellant. More pictures. Go!

 Next: Gran Plaza. The route is rocky, rooty (don't know if this expression exists), steep, narrow. It is so hot - I hate my jeans right now. My feet hurt. I sweat. My bag is so friggin heavy and I can feel how there is a tension in my neck. I feel like a little baby, whining and complaining. I better be quiet now and focus more on my steps and on the beautiful place we are at.... We think we are there. I feel how excitement kind of displaces my stress as we get closer. I look around the corner and see this:

Uffff. Made it. As pretty as it looks, I need to lay my bag down and sit for a few minutes. We walk up the stairs, to the left and sit down on some excavated stairs of another huge building complex. Perfect view. Time to relax and become aware this place. Looking at these temples, I ask myself "how did they do this? how did this look when the Mayans were still alive?". I touch the stair and think wow, that's the oldest stair I've ever sat on! Is that weird? Please don't judge me!

Rike resting on the stairs, analysing the surrounding

Temple of the Great Jaguar

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to climb up any of the 2 temples. We take some pictures, read about the Plaza in our map and walk a little bit around. The sun is burning. But at least there is a little breeze and the humidity does not feel so extreme anymore.

Rike and Temple II

I wanna climb up the Gran Acropolis now. It is harder than I expected it. The stairs are narrow but high. How could they walk up the stairs? That is like a super hard excercise. ....Mayans, weird people.... ;-) On top we had a great view over the plaza and explored a little bit more of the Acropolis.

We leave the Gran Plaza and wanna get to Temple IV. The highest one. Another tour through the jungle. We stop at the Plaza de los siete templos, which is well located in the shade. I sit down on a wooden bench and rest my feet.

Not far away is El Mundo Perdido- Lost world. I don't know why, but the pyramid there was probably one of my favourite ones. Maybe because it was the first one we were able to climb up. All the way. Or because the Mayans used the high platform to observe the milky way?

     

That was a lot of fun. But my body gets weaker and I have a headache. I miss Josh.


Off to the last one of our list: Temple IV- the highest one. I keep drinking water and hope my head ache will go away. We see the jungle turkeys, and, finally, MONKEYS! No howler monkeys though, but spyder monkeys - cute!

Unfortunately I couldn't capture them myself- Foto by billofthebirds.blogspot.com

A lot of visitors are at Temple IV. We can't really see much from the bottom but we see that there is a wooden stair way constructed right next to the pyramid, where everybody and they're mother seemed to walk up. Let's do this. 

On top. Speechless.

We can overlook the jungle. And see the high temples of the Gran Plaza emerging through the trees. It's finally a little bit more quiet than underneath the trees, where you can hear insects that make noise like these electric wood saws .... And the cool breeze finally dries me up. I sit down and just enjoy the view.

We decide to leave since we wanna get the bus at 14:00. We take a short cut and arrive at the bus parking a little bit early. We visit some typical Mayan stores, the restrooms and a small supermarket right at the bus stop. Finally sitting down again. 
Right when I look up to analyse their roof construction I see 2 Pizotes playig around. They weren't shy at all and even came down. It seemed like they wanted to be in the spot light of all the visitors.  They came really close and I took alot of pics. They did a good job and soon many tourists were admiring them and giggeling. Then, they get close to Helen, our French friend, walked behind her back and stole her cookies! It was soooo funny- everybody started laughing. The Pizote didn't even wanna share the cookies with his friend- what a meany!!!

Summing up, TIKAL WAS AWESOME! I got to see my first Mayan site and definitely licked blood. I wanna visit Palenque in Mexico and of course Yax-ha and La Blanca. And any other site when I get the chance to.